The Burlington City Council is likely this evening to reopen discussion of a Church Street Marketplace no-trespass ordinance it unanimously approved four months ago.
Stricken with second thoughts about the wisdom of their votes in February, the council’s four Progressive members recently asked attorney John Franco, a fellow Prog, to assess whether the ordinance gibes with the provisions of the U.S. Constitution. It doesn’t, Franco concludes in a five-page memo dated June 4.
That finding conflicts with an analysis of the ordinance written a year ago by Assistant City Attorney Gregg Meyer. It argues that giving city officials the authority to ban certain individuals from the Marketplace is consistent with the Constitution. But the basis for Meyer’s conclusion has not been revealed to the public. City Attorney Eileen Blackwood says the document’s contents come under the heading of “attorney-client privilege” and must thus be treated as confidential.
The Progs got permission from Blackwood’s office to share Meyer’s analysis with another attorney — Franco.
The four Progressive councilors are offering a resolution at this evening’s meeting calling for Meyer’s memo to be made public. “We need it to be out there so there can be an open debate,” City Councilor Rachel Siegel said in an interview on Sunday.
In response, Blackwood said it would be “inappropriate” for her to comment on the Progs’ resolution. Asked how the document’s secrecy squares with Mayor Miro Weinberger’s stated commitment to transparency in city affairs, Blackwood responded, “If we want to be transparent on something like this, someone has to give me direction” on when the claim of privilege should not be asserted.
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It’s odd that Burlington is pushing the constitutional envelope to make arrests on Church Street while two blocks on away on Battery street it is tolerating a prostitution service that exploits immigrant women.
Does anybody else have a problem with the fact that the police department is more than willing to go after alcoholics who annoy the local elites on Church Street while at the same time tolerating the exploitation of poor asian women? Could this dichotomy be any more explicitly race and class biased?
When Kevin Scully was chief he introduced community based policing, sad to say that this philosophy has morphed into class based policing under Mike Schirling.
My personal favorite moment in the ordinance is when, after being banned from the marketplace, you have the right to request an appeal. But the address where you request an appeal is LOCATED ON the marketplace, making it illegal to do so. Sure, you could mail a letter…but what about citizens struggling with mental illness, drug addiction, and homelessness? Sending a letter is harder for citizens in that position, and those are the people being targeted, in order to (I quote verbatim from the ordinance) “maintain a safe, attractive environment in areas designed to attract tourist revenue”.
I’m not a tourist. I live here, and pay taxes for the right to use the marketplace. I have the right to go to Church Street without me or my children being subjected to loud swearing and having to avoid certain parts of the marketplace because of it.
so……. drinking a beer on a park bench gets you a ticket, but drinking a beer 15 feet away inside the chain of one of the restaurants grants you immunity from prosecution??? THAT is some magic chain the city has going there!!!! Maybe on 4/20 next year, there should be a beerIN on church street….errr lets make that 8/20-who wants to drink brew outside in April!!…