After hours of backlash, Tempe OKs controversial new parks ordinance

Tuesday night in Tempe, more than one hundred Valley residents snaked up a stairway and down Fifth Street, sweating through 109-degree heat. They had not lined up for a concert or some trendy restaurant pop-up, but for a Tempe City Council meeting. One by one, many of them waited — often for hours — for a chance to beg their elected officials not to pass a new ordinance that could make it harder to gather in city parks.

The item on the agenda was an update to the city’s special events ordinance, which the city has used to crack down on community groups that convene in city parks to distribute food to unhoused people and connect them to social services. While some Tempe residents have been in favor of curbing such activities, Tempe’s hardline approach to combating them — arresting and jailing unhoused advocate Austin Davis, ticketing members of the group New Deal Meal — has generated significant blowback.

Tuesday — a day after the city shut down an organization providing showers to homeless people on similar grounds — that blowback blew into Tempe City Hall. Before the seven-member city council could vote on the new ordinance, 85 residents stood up to speak during public comment on the change. Seventy-seven of them opposed the new ordinance, which requires gatherings of at least 30 people to obtain a potentially costly special events permit, and which critics argue empowers unelected city officials to capriciously deny permits to organizations they don’t like.

Public comment took six hours, pushing a meeting that started at 6 p.m. well past midnight. Tempe Mayor Corey Woods frequently chided attendees for applauding after a resident spoke, pointing out that clapping would only make the meeting last longer. “We have to please, please, please finish this,” Woods told the crowd. “We all want to go to bed.”

The comment gave a distinctive whiff of “let’s get this over with,” an impression only strengthened by how the city council ultimately voted. At about 1 a.m., despite the vociferous backlash and pleading to examine the proposed ordinance change more closely, the council voted 7-0 to pass the new ordinance.

"Last night, we listened to the concerns of many people, some who think this ordinance targets the unsheltered, mutual aid organizations, or people exercising their first amendment rights," Woods said in a statement, attributed to him and "members of our Tempe City Council," sent to Phoenix New Times. "The notion that this ordinance is discriminatory in any way is wrong. This ordinance creates a system that is consistent with the way we reserve our other public spaces, like rooms in community centers. It is designed to streamline the process for residents and visitors alike in a clear and fair manner, in a way that is in line (with) what most other cities in the valley already do."

The ordinance will go into effect on Aug. 1, barring legal challenges.

A torrent of opposition

A few members of the public spoke in favor of the new ordinance, though sometimes in coded language. “These are not homeless — these are drug addicts,” said one resident. (Of course, people can be — and need help with — both.) But throughout the nearly six hours of public comment, residents from different backgrounds expressed a variety of concerns about the proposed ordinance.

Democratic state Sen. Lauren Kuby, a former two-term member of the council, called into the meeting to question the ordinance’s legal basis. By placing hurdles in the way of peaceful assembly on public property, she said, the ordinance is out of step with the Constitution’s guarantee that the right of the people “peaceably to assemble for the common good shall never be abridged.”

“The ordinance delegates broad powers to unelected staff to deny, revoke or restrict permits based on vague terms such as ‘adverse impacts’ or ‘duplication of services.’ That’s not just unclear — that’s a recipe for arbitrary or discriminatory enforcement,” Kuby said. “If you don’t get that permit, then you’re committing a misdemeanor. That’s textbook prior restraint — government blocking free expression before it even happens.”

Alix Monty, a fifth-generation Tempe resident, criticized the increased policing of the parks and new security cameras that have quickly become ubiquitous in public spaces. “This is not the Tempe I grew up in,” she said, accusing City Manager Rosa Inchausti of “running Tempe as a police state.”

(In a statement to New Times, Inchausti said the police state accusation "is so over the top — and dead wrong — it demands a response. My parents emigrated to the U.S. from Cuba, fleeing an actual police state. Tempe may be many things, but it is not and will never be a police state." She also noted that city officials "spent more than six hours listening to input from residents. They don’t do that in a police state.”)

John Elvis Taska, a 37-year Tempe resident who will run for a council seat in 2026, took issue with the public engagement process, which many residents felt was rushed and too secretive.

“Let us not become a place where the right to gather — something sacred enough to be enshrined in the First Amendment — is reduced to red tape,” Taska said. “Look around: There’s about 100 people waiting for hours to see what happens tonight. Let’s postpone the vote and bring them into the conversation.”

Indeed, even city officials admitted the process of changing the ordinance was sped up. City Attorney Eric Anderson said during the meeting that an ongoing civil rights lawsuit over the city’s current special events ordinance — brought by Davis and fellow homeless advocates Ron Tapscott and Jane Parker — prompted the city to move faster. Residents complained that the accelerated timeline boxed out public input and made the consequences of the ordinance change opaque, a criticism that was underscored when even a city councilmember admitted her confusion over its ramifications.

During the meeting, Anderson and Tempe recreation manager Shawn Wagner explained the new ordinance’s provisions, which include different permits for smaller gatherings, like a $25 permit to rent a ramada in a city park. Yet when New Deal Meal organizer Dave Wells asked for clarification on what his group should do to comply with the ordinance — “There’s lots of language in the proposed ordinance designed to potentially close us down,” he said — Wagner did not have a clear answer.

“It’s really difficult to determine which permit that would be,” Wagner said, generating some bitter laughs.

Even Councilmember Jennifer Adams — who ultimately voted for the ordinance — couldn’t get a straight answer about the recent No Kings Day protests in Phoenix and Tempe. While the ordinance exempts spontaneous protests related to current affairs, pre-planned and regularly scheduled demonstrations, as many large-scale protests have been this year, could require a permit.

“I guess I’m a little confused,” Adams said.

“This special evidence ordinance is completely unconscionable," said Bobby Nichols, an organizer with pro-labor group Arizona Works Together who said he knocked doors for Woods’ mayoral campaign. “We are being told these changes are being made for clarity, but the ordinance is a confusing mess.”

What comes next

As the night and public comment dragged on, some council members seemed less than engaged with their constituents. Woods policed the applause, while Councilmember Randy Keating absent-mindedly fidgeted with a small piece of paper. Several other members stared at computer screens and not at those who were speaking.

Then again, after getting lectured for several hours by scores of people, perhaps anyone’s eyes would glaze over.

What’s clear is that, despite an obvious organizing push to attract concerned residents to the meeting, their outspokenness had little effect. What remains to be seen is how that organizing energy is used going forward.

One wild card is the lawsuit against the city, which was brought with the help of the Pacific Legal Foundation. In court documents, the foundation suggested it would send updated filings to the court if the new ordinance passed. Tempe has held off on enforcing its current special events ordinance against the lawsuit’s plaintiffs while the new ordinance was under consideration, but it remains to be seen if that detente will hold. It also remains to be seen whether New Deal Meal and other groups will comply with the new permitting requirements once they go into effect.

While that plays out, some residents pleaded with city officials to become more familiar with the groups helping the unhoused. “A lot of these people — and it’s a small army — want to help the homeless,” said personal injury attorney Paul J. Sacco at the meeting, inviting the councilmembers to attend a gathering. “When they speak to the unhoused, they are heard — and they are heard because they are trusted.”

But between Tempe officials and many constituents, that trust is sorely lacking. During the meeting, numerous speakers vowed to drive the councilmembers out of office if they continued to ignore the voices of the community.

“If you guys are always voting as a united front,” resident Diane Melrose said, “it’s time for new faces on the council.”