Tempe City Council to reconsider divisive ordinance it passed in July

On July 1, the Tempe City Council sat stonefaced as dozens of people blasted a proposed change to city code that they worried would limit freedom of assembly and crack down on mutual aid groups that hold events in city parks. After the hours-long public haranguing was done, the council voted unanimously to pass the new parks ordinance.

The backlash after the vote has been even stronger than the backlash that preceded it. The vote sparked a petition campaign to repeal the new special events ordinance, which critics say invests too much power in city staffers who can unilaterally decide who can and can’t gather in city parks. Last week, the city clerk officially approved the repeal measure to be placed on the ballot for the city’s March 10 elections.

Suddenly, Tempe’s city councilmembers — several of whom are up for reelection in the spring — appear to be less certain about their votes. The agenda for the council’s Aug. 28 meeting, at which the council was expected to conduct a pro forma vote to send the repeal measure to voters, includes an item about “discussion and possible reconsideration” of their original vote on the matter.

According to state law, the council can indeed either send the referendum to the ballot or pass it into law without letting voters decide — which, in this case, would mean striking the new ordinance from the books and returning to the status quo. The new ordinance has not gone into effect while the referendum campaign progressed. Last week, Tempe Mayor Corey Woods suggested to Phoenix New Times that the council would put the issue before voters.

“Now that the signatures have been submitted and certified, the City Council and I will just have to wait and see what the final outcome is,” Woods said at the time.

However, Tempe spokesperson Kris Baxter-Ging told New Times via email on Tuesday that the council “will discuss whether to send the new parks and special events ordinance to voters as a referendum item, or, with a two-thirds majority, reconsider the ordinance.” Baxter-Ging did not explain why the council needed the two-thirds majority vote, though the council rarely splits votes anyway.

Organizers from the coalition of community groups that gathered petition signatures told New Times that an about-face from the council would be a welcome outcome.

“They thought they were still speaking for the majority of Tempe voters,” said Dillon Wild, a co-chair of the Phoenix chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, which led the repeal campaign. “What our campaign has demonstrated — and what the council has clearly realized — is that is not the case.”

The parks ordinance saga

However it goes, the council’s Aug. 28 vote will mark the latest chapter in a more than year-long saga between the city and mutual aid groups that assist unhoused people in city parks.

Under the leadership of City Manager Rosa Inchausti, Tempe has used its original special events ordinance to crack down on community groups gathering in the parks to distribute food and clothes to unhoused people and connect them to social services. The city has cited organizers of those events, including AZ Hugs founder Austin Davis and New Deal Meal founder Ron Tapscott, with violations of the ordinance because they did not obtain permits from the city.

More recently — notably, after Davis, Tapscott and fellow organizer Jane Parker filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the city — Tempe has backed off. It dismissed a charge against Tapscott and agreed to an early end to the probation period that had kept Davis out of city parks.

That enforcement occurred under the previous version of the ordinance. The new law, which has not yet gone into effect, would impose even stricter changes on certain gatherings in public parks and create requirements for the use of park ramadas. Critics say the new ordinance gives the city too much power to approve or deny gatherings and feel the ordinance was rushed into passage with little meaningful public input.

Suffice to say, if the council chooses to scuttle the new ordinance, those organizers will be happy.

“In the event the city council overturns their previous vote, it will again be a victory for Tempe voters,” Tapscott said in a written statement. “That reversal will be an indication that City Hall has lost the confidence of Tempe voters and that vote would be a declaration that the citizens of Tempe have no confidence in the Tempe city council.”

The council’s reconsideration of the ordinance comes just a day after Tapscott, Davis and Parker dropped their federal civil rights suit against the city. The trio’s lawyer, Russell Facente, told New Times that if the repeal measure were to pass — by voters or by the council on Aug. 28 — it would “drastically change the arguments and nature of the case.” The case was dismissed without prejudice, meaning it can be refiled at a later date.

“That is exactly what we will do if the City continues to use the law unconstitutionally or selectively against the homeless and their advocates,” Facente said.

Election consequences?

If the repeal measure does go to the ballot, it will likely be one of the defining issues of the city’s March elections. Three incumbents who voted for the ordinance change — Arlene Chin, Berdetta Hodge and Jennifer Adams — are up for reelection.

Bobby Nichols, who is running for Tempe City Council and who wrote the language of the referendum petition, told New Times that he is highly confident that the referendum would pass if put on the ballot.

“I wrote the referendum petition language to repeal the new special events ordinance because my community was deeply frustrated that the council had left them out of the decision-making process,” Nichols said.

Wild echoed that thought.

“When this ordinance was rushed through on July 1, the council ignored public input from the people who would be most impacted by it,” he said. “The people of Tempe spoke loud and clear that they don’t want to see that happen again.”

Woods defended the rapid passage of the update to New Times in July, attributing the decision to the then-ongoing civil rights lawsuit.

Wild, whose DSA chapter recently endorsed Nichols, said he is cautiously optimistic about what the council’s repeal of the ordinance will mean for crafting a new update to Tempe’s parks and special events laws.

“Ultimately, at some point, we have to come together and write a better ordinance,” Wild said. “If (Tempe councilmembers and staff) are ready to have a constructive conversation about what an ordinance that meets the needs of the community looks like, it’s clear that our coalition should be a part of it. Our door is open.”

Wild added that he hoped the council would not pervert the process to sneak through another special events ordinance without community support.

“If they use this process to just deny Tempe voters once again the opportunity to be a part of the process and conversation, I think that would be deeply cynical,” Wild noted.

Odds are, Wild’s coalition will get good news of some sort Thursday night. Either the repeal measure will officially go to the ballot, or the council will admit defeat and repeal the new ordinance itself.

If that doesn’t happen, though, the issue has become pervasive enough that it could spell election trouble for some of the council’s incumbents.

“It was also clear that the new ordinance would be used to suppress mutual aid organizations, just like the last one was,” Nichols added. “We are going to fight back against that by putting principled, progressive decision-makers who are committed to community input into those seats instead of having the same unanimous council making all the decisions for us.”