Bend City Councilors will discuss implementing a new rule Wednesday that would ban sitting or lying on downtown sidewalks after a number of merchants complained about the impacts that behavior has had on their businesses.

In particular, there have been complaints about people loitering around Riverfront Park and in the nearby breezeway that have caused the councilors to explore whether an ordinance is needed to stop them.

The city has been struggling for the past several years with loiterers and panhandlers in downtown Bend, and so far has been unable to find an equitable solution that was not seen as discriminatory.

Need for a solution

Councilor Oran Teater, who has been a vocal proponent of stricter rules targeting loiterers, said the problem has reached a point where there needs to be some sort of redress.

“I understand the whole civil rights issue, but it’s not fair to our businesses, it’s not fair to our tourism industry and it’s not fair to our people who go downtown,” Teater said. “We don’t need to have our guests and our citizens intimidated in a portion of town that we think is a treasure.”

Before councilors ask city staff to draft an ordinance banning sitting or lying on sidewalks, they must weigh several options for how to proceed with the new law to make sure it is not unconstitutional or in conflict with state statutes.

Portland has failed at least two times to implement an ordinance that banned sitting and lying on sidewalks for those reasons. But earlier this year, Portland’s city commissioners passed a new ordinance that essentially did the same thing under the auspices of keeping sidewalks clear for people with disabilities.

Portland model

Bend City Attorney Mary Winters said that if the city did decide to move forward with an ordinance, it would probably be modeled after Portland’s since it has not yet been overturned.

Otherwise, she said, the council could take its chances with the state Supreme Court or try to get some sort of legislative fix.

If councilors decided to follow Portland’s lead, Winters said, they would probably want to make sure a violation was considered an infraction instead of a crime so as to not conflict with state law, as well as limit the time and place the ordinance would be effect.

“The issue is whether an ordinance would survive a constitutional challenge,” Winters said. “If they’re narrowly enough tailored, they have had chances of surviving challenges.”

In a memo she co-wrote with Assistant City Attorney Gary Firestone, Winters states that probably one of the “major features” of Portland’s ordinance is that it does not prevent people from obstructing an entire sidewalk, and instead focuses on keeping a pathway where sitting or lying is prohibited.

Enforcement

But even if councilors find that an ordinance is needed, enforcement will likely be the biggest challenge.

In Winters and Firestone’s memo, they note that the city probably receives “no more than five calls a year on sidewalk obstruction.” And as far as the Bend Police Department ranks crimes, loitering or blocking a sidewalk wouldn’t be high on the list.

“It’s a problem, but I don’t think it’s a major problem,” Community Liaison Officer Steve Esselstyn said. “It’s not so frequent that it’s worth putting an officer down there.”

He said that while the police department receives complaints about loitering or people using offensive language from time to time, officers probably wouldn’t speed downtown with their sirens on if someone was sitting or lying in the middle a sidewalk.

“There’s no doubt that obviously we’re not going to be zipping Code Three on that,” he said. “It’s kind of like cell phone laws. It’s not like we’re sitting out on every street corner with a pair of binoculars.”

If you go

What: Bend City Council meeting

When: 5 p.m. work session, 7 p.m. meeting Wednesday

Where: Bend City Hall, 710 N.W. Wall St., Bend