After grappling with concerns about constitutional rights and drawing a distinction between “behaviors” and “type of individuals,” Burlington’s city council voted unanimously Monday night to initiate what a Church Street Marketplace official describes as “a timeout for adults.”
The new ordinance empowers police to issue a citation exiling an individual from the Marketplace. It specifies that a no-trespass notice can be handed out only to a person engaged in illegal actions such as disorderly conduct, property damage, public consumption of alcohol or possession of banned drugs. A first offense would result in banishment from the pedestrian mall for the remainder of a day; a second citation puts the Marketplace off limits for 30 days; and a third ostracizes an offender for up to one year.
Advocates argued that the new measure is needed because current penalties have not adequately deterred illegal behaviors on Church Street. Outdoor Gear Exchange owner Marc Sherman told councilors that potential customers don’t want to expose their children to the “reality show at Church and Cherry” — the location of Sherman’s store.
Councilors then debated what could be interpreted as an offensive or illegal “reality show.”
Rachel Siegel, a Ward 3 Progressive, proposed stripping from the ordinance references to “inappropriate” or “antisocial” behavior. These terms are “extremely subjective,” Siegel argued, noting that years ago when she was a Marketplace peddler, she regarded one store’s amplified tape loop of Alvin & the Chipmunks as “antisocial.”
Ward 4 Democrat Dave Hartnett added, “I don’t want it to apply to people who have purple hair.”
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Why was this done? Was there an uptick of disorder, or was there just an uptick of paranoia?
Yeah, this will end well.
As a parent, I was always cautious about bringing my children, it was sometimes more ‘educational’ than I had time to deal with. I know that the world is diverse and we cannot force our morality on all. That avoidance of Church Street in general when my children were younger did become habit. Now I will have to rethink that, thanks to the discussion of this rule, not because the rule was enacted.
This isn’t fixing anything. All this is going to do is move these activities to the front of the UU Church at the top of Church St or the Cathedral on the corner of St Paul/Cherry/Pearl.
but where will those kids sell their drugs if they can’t do it in front of the mall entrance?
Have you walked Church Street lately? It is full of people shouting obscenities. It’s not fair to parents with young children.
Agree – I rode the bus quite a bit early last summer, and Sherman’s description of the scene as the “reality show at Church and Cherry” is putting it nicely.
I am on Church Street every day. i hear no more foul language there than I do at UMall or any other public space. When my kids were small, I didn’t want laws passed to prevent people from using language I didn’t like. I just told my kids that such language made people sound ignorant.
right down the street. this is about the merchants desires more than any one else’s. further privatization of public space undertaken by the Church Street Markeplace folks