Desperate Times, Pacific Street Santa Cruz Edition: Businesses Breaking Laws
Aside from the plainly observable fact that no one is enforcing the Dog Laws downtown despite the fact that the temporary removal of the ban has not yet become effective, yesterday and today I focused on obstruction of sidewalks, city facilities by merchants, state traffic law violations, and one other thing, dealt with by the city years ago when the residents of El Centro Housing complained to the city about Hoffman's restaurant's exhaust smoke.

The scenarios, and mind you I am not a specialist on sidewalk laws in Santa Cruz so I may have left out potential H&S codes, city infractions, state laws, and EPA violations, are as follows:
Blocking a crosswalk, impeding pedestrians attempting to cross a street.
(This picture and the one following are about a month or so old...)


Santa Cruz Police Supervisor's personal 6 hour parking spot.

Illegal public camping, day and night. Including the blocking of neighboring doorways and '14 foot rule' violations.

Sidewalk Blockage... Texter Hazard Ahead

Blocking extensive portions of sidewalk precluding people from getting to their cars/parking meters... (Something the Christians who come downtown to feed people at tables are constantly harassed about.) along with entirely blocking a city facility, a public bench, all day, leaving perhaps two feet, enough to use it as their own personal shoe fitting area.
Note that the clown performs for HOURS, again violating performance ordinances, or perhaps not. In discussions with this joker a few years ago he had the audacity to tell me that a business, Marini's, PAID HIM to stand in front of their store to preclude other performers from using the space. If so, he is STILL in violation of the law, and further, if that paid-for-performance status is also the case here, since he IS NOT an itinerant street performer but a hired paid performer, he should have a business license unlike the average busker, performer, or handcrafter.



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