Don’t erase Ped Mall’s diversity

By The Gazette Editorial Board

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First it was panhandlers. Now, it's non-profits. What's next?

And where will Iowa City stop in its efforts to scrub public activity from public places downtown?

Iowa City staff has asked City Council members to ban non-profit organizations from setting up tables on City Plaza, known as the Pedestrian Mall.

Current ordinance allows them to do so with city permission, so long as the tables are for non-commercial use.

But city staff now says it's too much work to process those requests; that it's too difficult to decide which organizations should be approved.

Much easier, they argue, to do away with tables. If groups want to spread the word, they can just walk around with fliers.

Whoa there. Allowing individuals and non-commercial groups to set up in the plaza is in keeping with the plaza's intent and serves an important public purpose. Is a ban really justified?

“These requests take an inordinate amount of time to process and require difficult line-drawing that is problematic from a legal perspective,” Assistant City Manager Dale Helling and other city staff wrote in a memo to City Manager Tom Markus earlier this month.

At a work session last week, Iowa City Council members indicated they're not ready to ban the practice. However, they'll consider tighter rules, like restricting the number of groups allowed to set up tables and where. They could require permits or prohibit the exchange of money even for charitable purposes.

Helling has said his intent in urging the ban is to help maintain an atmosphere of “activity and entertainment” while making sure the public space is “comfortable, accessible and walkable.”

Comfortable for whom?

Iowa City's Pedestrian Mall was intended to be a gathering place, and as such it's been a showcase of the city's diversity in people and causes.

Nowhere is that any more evident than the tables that pop up periodically - staffed by groups spreading the word and answering questions from casual passers-by about their group, charity or cause.

Art or ideology, political or personal - we've never known this practice to interfere with commerce or other activities.

If it's really so difficult for city staff to decide on a case-by-case basis which groups should be allowed to table, perhaps some guidelines are in order.

But an outright ban goes too far. And, frankly, less than a year since council members voted to all but ban solicitations downtown, we wonder about the real motivation here.

As leaders look to attract more office space and retail, is it about whether groups of ragtag idealists or other slices of society will fit in with the new downtown?

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