LOCAL: 3/20/2012 SLO City Council Report (Safe Parking Program)

Hey Folks, I wanted to do a quick write up on the Tuesday 3/20/2012 San Luis Obispo City Council meeting. I attended and spoke for my 2 of 3 alloted minutes, pretty much reading the speech attached below. I modified it during my time at the dais to comment in more detail about the onerous new restrictions on parking that was being proposed. I alluded to the fact that when my Aunt and Uncle pull up to our house in SLO in their RV for a few days visit that they would have to go downtown to apply for an oversized vehicle permit. They would fill out an application, which would be evaluated (on the spot - by next Tuesday? etc.) and if they were qualified to receive one of the limited number of permits being allocated (that day, that week, etc.?). If they couldn’t get a permit (hey, they probably would have to borrow a car or take the bus to go downtown, as their RV is a Dodge Ram pickup with a 32 foot 5th wheel - no idea where they’d park THAT downtown). 


Anyways, a few other comments on the meeting itself. Many of the speakers were inspring to me. I’ll start with those first. There was a homeless Cal Poly student who had a job, was working towards a degree, but was homeless. He was well-spoken and emphasized the hard times faced by homeless people like him who were doing everything possible to become a viable productive member of society. Another person, older, was a lifetime homeless person, who grew up homeless. He too was working but could not afford the home lifestyle yet. He too was an articulate member of the homeless class and represented them well. Several commented about tearing up over his testimony. These are the type of folks, for lack of a better shorter term - the *good* homeless, whom Police Chief Gesell wants to throw under the bus along with the homeless that I call the *bad* homeless (the sex offenders, criminals, litterbugs, the hopeless, those who have made bad decisions, etc.). Now, of course, I do NOT consider them to be *bad*, but I use that good and bad distinction for conversational purposes. In the course of wanting to curb the criminal behavior of the bad homeless, Chief Gesell wants a club to bash all the homeless, both the good and the bad. I want him to do his police work and catch and prosecute the homeless lawbreakers - the hard job of police work. 


He claims he has limited resources, but what he has is overpaid law enforcers who aren’t willing to get their hands dirty in the complex world of the homeless, and due to union privilege, aren’t free to just go out and do their jobs, no matter what it takes. In another lifetime, I worked in the defense industry (where we didn’t have overtime) for 15 years in Southern California. We worked 90 hours weeks for months on end, trying to get the birds to fly (i.e., the Satellites launched and in orbit, processing and transmitting date, and not falling out of the sky); there was no overtime and nobody felt sympathy for you and your crummy 18 hour days, coffee and donut food regimen - you did what you had to do. With unions, you couldn’t, even if you wanted to *just get the job done*. Union rules, doncha see? I’m in favor of union rights, just not for public workers who are NOT oppressed by their government overseers. Okay, major tangent - time to get back on track. Oh yeah, one of the speakers also mentioned the irony that we throw pennies at the homeless problem, yet find a way to spend  $308,048 on SLO City Manager Katie Lichtig. I don’t believe for a minute that a competent manager could be had for maybe $100k or so. $308k salary to one person on the government payroll makes me ashamed of our local government for being so callous to the plight of the common man.


Okay, this is turning into a major diatribe - again! Sorry! A few more tidbits. A statistic was put out that was NOT in the 42 page staff report on the Prado Safe Parking Program: a tour of the city revealed 69 RV and cars housing the homeless on the streets (wonder how they got that number - did they count the RV at my house?). SLO City Council announced a cost of $80k to set up the Safe Parking Program (ouch! assuming a discounted hotel voucher program of $40 per night, that would be 5.5 years of a single hotel room for a homeless family - ok, breath - $80k is a onetime cost). Not clear how much was already spent with the staff time for the 42 page staff report. Another idea floated was campground vouchers for homeless RVers at local campgrounds - no opinion on that one, other than I agree that it should be explored. Chief Gesell emphasized the large volume of complaints about the homeless and their crimes, assaults, trespassing, and unruly environment in general. I wonder how many were arrested, prosecuted, cited, fined, etc. - he didn’t say. To me, that would be doing his job - catching the bad guys - maybe I don’t understand the function of police in SLO society. I also wanted to ask the Chief what the difference was between using the word TRANSIENT and the word HOMELESS to describe those who are unable to find housing. Transient has a negative and innacurate connotation, IMO. Transients (root “trans” which to “go across” or travel) are folks who are traveling, whereas, IN MY EXPERIENCE, our homeless have strong ties to this community and have not and are not leaving their roots - they are staying in SLO. Granted, it is anecdotal evidence on my part. 


Given that the SLO Police Department categorizes calls by transient or nontransient (28% of all SLO PD calls were transient related, according to Gesell), I was wondering if they could start logging calls by TRANSIENT, RENTER or HOMEOWNER? (since we’ve already started to categorize them by method of housing - why stop with homeless or with home?) I suspect that more calls are generated by those pesky renters, and especially those Cal Poly students, so maybe we could pass more onerous laws to crack down on renters and Cal Poly students, along with the transients? Yes, I am being facetious, but I do object to classifying calls as transient or non-transient. Its as if transients aren’t full humans, or at least not citizens of our state, county, city and country? Chief Gesell also noted that between 3/1/2012 and 3/20/2012, only 18% of SLO PD calls were related to transients, representing a drop of 10%, or in statistical parlance that makes it look distorted, during the 3/1 - 3/20 timeframe (when transient calls surged), the actual transient call numbers dropped 64% Huh? Something is fishy here, and I’m guessing its the way the SLO PD counts transient calls (over the last 5 years). I’m guessing that if a transient witnessed a crime, the call became a transient-related call, and added to the 28% transient related call statistic.


Another speaker, Robert W., lives in fear in his vehicle. He has lived in homeless shelters all his life. His testimony served to alert the SLO PD to the level of fear created by pounding on RV and car doors in the middle of the night when people are sleeping. Chief Gesell continues to justify this practice, and appears that it will be continued. He did not back down from his view when teachers reported children in these cars coming to school the next day and being very upset - making it difficult for them to concentrate on their studies and no doubt causing ongoing emotional problems for them.


Some speakers alluded to the possibly unconstitutional nature of outlawing sleeping in cars; several expressed the desire to remove the prohibition on sleeping cars. I was always taught that if you were too tired to drive, to pull over and take a nap. If that happened in SLO and Chief Gesell or his officers came by, I would have a problem - I would now be breaking the law, plain and simple (I’d still take that over falling asleep, crashing and dieing). I have no constitutional view on this, but do believe that the framers of our constitution would be shocked to find out that a person without living quarters could not legally bed down in a tent on a ranch outside of town - legally. Again, I need to make the point that outlawing sleeping in RVs, cars or creekbeds is de facto outlawing homelessness. Humans need to sleep to live. Outlawing sleeping is akin to outlawing breathing - stopping breathing just makes you die faster, but never sleeping will kill you eventually. There’s much evidence out there - just go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_deprivation to read more. I’m sorry if the Police Chief disagrees with this, too. Basically, the Chief views sleeping in cars as breaking the law and “they came from somewhere [else]”, meaning they should go back to wherever they came from (even if SLO is where they were raised, worked or went to school).


The bottom line is that the SLO City Council did the right thing: they went ahead with the Prado Safe Parking Pilot Program, and tabled the onerous parking restrictions for another day - stay tuned. Sorry so long. Wanted to give an update on the meeting.