How long should a visitor to Hemming Plaza be allowed to sit at a table or a bench there?
That was one of the latest questions discussed by the City Council Ad Hoc Committee on Hemming Plaza, which has been meeting regularly since Sept. 28 to explore ways to improve the experience in Downtown’s central park.
The park is across from City Hall’s front door.
From the outset, Council member and committee Chair Denise Lee said the issue was the park, not the people in the park.
“This meeting is not about the homeless, it’s about what’s going on in the park,” Lee said at the first meeting.
One issue consistently discussed has been the practice by some park users of arriving at the park in the morning and sitting on a bench or at a table all day, preventing use of the public street furniture by other park visitors.
At the committee meeting Wednesday, City Assistant General Counsel Jason Teal presented an opinion on the legality of imposing a regulation or enacting legislation that would serve to limit the length of time an individual could be within the boundaries of the park or occupy a seat or bench in the park.
“The park is City property. The City makes seating available, but there is no constitutional right to sit in the park,” Teal said.
He said any potential regulation would have to meet the requirements of accomplishing a public purpose, not being arbitrary and not being “overly vague.”
Teal compared potential rules regarding how long a person could legally occupy a particular space in Hemming Plaza to laws that regulate the use of a metered parking space.
“The same would apply to tables and benches in the park,” he said.
“If tables are used for long periods of time, the park is not being properly utilized,” he said.
“There should not be an issue with placing reasonable time restrictions” on the use of the park or its fixtures, he said. “How you go about it is something else.”
Teal said placing regulations on how long the space could be used at one time by an individual would require either an amendment to the park rules or legislation specific to Hemming Plaza.
He suggested an element of any regulation effort might be to restrict the use of tables and seats during certain hours, for example 11 a.m.-2 p.m. That would allow Downtown office workers and visitors to eat lunch at a table in the park.
That would make the rule more “activity driven,” Teal said, through requiring table users to be eating lunch in order to be allowed to use a table during the specified time period.
The committee’s goal is to develop ideas that might help reduce or eliminate nuisance behavior in the park, including drinking in public, panhandling, profanity and other issues that might cause some people to avoid the park altogether.
Another change discussed Wednesday was increasing the police presence in the plaza. The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office assigns walking beat officers to the area that includes the park, but Vikki Wilkins, owner of The UPS Store on Hogan Street near the plaza, suggested JSO might assign an officer dedicated to patrolling only the park.
“There used to be a security officer from City Hall who patrolled the park and we didn’t have problems,” she said.
Jerry Moran, owner of La Cena Ristorante on Laura Street, said he would support having private security patrol in the park.
“We can’t enforce the rules we have now in the park. JSO doesn’t have the means or the will to enforce the rules,” Moran said.
The committee’s next meeting is scheduled at 10 a.m. Feb. 15 in the Don Davis Room at City Hall. The public is invited to attend.
356-2466