09/11/1972 Meeting - Laserfiche WebLink

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favored quick progress on' reworking of the behavioral ordinances in attempting . to resolve the problem. Councilman Williams said the Council is still faced wi th a question of. what to do _ ,to eliminate the problem. He suggested the Downtown Association present specific . 'requests they believe the Council should comply with and have the City Attorney , comment on those which could or could not be carried out. Mr. Wilson said the Association has presented such requests. They were taken into consideration when- the new regulations were developed. Some were incorporated. He added that the request to prohibit use of the lawn areas was dropped, but/the Association feels it should be included. He repeated their thinking that the peop1~_J'l1)o/are causing the problems should be banned from the mall. Manager said the DOwntown Associa- tion has been involved in development of the regulations since the mall originally : opened. Those now being considered by the Council, he said, are based on considera- tions of how best to accomplish primarily what a majority of the community wants and are felt to be a workable tool which will help. _ c/---~~ Assistant Manager re-emphasized Police Chief's position that it is a problem of . enforcement since these occurrences are usually misdemeanors and cannot be pro- secuted without actual observance by .a pol~ce officer. He said citizen participa- tion is necessary in the filing of compla.ints'i:rthere is to be any real progress in resolving the situation. Councilman Bradshaw favored further work on strengthening the behavioral conduct code. Mrs. Bea1 said the problem may be that because there are not very many people in the mall area those who are there become lOOre obvious. She said she . was not sure they are the cause of keeping other pec?ple away, that some acti vi ty . . 'attracting other People would make the objectionable ones less noticeable. The use of the mall by the EnA itself, she said, for outdoor sales and other outside commercial or cultural activities would serve as a focus to attract more people..' Mrs. Campbell wondered whether Mr. Hunt in his contacts with people in like posi- tions in other cities had gained information on how they solved similar mall problems. Mr. Hunt replied he didn't, it being an administrative problem depend- ing upon individual communities. He said a lot of cities which do not have malls are having the same problems. Mr. Bradshaw moved seconded by Mr. Williams to schedule a public hearing on the regulations . Manager asked clarification. He said the regulations are in ordinance form and public hearing is automatic in adoption of an ordinance. He wondered whether the Council wished to schedule and advertise for public hearing, since it would in a sense duplicate the administrative hearing held on ,this set of regulations. Councilman Teague said he hoped work would proceed on additions to the behavioral conduct code to allay some of the communi ty' s concern and the possibili ty of loss . of business outlets from the mall area. .., 0/ With the consent of Mr. Williams, Mr. Bradshaw changed his motion to bring the regul'!tions ordinance to the Council for adoption. --- ------ Mr. Mohr commented on the situation of the Council's having before it for adoption an ordinance which had not been placed under public scrutiny and with comment from only a selected group. Assistant Manager said this set of regulations was the subject of substantial 'testimony and debate in the administrati ve hearing wi th compromise of divergent views. He added that there should not be ~y -criticism I on the availability of the document. Mr. Mohr asked for a definitive statement as to where the failure was in the previous adoption of the mall regulations and why~it is having to be done in this : manner. City Attorney said the statement would be ready for/the September 11 I Council meeting. -- Comm ,Vote was taken on the motion to bring the ordinance for adoption. Motion carried 9/6/72 unanimously. . Approve Mr. Mohr added that adoption of the ordinange would constitute public hearing . confined to this draft only. - c , ~. Manager said' he believes there is improvement in conduct in the mall area this f summer over last year. He expressed concern that negative comment on the mall seems to be all that makes news and this results in re-enforcing those people who may be misinformed about the total asset this mall is to the community. He hoped there would be no further discussion on these problems, as debate on this matter time after time is a great disservice and is doing more damage to the communi ty 2 ~ L R 9(11/72 - 6