Since the City of Austin is still refusing to enforce the will of voters when it comes to clearing out illegal camps of drug-addicted transients, Save Austin Now and several business owners have filed lawsuits against the city:
Two lawsuits were filed in Travis County District Court this week alleging that the City of Austin has failed to enforce the public camping ban that was reinstated back in May.
Austin voters approved the reinstatement by a wide margin after the activist group Save Austin Now collected 26,000 signatures in 50 days to place it on the ballot. Rather than implement the camping ban immediately, the city council decided to move toward a phased re-enforcement over the course of four months.
The fourth phase, begun earlier this month, was the first during which illegal campers that refused to move could be arrested. At the time of its start, numbers released by the city showed 572 warnings and 24 citations had been issued. No citations have been issued since July 20.
Since Phase 4’s beginning, some larger camps have been cleared out, but tents and encampments remain scattered throughout the city.
“That refusal leaves voters and residents of the City in the same position as they were before the ban was reinstated,” reads the first lawsuit filed by Save Austin Now co-founders Matt Mackowiak and Cleo Petricek.
The other lawsuit — filed by Headspace Salon and Co-op owner Laura North, Balance Dance Studio owner Stuart Dupuy, Dairy Queen franchisee Robert Mayfield, and Buckshot Bar owner Bob Woody — say the city’s actions have “resulted in severe business disruption.”
“[The business owners] have incurred substantial expenses to protect their property, their customers, and their clients,” it adds further.
Those businesses are requesting at most $100,000 in monetary relief along with full enforcement of the ban.
In his legal statement, Mayfield says he’s had to hire off-duty police officers as security for the establishments — to the tune of $72,000 per store per year.
I think Mayfield actually owns more Dairy Queens in the Austin area. But the two stores mentioned in the lawsuit filing are at 8728 North Lamar and 5900 Manor. Says Mayfield:
The problem is bad with homeless coming in to use the rest room and nothing more, hanging around the parking lot bothering customers, asking for money, and making DQ not a desirable place to visit. We have to run them off or real customers would not come in to the store. We have had customers harassed while in line at the drive up window.
Perhaps worst of all, it is costing us in the neighborhood of 572,000 per year, PER STORE, paid to off duty police, to keep these stores clean and inviting so that customers will visit us. Having off duty police has helped us a lot and sales are good, but at a cost that we should not have to bear. Try swallowing $140,000 per year and see what it does.
Perhaps people upset with the Austin City Council’s refusal to enforce the camping ban can organize a buycott of his Dairy Queens.
Youth Dance studio owner Stuart Dupuy had this to say about the huge problems caused by Austin’s refusal to enforce the law:
On our security cameras, we started seeing more people come up to our building at night. Someone broke through the roof, stole the cash register, and smashed the glass door on their way out. Someone stole a catalytic converter from one of our vans. We’ve been broken into three times in the past 18 months. At least once a week, we now see people park in our parking lot, and we watch a constant stream of people come up to their car from the Greenbelt or from under the overpass.
People were bathing in our exterior faucet, between our buildings. We kept putting locks on the faucets, which they would break off. Eventually we just removed the handle completely. One time a lady was bathing, while kids were there, and I asked her to leave and she started screaming at me telling me that I was going to go to Hell.
These people, ordinary Austin taxpayers and business owners, don’t seem to figure in City Council decisions at all. Only the drug-addicted transients, and the left-wing activists of the Homeless Industrial Complex who profit off them, seem to count.
One thing about these lawsuits: Discovery is going to be lit…