Why Should Delaware Care?
An anti-panhandling ordinance has embroiled Delaware’s capital city in controversy for months. City Council members ultimately voted on Wednesday against the ordinance, leaving its proponents unsatisfied with the situation of people standing on street medians, and opponents pleased the city will not face potential legal challenges over its adoption.
In a more decisive vote than many anticipated, the Dover City Council voted 6-3 against an ordinance that would have banned panhandling in city road medians — a common sight in heavily traveled corridors.
The Wednesday night vote came nearly five months after City Councilman David Anderson introduced the ordinance, officially called a “Traffic, Vehicles and Pedestrian Safety” measure, which would have prohibited pedestrians from stopping and standing on street medians.
Since Anderson first presented the ordinance in late October, the proposal has faced dozens of hours of debate among council members and city residents, amendments delaying final vote, threats of legal challenge by the ACLU of Delaware, and even calls for Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings to weigh in on the measure.
Debate has gotten so tense at times that councilmembers’ spouses got involved, personal attacks were waged on social media, and residents on opposite sides of the debate hurled insults at each other across the council chamber.
City leaders discussed the proposal for more than an hour and a half on Wednesday, and 23 residents gave one last public comment before council members ultimately cast their final votes after 9 p.m.
The three council members who voted in favor of the measure — Anderson, Council President Fred Neil and Councilwoman Julia Pillsbury — cited serious traffic safety concerns and hearing support for the ordinance from their constituents as their reasons for supporting it.
“It deals with basically keeping the intersections and the medians flowing and free of those who are not using them for their intended purposes,” Anderson said at the meeting.
Anderson did not respond to Spotlight Delaware’s requests for comment after the meeting about the outcome of the vote on the ordinance, an effort he has championed since the fall.
Each of the six elected officials who voted against the ordinance provided a lengthy explanation for their thought process in opting to reject the measure.
Councilman Gerald Rocha, who had expressed tentative support for the proposal at previous council meetings, said he ended up being convinced that the possible legal risks of the ordinance are too strong. Rocha also said he put a lot of stock in the opinion of State Rep. Sean Lynn (D-Dover), who wrote a letter to council opposing the ordinance.
“I didn’t hear anything that says this ordinance, if passed, is going to pass the litmus test in a lawsuit,” Rocha said at the meeting.
Councilwoman Donyale Hall, who has said in the past that she considers herself to be a swing vote on the council, said similarly that she voted against the ordinance because it isn’t in the best interest of taxpayer dollars to “welcome more legal challenge.”
A number of the more than 40 residents sitting and standing in the audience clapped and cheered as additional council members voted against the ordinance and the city clerk announced that it had failed.
Public discourse
Many of the same citizens who have previously spoken about the ordinance came out again ahead of Wednesday’s vote.
Speakers in favor of the ordinance characterized it as purely addressing a safety concern they encounter on a daily basis. Those against it, however, said the city is inviting a legal challenge by passing the measure, and deflecting from directing resources toward the root causes of homelessness.
Five residents spoke in favor of Anderson’s ordinance, while 19 made arguments against the proposal.
Katrina Stubbs, who said she has been homeless multiple times over the past 10 years, said she views the ordinance as separate from the homelessness issue in the city.
“Homelessness, panhandling, mental health – totally different,” Stubbs said. “This is something dealing with safety.”
Dover resident Ronald Eads, on the other hand, said he panhandles frequently on one of the road medians along U.S. Route 13 that city council members have described as a hot spot for loitering activity.
Eads, who said he solicits money to afford a motel room and food for himself and his wife, said peoples’ portrayals of panhandlers as careless and aggressive with passing cars is not accurate.
“You see a car, you don’t run out to a car,” Eads said. “We ask when we approach the cars. We’re not that stupid.”
Community activist Chelle Paul handed out to council members and attendees a packet of potential legal challenges that could stem from the ordinance, including that it leaves too much up to individual police officers’ discretion, and is difficult to enforce.
Paul said she interprets the proposed ordinance as strikingly similar to the previous state law on loitering and solicitation, which was struck down by an agreement between the ACLU and the state’s Attorney General in 2024. She questioned why City Solicitor Dan Griffith had allowed the ordinance to move forward.
Griffith responded that Paul’s research looked like she had taken the proposal and ”put it through an AI,” but said he believes the city’s ordinance to be in line with the updated bill that Jennings announced this year, rather than the previously nullified legislation.
Jared Silberglied, a lawyer for the ACLU of Delaware, wrote in a message to Spotlight Delaware that his organization is pleased that the city council “resoundingly defeated this proposed ordinance.”
“We are closely monitoring strikingly similar legislation proposed by the City of Wilmington and the State of Delaware, and we encourage those public bodies to follow Dover’s example,” he added.
Moving forward?
While many of the residents who have worked for months to defeat the ordinance left the meeting pleased, council members were left to reckon with the personal insults and flared tensions stemming from the prolonged debate.
Sudler, who has been perhaps the most vocal opponent of the measure, said after the meeting he was “concerned” by how biting the attacks between council members have become. He cited comments on Facebook about legal fees his family has cost the city in a lawsuit over the city unnecessarily taking land from his family.
“I think we need to get back to being respectful of each other’s positions,” Sudler said. “When we are divided, we don’t do our best job.”
While some council members made vague mentions of the city reconsidering the ordinance in the future, Sudler said he cannot imagine that happening while he is still on council, because he has been such a staunch opponent of it.
Councilman Brian Lewis said he does not believe the city will reintroduce the ordinance, unless the Attorney General’s proposed state law is passed, and the city must begin enforcing that legislation.
Lewis agreed with Sudler that the council has escalated to a state of extreme tension over the ordinance, but he said one positive has been the increased resident turnout and engagement at meetings.
“Most council meetings have a very, very low turnout,” he said. “I’m glad people came out and voiced how they felt.”
Maggie Reynolds is a Report for America corps member and Spotlight Delaware reporter who covers rural communities in Delaware. Your donation to match our Report for America grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://spotlightdelaware.org/support/.
