Council takes up panhandling ordinance tonight
An ordinance to ban most panhandling in Kalispell goes before the Kalispell City Council for a first reading tonight.
The subject of an informal work session in mid-June, the proposed ordinance would make it a criminal misdemeanor to:
• Panhandle after sunset or before sunrise or on private property without the owner’s permission.
• Solicit any person in a vehicle on a street or highway or any person within 50 feet of a bus stop, automated teller machine or street intersection.
The ordinance also would prohibit panhandlers from:
• Making false or misleading claims about their needs or situations.
• Coming within three feet of a solicited person unless that person has indicated a desire to make a donation.
• Blocking the path of a solicited person on a sidewalk or street or following a person.
• Panhandling in a group.
• Using any profane, abusive or threatening language or gestures.
As misdemeanors, violations of the panhandling ordinance would be punishable by up to $500 in fines and up to six months in jail.
The ordinance would not apply to people who are “passively standing or sitting” with a sign indicating they are seeking donations as long as they are not actively soliciting any specific person or located within 50 feet of a street or highway.
Council members could amend the ordinance to let people get a free permit from the police department to panhandle in otherwise prohibited areas. But that’s an idea several council members have called ridiculous.
The ordinance would replace Kalispell’s existing municipal codes that prohibit loitering and vagrancy.
Those are outdated codes on the books that “courts have found to be unconstitutional and have not been enforced by the city for many years,” City Attorney Charlie Harball wrote in a memo to the City Council.
Kalispell’s unsavory vagrancy code, for instance, defines a vagrant as “every person (except an Indian) who has the physical ability to work and does not seek employment when employment is offered; every healthy beggar who solicits alms as a business; every person who roams from place to place without any lawful business; every idle or dissolute person or associate of known thieves who wanders the streets at late or unusual hours; every lewd or dissolute person who lives in or about houses of ill fame or with or upon the earnings of a woman of bad repute; and every common prostitute and drunkard.”
This unique portion of city code dates back to 1947.
Some cities have seen their panhandling bans overturned by courts after the bans were challenged on freedom-of-speech grounds. Kalispell’s ordinance aims to regulate panhandling in the name of public safety.
“Although the Kalispell City Council should recognize the rights of individuals to exercise their free speech and to reasonably solicit financial assistance from others, it should also consider that certain panhandling behaviors may infringe on the rights of others not to be unreasonably confronted (and) that some behaviors create hazardous conditions that compromise the safety of the public. It is only these behaviors that are targeted in the proposed ordinance,” Harball writes.
IN OTHER BUSINESS on Monday, the council will consider:
• Two permits for special public events with alcohol. One is for Taste of Kalispell at the Museum at Central School on Aug. 10. The other is for Arts in the Park at Depot Park on July 19, 20 and 21.
• A conditional use permit for Julie and Barry Smith to open Tree Frog Tavern with an accessory-use casino in the former Sizzler building at 1250 U.S. 2 West.
• A conditional use permit for Craig and Debbie Munro to open a retail liquor store and casino in the former Rosco’s building at 1121 U.S. 2 West. Two representatives from Gateway Community Center opposed the request during a planning board hearing on June 4.
• A request for planned unit development zoning overlay by Gardner Investments for two lots totaling 4.7 acres at the corner of U.S. 93 South and United Drive. One lot is the proposed site for a new Fred’s Appliance Store.
• Accepting a $359,500 grant for Flathead Valley Community College to expand its heavy equipment operator licensing program. Kalispell and the college earlier this year applied for the Community Development Block Grant.
Reporter Tom Lotshaw may be reached at 758-4483 or by email at tlotshaw@dailyinterlake.com.