AURORA | Aurora is making revisions to its longstanding panhandling ordinance after successful challenges to similar panhandling laws across Colorado.
At a study session Monday, Nov. 9, Aurora City Council members gave initial approval to a slate of changes that included removing Colfax Avenue-specific language from the ordinance so that it can be applicable citywide.
“Right now our panhandling and loitering provisions don’t apply to the rest of the city,” said Aurora’s Senior Assistant City Attorney Nancy Rodgers.
Other changes being considered for Aurora’s decades-old panhandling ordinance include repealing the section that refers to “loitering” as a crime.
“We removed loitering itself as a violation and tried to move the focus to be on behavior: Obstruction, drinking in public. Then loitering for drug-related activity and loitering near schools,” she said.
The definition for loitering being removed from the ordinance defined the act as to be “dilatory, to stand idly around, to linger, delay or wander about, or to remain, abide, tarry in a public place.”
The revised ordinance also now declares that “acts authorized as an exercise of one’s constitutional right to picket or legally protest” will not constitute obstruction as defined in the ordinance.
Aurora Councilwoman Sally Mounier asked if the day laborers who congregate and wait for employers to pick them up at the intersection of East Colfax and Dayton would be considered “panhandlers” and protected under the revised measure.
“The act of asking someone for a job, for $5, for directions are all the same act. It’s protected free speech,” Rodgers said. “It’s when you take it to that next level, being obscene, aggressive, that’s where it becomes volatile.”
Aurora is making changes to its panhandling laws on the heels of Denver and Colorado Springs rolling back their aggressive panhandling laws after a federal judge ruled in October it was unconstitutional for Grand Junction to stop people from asking for money after dark.
U.S. District Judge Christine Arguello ruled that Grand Junction’s panhandling ordinance was too broad and curbed constitutionally protected speech. The American Civil Liberties Union sued Grand Junction last year.
The Aurora ordinance has also been revised to be geared toward preventing “aggressive begging,” which is defined in city documents as begging with “the intent of intimidating another person into giving money, goods or alms.”
The city has also added clauses that make it illegal “to aggressively beg on private property if asked to leave by the owner,” or if there is a sign posted on the private property that prohibits “aggressive” solicitors.
Mark Silverstein, the legal director with the American Civil Liberties Union in Colorado, said the ACLU supports such repeals, but said Aurora will want to review its “begging” revisions based on the Grand Junction ruling.
Rodgers said she had discussed Aurora’s panhandling laws with Silverstein and that they do not contain many of the provisions in the Grand Junction ordinance that were challenged by the ACLU and ultimately found unconstitutional.
“Specifically the provisions that prohibited panhandling at night, on a public bus, within certain feet from an ATM, in a parking garage, or to a person on an eating or drinking patio,” she said.
So far Aurora has not been part of the slew of lawsuits brought on by the ACLU.
Aurora Judge Richard Weinberg confirmed the city has worked to design its ordinances in order to meet constitutional tests.
Aurora City Councilwoman Barb Cleland said the ordinance was not created to violate an individual’s free speech rights, which has been cited as the cause for unconstitutionality in several lawsuits filed against Colorado cities by the ACLU.
“Our issue is public safety,” she said.
Cleland helped institute a panhandling ban in the 1990s in response to what officials said were safety issues being caused by street vendors hawking papers for the former Rocky Mountain News.
Cleland has also been an advocate for the city taking ownership of a busy exit off northbound Interstate 225 as it turns onto Parker Road, which has been considered a panhandler’s oasis for decades.
Aurora is in the process of taking ownership of that offramp through an annexation petition submitted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
– The Associated Press contributed to this story
The ACLU, most un-American organization in the world today.
‘asking for jobs’ Are you kidding? They don’t want jobs, they want hand outs, nothing more, so they can go get drunk or get high