After some delay Micah Posner has agreed to be in his office 11 AM to noon every Friday to hear take input on the new (goes into effect December 25th) “Performer Pens” law.  He asks that folks call in advance if they’re planning to come in on his office line at 831-420-5028.

For this Friday only, Posner says he’ll be in the office at 3:30 PM. 

Posner is finally establishing office hours at the request of HUFF and some street performers.

Presumably he’ll also be interested in hearing about other concerns regarding ordinances downtown impacting poor people (such as the current 1-day Stay Away ordinance–due for explosive expansion on January 11th).   And he has expressed a continuing interest in bemoaning the Sleeping Ban (while voting for laws that further empower rangers and police to enforce it).

The ordinance (MC 5.43) further restricts and freezes in place specific spaces where the public can perform, vend, table, or panhandle.  It also likely more severely limits the sitting spaces on Pacific Avenue where one can put butt to sidewalk.

Neither he nor Lane moved to abolish or amend the Move-Along law section of 5.43, which poses huge ($300+) fines on anyone with a cap, open guitar case, table, or other “display device” who fails to move along every hour after being told his “time is up”.  (Police have falsely directed people  to move every hour and “time themselves” but the wording of the law requires a warning after an hour is up.

A sight-disabled man at the HUFF meeting yesterday advised us he was ticketed for his painting activity when he didn’t clean up and move on quickly enough for the various police officers surrounding him.

HUFF has strongly opposed the anti-homeless Downtown Ordinances–particularly the “forbidden zones” law which shrinks available space for sitting and sparechanging to less than an estimated 1% of the total sidewalk area, and available space for vending, tabling, and performing to less than 2%.
[See “Restore Sidewalk Space For All; End the “One Hour of Free Speech and Get Going” Rule” at https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/11/18/18764290.php ]

Lengthy e-mail dialogue with Mayor Don Lane from a few months ago can be found at https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/10/27/18763374.php [“Vice-Mayor Meets With Activists on Performance Pens Along Pacific Avenue 1:30 PM Today “]

As far as street performing goes, HUFF supports the Voluntary Street Performers Guidelines [http://www.buskersadvocates.org/saalegalSantaCruzGuide.html )] created in 1980 by Tom Noddy & other performers and effective for 22 years before being bulldozed over by the Reilly-Mathews Council of 2003.