Gilroy
– City leaders hope to drive vagrants and gang members out of
the city’s two biggest parks by cracking down on daytime boozing,
but officials are not quite ready for
”
dry
”
parks.
Gilroy – City leaders hope to drive vagrants and gang members out of the city’s two biggest parks by cracking down on daytime boozing, but officials are not quite ready for “dry” parks.
At a Monday policy workshop, five of six city council members agreed to limit alcohol consumption at Christmas Hill Park and Las Animas Veterans Park to the hours of 4-8pm on weekdays, and from noon to 8pm on weekends and holidays. City ordinance currently allows drinking in picnic areas at both sites between the hours of 10am and 8pm, and bans alcohol at all smaller neighborhood parks.
Council members resisted a push by city staff and parks and recreation commissioners to ban drinking in all parks except by permit.
“I wonder if we’re trying to legislate human behavior,” Councilman Craig Gartman said. “I think all we’ll end up doing is punishing normal, law-abiding citizens for actions of a few citizens.”
Gartman, who was the sole dissenter in the Monday vote, was not the only council member who voiced displeasure with the alcohol ordinance in the last year, as city staff and parks and recreation commissioners shaped the proposal.
The ordinance was motivated by complaints from residents who say they steer clear of the parks because of daytime drinking by homeless people and gang members, Gilroy Community Services Director Susan Andrade-Wax told councilmen Monday night. She said that Monday morning, shortly after 9am, she spotted 19 people drinking at Las Animas Veterans Park as she dropped her child off at camp.
“I do not believe they were (drinking) Starbucks,” she said. “People are coming to drink at our parks because they can.”
In response to council concerns about profiling people for simply drinking, City Administrator Jay Baksa raised the “intimidation factor.”
“When people see this, they give it wide berth,” Baksa said. “What this ordinance is doing is protecting people who want to use the park but are scared to.”
Councilman Dion Bracco said, however, that the complaints he has received come from residents worried they will no longer have a chance to rest in the park after work and have some wine, or have a beer during weekend baseball games. Rather than banning all alcohol consumption, Bracco proposed the idea of restricting daytime drinking at the park.
Gartman said he would rather see police enforce existing laws that prohibit public intoxication.
The difference between “sober and drunk is a big gap,” replied Gilroy Police Chief Gregg Giusiana, a strong backer of the ordinance.
“It’s hard for officers to go after these people without anything with teeth to enforce,” he said.
While the council agreed to limit consumption hours to aid in enforcement, they refused to burden residents with a tedious permitting process. Under the staff proposal, residents would have to pass through the same permitting process now in place for reserving picnic areas for private parties. The permit requires a fee and proof of insurance.
“I’m concerned with protecting our citizens without having them go through this rigamarole of getting a permit,” Mayor Al Pinheiro said.
Councilmen deferred the question of whether to prohibit hard alcohol at parks until their next review of the ordinance. A revised draft is expected to return to council by September.
