Why Should Delaware Care?
For the better part of a year, a proposed ordinance banning panhandling has been the subject of debate and controversy across the city of Dover. Now, as the city government has decided to re-consider the proposal, residents are using it as an avenue to express their broader grievances with homelessness and public safety in the capital city.
Following nearly nine months of debate, legal opinions, public outcry and a February city council vote striking it down, Dover’s controversial panhandling ordinance is back for consideration.
This time around, Dover residents are showing up in even higher numbers to council meetings and public demonstrations to voice their opinions on the proposal, which would ban panhandling in city road medians.
Residents’ reactions to the ordinance have become not just about people asking for money in roadways, but also a referendum on a series of other issues they say are plaguing the capital city – homelessness, drug use, the struggle of attracting businesses to the downtown area and public safety.
“How did we get to a point where we have allowed people that are not being held accountable to take control of our community?” asked Gina Bloom, one of roughly 20 residents who spoke on the measure at the June 9 city council meeting.
Community leaders from the downtown revitalization efforts and a homeless shelter that have become a focal point of the debate over the panhandling ordinance say they recognize the need for policy to address people soliciting and standing in roads. But the measure will not resolve homelessness and the challenge of attracting business downtown in the way some are suggesting, they say.
City Councilman David Anderson originally introduced the ordinance last fall.
Then, in late April, after a ruling by Attorney General Kathy Jennings’ office that the city needed to ratify its February final vote on the measure due to an open meetings law violation, Anderson used an obscure governmental procedure to revive the debate over the ordinance for another vote by council.
The measure has not since been placed on a city council agenda for consideration. Anderson told Spotlight Delaware he is still “building momentum” and seeking legal review of the ordinance before he plans to reintroduce it later this summer.
Other city council members are divided as to whether to reignite the debate and whether its approval would open the city to legal challenges.
“I’m concerned with whether this is a good use of resources and time, given the fact that we’ve already addressed this matter,” Councilman Roy Sudler said.
The city council voted 6-3 against the ordinance in late February.
Council members Anderson and Julia Pillsbury told Spotlight Delaware they intend to vote in favor of the ordinance once again on the re-vote, while Sudler, Brian Lewis and Donyale Hall said they will again vote against the ordinance.
Council President Fred Neil, who voted affirmatively on the ordinance in February, and council members Tricia Arndt, Andre Boggerty and Gerald Rocha, all of whom voted against it, did not respond to requests for comment.
Protests, petitions & public comment
Since the re-introduction of the debate over the panhandling ordinance, officially called a “Traffic, Vehicles and Pedestrian Safety” measure, Dover residents have held rallies, signed petitions and written letters linking a range of issues they are experiencing in the city to the ordinance.
In a clear escalation of the tension over the ordinance, Anderson held so-called “reclaim our streets” rally in favor of his proposal prior to the June 9 city council meeting, while a handful of opponents of the measure simultaneously held a counter-protest in the same location.
Roughly 70 people stood outside of city hall for the two protests with hand-held signs, megaphones and shirts signaling which side of the debate they were on.
Attendees of Anderson’s event and the subsequent hour-long public comment period during the city council meeting said they are frustrated with the individuals soliciting money, drugs and sex acts across downtown neighborhoods and prominent road medians.
Councilman Anderson’s wife, Jeannie Anderson, who has been gathering support for her husband’s proposal on social media in recent months, said at the rally that the conversation needs to not be just “about the homeless,” but also the rights of residents in the area.
Other vocal supporters of the ordinance included a number of residents and business owners in the Bradford Street and Governor’s Avenue area, which has received increased attention in recent months since the city council tried to shut down the People’s Church homeless shelter there due to resident complaints.
One Governor’s Avenue resident, Michelle Walls, said during public comment at the meeting that her neighborhood has turned into an active market for drug trafficking, loitering and prostitution.
“My home should be my sanctuary, but instead I feel entirely exposed to this criminal behavior,” she said.
As it is written, the proposed ordinance would not apply fines to individuals soliciting on streets like Governor’s Avenue, as it applies strictly to larger, busier roadways with medians.
On the opposite side, a group of community activists and homeless individuals argued that the proposal is both unconstitutional and unfair to people who panhandle because they do not have another option to afford food and shelter.
Community activist Vonda Smack said the city police department already has alternative statutes at its disposal to charge individuals aggressively panhandling or causing a public nuisance.
The ordinance is simply opening the city to more legal expenses in an already precarious financial situation, since the state attorney general told municipalities around the state not to enforce any loitering and solicitation laws in 2024, Smack added.
Mike Potanovich, a Dover resident who has been living in his truck and panhandling for money for the past year, said at both the rally and city council meeting that it is unfair for peaceful, respectful panhandlers like himself to be conflated with individuals using drugs and aggressively soliciting money.
“I’m just out there trying to make a living, put gas in my truck, food in my belly. I’m not hurting anybody,” he told Spotlight Delaware.
Stakeholders respond
Anderson is holding up his ordinance as “one piece of the puzzle” toward addressing the issues of homelessness, drug use and economic opportunity about which residents are sounding the alarm.
Community leaders in these realms, however, are more mixed in their assessment as to whether the measure is an effective focus of the city’s efforts.
The Rev. Derrick Hodge is the lead pastor at the People’s Church of Dover, which has been the subject of scrutiny by the city council due to residents’ complaints of loitering and other illegal activity in the neighborhood near its shelter.
Hodge said his organization is not weighing in specifically on the merits of Anderson’s ordinance, but he believes many people in the city are conflating “the real problems” and “how we can fix these problems.” The city council denied grant funding for the shelter in March, arguing that the shelter was attracting more people to loiter on the streets near it.
Hodge added that he would urge city leaders to focus on creating more affordable housing and drug treatment centers as solutions to the issues in the downtown area.
A number of residents have raised concerns about how the city will successfully attract more residents and businesses back downtown with the safety and loitering concerns.
At the same time, skeptics of the ordinance have drawn a link between the desire to clean up panhandling and the city’s ambitious 2030 downtown Dover revitalization project, which includes adding a housing project, parking garage and new businesses to the area.
Diane Laird, executive director of the Downtown Dover Partnership (DDP), acknowledged that her organization has concerns about panhandlers impeding businesses’ and residents’ “unobstructed, clean access” to the downtown area.
Still, she said the DDP is leaving it to other city and state entities to address the safety concerns, while her group focuses on bringing more businesses and residents downtown.
