EH!!! USELESS!!!

This follows
The Trouble with All Transienthomelessdruggiemental Panhandlers
23 Sep, 2015
immediately below

While I can see purpose in a bylaw regulating panhandling in Nelson - I find much of the reasoning thus far to substantiate a pressing need for it spurious and driven for/by/with special interests. Content & form clearly point to even just the idea as less than fully gestated!

Proposed: Panhandling Bylaw No. 3321, 2015

ANALYSIS SUMMARY

The Nelson Police Department (NPD) and Bylaw Enforcement Officers are requesting this regulatory bylaw due to an increase in panhandling within City limits, especially the Downtown core. The bylaw will support and strengthen the Nelson Bylaw Officers ability when interacting with person(s) panhandling.

Cops simply are not seen downtown (unless on their way to/from coffee - really!): we have no foot-patrols there/anywhere. Conventional wisdom has it: a reliably visible police-presence definitively changes the profile of any area it covers. Here - negative aspects of the downtown profile - while supposedly of concern to the cops - ironically - have been created and habitually locked-in directly due to their commonly known absence.

Bylaw Enforcement Officers - the very few we have largely left to their own devices - are spread so thinly throughout Nelson that their observations concerning panhandling have to be very few as well.

Neither group - without consistent presence and accurate record-keeping - is in the position to determine the scope of local panhandling (even less: within its much larger and totally unaddressed context - should that be of interest). They have no (correlated) data-bases of incidents, numbers - facts. If they had: why wouldn't those be the anchor of this proposal?

The motivation behind this bylaw (supposedly) requested by them is specious.

Seeing that the Deputy Police Chief - at least nominally - is in charge of the Bylaw Enforcement Department (BED) as well: he - and not his meter-maids - would have made this bylaw-request for their department. So this proposal stating that the NPD and Bylaw Enforcement Officers are making it - with him solely in charge of both while the Police Chief is very otherwise occupied: as an attempt to give this request more weight - is just so much outside-created fluff.

Why isn't Burkhart mentioned in this proposal?

What's the point of this bylaw if nobody is there there to apply it?

BACKGROUND

While much is made of increase and increase of aggressive panhandling - with no data provided by City/NPD/BED of either in this REQUEST FOR DECISION, SEP. 14, 2015 - no valid grounds exist for warranting such request! Period!

Which raises the question: where/when/how did the idea of a Panhandling Bylaw become an official Proposal? More to the point: who originated it for whose presumed advantage?

Bylaw officers, when asking person(s) panhandling to move along, believe 50% of the panhandlers they interact with are great and easy but then there is the other 50% who are confrontational, us extreme profanity, and seem to need the extra encouragement or incentive (NPD assistance) to comply.

Is this 50/50 twaddle with extreme profanity a quote of something BED (while not acknowledged as such - it does sound like them); is it a collaborate effort of City Staff and BED; or is it pure City? No matter who: this is the white-sugar/empty calorie energy driving the need for a panhandling bylaw right now this moment not a minute to be wasted oh the peril we're in!!!

Ultimately City Staff is (literally?) responsible for this poorly, embarrassingly official REQUEST. 
It is up to Council to look at its deeply superficial! content closely!

Person(s) panhandling appear to be

approaching pedestrians more frequently

becoming aggressive towards pedestrians causing pedestrians to become uncomfortable walking downtown, even crossing the street to avoid certain areas

more signs being held by panhandlers which are extremely offensive

blocking of the sidewalk passage putting both the pedestrians and panhandlers into a safety/hazardous situations.

Person(s) panhandling occurs year round within our community with increased activity realized in the summer months.

All this is merely subjective anecdotal wingeing! Coming from where - exactly? Of fundamental concern: This request is about an increase in panhandling - also increased activity realized in the summer months. Question: Is this the same increase - or is the increase during summer an increase of an increase? What about spring, fall, winter? A decrease from what to what? Or what!

 1. DEFINITIONS

"Panhandle"

means to beg for, or without consideration, ask for money, donations, goods or other things of value whether by spoken, written or printed word or bodily gesture for one's self or for any other person but does not include soliciting where approved by the City;

This definition in/by itself makes clear how little actual on-the-ground experience is behind the City scraping this bylaw together. If this particular definition becomes the bylaw's bottom-line - be still, poor heart! - this bylaw won't be done until it's done!

In this post (and all others) direct quotes are written in italics. I do not make changes to content, syntax, grammar, punctuation - no matter how tempted: particularly here - in every aspect!