On Thursday afternoon Mayor, Gary Soiseth, called and emergency meeting to address homelessness in Turlock.
Nearly 120 people gathered for a 3 hour meeting in the Turlock Public Safety Facility to bring ideas and criticisms to the possible solutions proposed by the Mayor.
Public officials opened up the discussion with members of the community on multiple topics including housing for the homeless population, lighting in parks, park hours, personal property in public spaces and staffing for the Neighborhood Services Division
In the mayors opening statement he dispelled concern that some in the community felt about the dehumanization of homeless individuals.
“This is not a meeting to criminalize homelessness, this is not a meeting to have derogatory comments towards homelessness, this is not a meeting that is going to be about anything but solutions.” Soiseth said. “We are going to focus on some issues that we have as a community and we are going to address those issues as a community.”
The main areas for concern for those in attendance were the enforcement of animal and bicycle licences and park safety.
Chief of Police, Nino Amirfar, explained the purposes of the bike and animal registration and how this will help to keep the public safe.
The $4 bike licence fee “cannot be used for anything but bike safely enforcement,” Chief Amirfar said. “The money is returned back to the public in regards to the actions we do.”
According to Chief Amirfar, the same is true of dog licencing fees.
“The reason for dog licences is to ensure that dogs have their rabies shots, a licence cannot be issued unless the owner can prove a dog has its shots.”
Chief Amirfar went on to say that “this is enforced city wide, we will not target the homeless.”
Still, some members of the community believe this solution is inadequate and unfairly targets the homeless.
Dr. Ann Strahm, Associate Professor of Sociology, was in attendance at the meeting and expressedher opinion on the proposed solution.
“The registration ordinance is used by police as a convenient excuse to stop people who are deemed suspicious. Its used specifically to profile vulnerable populations, after enough citations are issued the bikes can be impounded leaving the most vulnerable without transportation,” Dr. Strahm said.
The proposed changes concerning park safety included additional lighting and a change in curfew hours in at least 3 Turlock Parks. Municipal Services Director, Michael Cooke, explained how additional lighting would reduce illegal activity in the parks.
“Additional lighting allows public and law enforcement to see further into the parks and see if people are loitering and indulging in illegal activity, so for relatively low cost the city could relamp Denair park and Central park and GAR park,” Cooke said.
Mayor Soiseth explained why those parks were being targeted for changes specifically.
“Those are three passive use parks, there’s not alot of play equipment, there’s not a lot of reason for folks to be there past dark hours,” Soiseth said.
Parks and Recreation Director, Allison Van Guilder, added that there is much more illegal activity at these three parks and there are at other parks in Turlock. She also explained the proposed changes to the park hours.
“Our current park hours are 6am to 10pm city wide, so what we are currently proposing is a temporary reduction in hours to 10am to 6pm,” Van Guilder said.
Again, some at the meeting felt that these proposed changes unfairly targeted the homeless population.
“If we are really concerned with safety in our parks maybe we ought to consider doing additional lighting in all of our parks, and if we’re going to reduce park hours, let’s do it in all of our parks, that way we’re not just targeting the parks where poor people go,” Dr. Strahm said.
Throughout the meeting city officials received feedback on the proposed ideas from community members. These options and the feedback from the community will continue to be discussed at the next Turlock City Council Meeting on Tues. July 24, at 6 pm in City Hall.