Concord City Council Sends Panhandling Ordinance Back to Legal

While it took about four and a half hours to get through, the Concord City Council was able to get a lot of things done on Feb. 11. Here is a short overview of the meeting.

Panhandling ordinance sent back

The Concord City Council held a public hearing about a proposed ordinance to deal with “aggressive panhandling” that has cropped up in the city in recent months. Three proposals were on the table including a general code on “morals and conduct” on police regulations when dealing with panhandling, the licensing of peddlers, and a fees and fine structure.

After weeks of meeting with advocacy groups and other concerned citizens, a last minute modification of the proposal was put before the council, which sought to “narrow” the proposal and alleviate concerns.

Nearly everyone in attendance testified against the original ordinance with some looking over the new ordinance and calling it a possible potential compromise. For nearly two hours, advocates for the homeless, like Pastor David Keller, a co-chairman of the Concord Coalition to End Homelessness, and free speech advocates, like Devon Chaffee of the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union, spoke against the ordinance.

The Coalition offered a letter of concern about the ordinance with Keller asked everyone to imagine the desperation of holding a sign on the street asking strangers for money, whether it was pain medication, food, or substances.

Chaffee called the proposal, including the compromise legislation, a violation of the Constitutional rights of those asking for charity on public streets. She also raised the specter of the legislation possibly keeping a child from having a lemonade stand or businesses to solicit on the street in statue of Liberty costumes.

Elliot Berry, of NH Legal Assistance, said communities would be looking to see what Concord did adding that any decision by the council “will cause a lot of havoc for a lot of homeless people."

Kevin Bloom, a Concord resident, stood against the proposal saying it “criminalized speech” and was “disturbed” by the “financial component” of the legislation – fines.

During the action phase, the council voted, with a few No votes, to give the proposal back to the legal department to come up with a better ordinance.

Main Street proposal: $11 million?

Engineer Ed Roberge and the design team from McFarland Johnson gave the council an update on the Complete Streets Main Street redesign proposal.

Over the course of many meetings with the public and stakeholders in the community, the design team has come up with a plan that moves Main Street from four lanes to two lanes, with a mixture of angled and parallel parking at different parts of the street. Both cars and bikes, with a small flush median in the middle, would share the two lanes. It also adds a number of bumpouts, 18.5-foot sidewalks, areas for public gatherings and art. The designers also propose closing Phenix Avenue, moving the clock tower from Eagle Square to Phenix Avenue, and have a social gathering space between CVS and The Bagel Café.

The price tag for the project is about $11 million which includes roadway/sidewalk costs, lighting, more than $1 million for amenities and landscaping, and another $4.96 million for heated streets and sidewalks to melt the snow.

Jim Rosenberg of Shaheen & Gordon, which owns the right-of-way behind Phenix Avenue spoke out against some parts of the plan noting that the avenue was used to deliver goods for a number of stores. If the passageway were removed, the trucks would be on their private way, blocking access to their parking spaces on Low Avenue.

Finis Williams, an attorney on the other side of the street, spoke out against the idea of parallel parking on the west side, noting that it would eliminate eight or nine parking spaces in front of the Chase Building where his office is.

Roy Schweiker said if the council was going to spend $5 million on heated streets, it should do the entire street and not just part of the street. He called it “the highest priority.” But the elimination of angled parking on both sides of the streets was “nuts,” he said.

There was some concern about the Phenix Avenue idea from councilors but they voted to accept the report and approve the preliminary layout and design concepts of the project.

Other items

The Council also voted to move forward on a completely new Sewalls Falls Road Bridge since the current steel bridge is unable to be repaired and kept. Ward 3 Councilor Jan McClure asked for designers to come up with something that matched the beauty of the area around the Merrimack River and not just put up a concrete bridge.

The Council approved new street configurations and future construction and map lines for Whitney Road, Old Suncook Road, as well as the elimination of existing remnant maps for Christian Avenue and East Side Drive.

The owner of Freedom Cycle, Rupert Dance, spoke against the Old Suncook Road extension, saying it would be too close to his building on Manchester Street and cut through his property splitting it so he couldn’t access the western portion that he uses for storage. Dance added that he was losing a lot of his property and value of his land by having the road installed.

At-Large City Councilor Dan St. Hilaire questioned Dance's testimony, saying the city hadn't taken land from him by eminent domain. Dance countered, "Effectively, you did. The only way I was able to build on that property was that I had to grant the right-of-way."

City Manager Tom Aspell said that when the new building proposal went before the Planning Board, it asked Dance to grant the right-of-way for a potential road. 

"They didn't ask," Dance said, "but that is accurate." 

Councilors tabled, however, a plan to extend Storrs and Theatre Streets after Harold Cohen, the owner of the old Clark’s Grain Store warehouse on Gas Street, made a plea not to take his property away. He said he had done a lot of work to restore the railroad building and said it wasn’t fair that he couldn’t do anything with his property.