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Back business owners over panhandlers

One letter from the American Civil Liberties Union and the city of Durango stops all police efforts to protect the private-property rights of business owners from panhandlers? Really?

Private individuals have spent years and millions of dollars building viable businesses in our community. They are the ones who pay all the property taxes, which build and maintain the sidewalks and streets in front of their businesses. They are the ones whose establishments offer goods and services that locals and visitors purchase and enjoy, generating those taxes.

Are the bureaucrats in City Hall really going to kowtow to out-of-town thugs? They are allowing these panhandlers to adversely financially affect the entrepreneurs who have taken all the risk, paid the mortgages and the taxes they so willingly collect to pay for infrastructure and their salaries. Business owners are now having to ask for the removal of the nice benches their taxes paid for to mitigate the panhandling nonsense at the expense of labor paid to city employees?

Shame on the city for not adamantly standing up for the business people who have invested their lives and fortunes into Durango. The First Amendment of our Constitution does protect the rights of free speech and peaceable assembly. It doesn’t protect the rights of panhandlers to intimidate and drive customers away from the source of funding for city paychecks. How about all of the Durango businesses close for the summer and bring a class-action lawsuit against the city and the ACLU to pay their mortgages, taxes, expenses and employees for allowing this nonsense.

Oh, wait! Then, there wouldn’t be any money to pay a potential judgment, the city attorney’s fees, garbage collectors, planners, City Council members, etc., without the taxes collected from the business community.

James F. Turner

Durango



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