While ordinance establishing a second ELEA area was approved on the first of two readings, a second ordinance changing expulsion criteria will get further revisions before coming back to council
By Morgan Rothborne, Ashland.news
An enhanced law enforcement area for the south side of Ashland was approved Tuesday by Ashland City Council with one nay vote.
Councilor Bob Kaplan voted against the ELEA while Councilors Gina DuQunne, Jeff Dahle, Paula Hyatt, Eric Hansen and Dylan Bloom voted in favor.
“I absolutely agree with sentiments that we want to make sure that crime is controlled in all parts of town and I’m looking for effective measures to make sure that happens. I’m just not convinced that this is going to have that effect,” Kaplan said.
DuQuenne said for her the level of effort from city staff and perceptible need in south Ashland justified a yes vote.
“If you’re not breaking the rules then you have no concerns. … I believe the south side of Ashland needs all the love and care and curb appeal it can get and I have to echo what was said earlier, I have faith in our police department,” she said.
Ashland Police Chief Tighe O’Meara was returning to present the ELEA to council a second time after the Nov. 19 council business meeting, when O’Meara and Acting City Attorney Doug McGeary presented the creation of an Enhanced Law Enforcement area for the south side of Ashland, along with a separate ordinance making it easier for law enforcement to ban repeat offenders from an area for a period of time under the city’s ELEA ordinance.
The second ELEA for the south side approved Tuesday, which will need a second vote before going into effect, was established under the same existing rules for the downtown ELEA.
The downtown ELEA is a roughly two- by six-block area bounded by Lithia Way on the northeast, Third and Hargadine streets on the southeast, Hargadine Street on the southwest and Winburn Way, Calle Guanajuato and Church Street on the northwest. The ELEA includes the Oregon Shakespeare Festival campus, the Plaza, City Hall and most of the downtown core. Most of Lithia Park, the post office on First Street and the library and fire station on Siskiyou Boulevard are outside the ELEA.
In the area of the proposed south Ashland ELEA — an area as skinny as it was long in a graphic provided during the Tuesday presentation — certain kinds of crimes have been decidedly trending up, O’Meara said. He noted a number of overdoses in the parking lot of Tolman Creek Plaza, the shopping center at the intersection of Ashland Street and Tolman Creek Road with tenants including Albertsons and Rite Aid. Four of the overdoses were fatal.
Since 2017 — the peak year for undesirable behavior downtown — the downtown ELEA has resulted in several expulsions and around 1,060 qualifying offenses, he said.
“These people know how many violations they have. So if they know they got two, they’re not going to do it again, as a general rule. There’s some that do, nine of them that did. But it works because people stand outside that ELEA and they go, ‘Well if I’m going to go in there and drink another beer, I’m going to get a ticket, and then I’m going to get convicted. … It is a deterrent to bad behavior,” O’Meara said.
Councilor Paula Hyatt asked if people expelled under the ordinance could regain entry to meet needs such as visiting a pharmacy or obtaining groceries and O’Meara responded they could.
Councilor Bob Kaplan asked if offenses in one ELEA would count toward expulsion from both. After a period of back-and-forth between Kaplan, O’Meara and Deputy City Attorney Carmel Zahran, O’Meara stated the language was intended to expel an offender from one zone for three qualifying offenses within that zone and if the language was not clear it could be “dialed in.”
Councilor Dylan Bloom asked about relevant training to assist APD officers.
O’Meara responded APD has historically been leaders in training such as fair and impartial policing and procedural justice. In recent years APD staff were invited to sit on a work group for the state police academy to redefine the curriculum which led to new curriculum items such as emotional intelligence to “be baked into the first weeks of police academy as foundational, rather than after-thought,” he said. Officers are continually trained and given more training as needed.
“I’m very confident and proud of the way our officers navigate difficult interactions with people in the community,” he said.
Several members of the public offered comments on the proposed ordinance.
“This proposal to expand the exclusion zone clearly targets the poor, a marginalized population facing difficulties meeting their basic needs for survival. … These are special infractions designed specifically to target a population in our community,” Eric Navickas said.
Navickas said the United States has been undergoing an experiment in recent decades called “neoliberalism,” rolling back safety nets and deferring to the free market to create economic prosperity for all but the policies have had the opposite effect creating wealth inequality akin to the turn of the previous century. The blight and perceived moral decay of poverty creates fear and weaponization of claims when the real problem is a failure of the community as a whole to recognize its responsibilities under the social contract, according to Navickas.
“Instead of recognizing our policy failures and social responsibility we continue to place the blame on the individual, especially the victims of these policies as the failed elements in society,” he said.
Trina Sanford acknowledged she may have a different relationship with police as they have helped her so many times and she feels an inherent trust in calling them. But the language of the ordinance seemed to be directed to behavior, not housing status, and control of behavior is needed.
“I don’t understand why some are fighting this; in this moment on the south side, we are definitely inundated with our own set of challenges that need some support, I am also disheartened by those who discredit our APD and think that they are incapable of being logical and navigating a situation,” she said.
Kaplan offered an amendment on the motion to approve the ELEA directing staff to come back with greater clarification about if offenses in one ELEA could count toward the other. The amendment was unanimously passed while the main motion to approve the ELEA was passed five-to-one with only Kaplan voting in opposition.
O’Meara presented proposed amendments to the second ELEA ordinance, the one governing how many strikes an individual gets before they’re called out, during the Monday study session He began with an apology.
“The first thing that I’d like to do is to take ownership of the misstep that was presented to council a couple of weeks ago. I am a firm believer that we need to have this conversation and I think that we have a way forward, but the way that it was presented a couple of weeks ago was a little bit sloppy. So I apologize for that and, lesson learned, and we’re going to go about our business,” he said.
Inclusion of a dog license violation in expulsion criteria will be removed and the potential to add a “scattering rubbish” violation, often used in cases of public urination, will be dropped. Officers will still have more discretion, but the new proposed amendments put an additional judicial check on their judgment, instead of allowing officers to make the expulsion call themselves.
“If an officer takes enforcement action on three or more of those violations in a 60-day period officer issues an expulsion order, and the person has seven to 10 days or whatever your direction is, to appeal that to a municipal court judge. I think that’s a fair balance of the officer’s having the ability to navigate these situations in fairly real time and also having the judicial review, if that’s what the community wants,” O’Meara said.
Councilor Paula Hyatt asked if this proposal means three citations of qualifying violations, rather than three violations that led to convictions in municipal court, prior to expulsion.
“The need to wait on convictions is one of the flaws of our current system. That people can exhibit the exact same behavior, drag out court processes, and we don’t have any sanction against them,” O’Meara said.
Three qualifying violation enforcement events will allow an officer to issue an expulsion order to allow faster action of the ELEA, but the offender can appeal the expulsion in the courtroom and officers will honor an overturning of their expulsion in the court.
Councilor Dylan Bloom asked if similar ordinances have already been tested in the judicial system and O’Meara responded Medford has a “substantially similar” ordinance which was tested and upheld in federal court.
Graham stated review of revised ordinance language scheduled for a study session in February will hopefully provide greater clarity about the data and circumstances supporting the ELEA amendments and what other changes may need to be made to achieve the desired result in the best way.
In other council business
In other council business Tuesday, Housing Program Specialist Linda Reid presented alongside Krista Palmer, executive director of the Sunstone Housing Collaborative, to request the reallocation of a grant for $55,000 from the Ashland Affordable Housing Trust Fund previously awarded in April.
The funds were awarded for the collaborative to acquire land, but the organization is now asking to use the money for pre-development costs after a recent agreement between the Ashland School District and Sunstone Housing Collaborative to create affordable housing in the area of North Mountain Avenue on what are currently athletic fields. The change in funding use was recently approved by the Housing and Human Services committee, Reid said.
Council voted unanimously to approve the reallocation and to approve Mayor Tonya Graham’s nomination of Councilor Bob Kaplan as council liaison to the committee evaluating applications for the Sunstone Collaborative.
Council tabled the acceptance of the master plan for the 2200 Ashland St. property for revision of the potentially legally binding word “shall” after Councilors Paula Hyatt and Gina DuQuenne expressed concern.
“‘Shall’ has legal meaning. … I have learned sitting here it is ill advised to pass aspirational work when there is not dollars behind it and disappoint the people who did the work,” Hyatt said.
If the city agreed to the master plan with “shall” statements in the wrong places and failed to obtain grant funding to support them, the funding would come from the city’s general fund, which is already stretched nearly to capacity covering core services such as the fire and police departments. DuQuenne asked if the committee could somehow assist in “word-smithing” the plan before council approval to resolve these concerns.
Graham stated she would seek guidance from committee members personally as she was a liaison to the committee which was dissolved after the plan was created. After alterations to the plan, it will come back before council for consideration again.
Council also unanimously approved a proposed funding option to create a USDA loan program supporting green upgrades for Ashland residents. The loan program has been a work in progress with city of Ashland staff for four years as it sought to become the first municipality, rather than a utility company, in Oregon to take advantage of the program.
Some funds from the program can be used for marketing to let the public know when and how to apply when the program is becoming operational, said Chad Woodward, climate and energy analyst for the city.
Graham also announced in her mayor’s announcements that the city’s three-dimensional tour of the Community Center is now available.
Email Ashland.news reporter Morgan Rothborne at [email protected].
Dec. 7: Corrected error that said $150,000 of Community Block Grant Development funds were allocated; the reallocation request was concerning a grant for $55,000 from the Ashland Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Also corrected name of Sunstone Housing Collaborative (not Sunstone Collaborative).
