Sharing Ban Limbo

The City's 45 day stay of enforcement has expired, and according to latest communications with the City, there is still no intent to enforce. The City's sharing ban seems to be in a self-imposed limbo while mediation between the City & Love Thy Neighbor takes place. The sharing ban has not been enforced for about 10 weeks now.

Sharing Ban Back At Commission

Minor zoning changes to the sharing ban meant that the ordinance was brought before another hearing at City Hall on Tuesday. Several people still came to speak in opposition to the law, and activists staged an impromptu sharing outside as the meeting began. 

The City cut public comment times short and even moved agenda items around to ensure the sharing ban was heard dead last. Despite these attempts to stifle participation, the discussion of the sharing ban occurred a solid 4 or 5 hours earlier than the time of night that the original law was discussed during. After public comment, Commissioner Trantalis spent another 15 minutes or so criticizing the other commissioners' support of the law. The current revisions will be discussed again on March 3rd, and further revisions to the law are expected later still.

The Mayor and other Commissioners made a continued point of foisting blame for the lack of sharing sites in the City on Broward County government. Members of the DDA & Chamber of Commerce made a similar point while avoiding any responsibility for creating the sharing ban recently when they came to visit Food Not Bombs' weekly downtown business protest. 

Occurring every Wednesday night in front of YOLO on Las Olas, February 11th's protest was bit different in that Tim Petrillo, the owner of YOLO, came out to greet the protest. The following week, a large police presence watched the demonstration from outside the Las Olas Starbucks. 

As a continued effort to show those responsible for the sharing ban the error of their ways. we'll close by repeating Reverend Gail Tapscott's open invite given to Ft Lauderdale City Commission officials on Tuesday. We welcome everyone to come March 7th to the Unitarian Universality Church's screening of "Uncharted" to learn a little bit about the truth behind homelessness.