By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

                Homeless people are becoming an unwanted presence in Chiefland and the Chiefland City Commission has decided to research what can be done about it.

            Chiefland has nothing on the books to deal with homelessness.

            Chiefland City Commissioner Lewrissa Johns persuaded commissioners Monday the city would be better off dealing with the issue rather than ignoring it.

            She said city police answered 379 calls related to “vagrants” between Jan. 1 and Nov. 15 of this year. She reminded the board she had made a similar appeal at the previous board meeting and was met with silence by fellow commissioners.

            “There’s a lot more, I think, than we are aware of going on in this community,” Johns said. “I do think it’s something we want to be a little proactive on and not reactive. Again, I am asking for support for what we can put in place to protect ourselves – that’s a lot of calls.”

            City Manager Laura Cain, after listening to a 20-minute discussion of homelessness in Chiefland, offered to contact other cities to obtain their ordinances dealing with homelessness as a starting point.

            Commissioner Rollin Hudson wanted to know if the 379 calls for vagrants were all homeless people.

            “That’s all homeless-folks?” Hudson said. “Surely, that’s just maybe someone hanging out and they want them to get moving, or vagrants coming through.”

            Police Chief Scott Anderson said the Walmart Supercenter has become a big attraction for homeless people along with Winn-Dixie across the street. Homeless people know customers coming out of those stores have money.

            Johns said the homeless people she’s dealt with outside her business aren’t mean people.

            “They’re just there,” she said.

            Anderson said the homeless person that Johns dealt with at her business was sleeping outside, and the same was true of a local chiropractic medical clinic, but he said the difference between the two was that the chiropractic center didn’t report the problem and they were feeding the homeless man.

            Johns said she talked to some people about a homeless person that was sleeping on the Nature Coast State Trail in Chiefland.

            “It’s to the point that the smell is there. It’s a problem,” Johns said. “You don’t want it there, you don’t want it at the park, you don’t want it out here. I just think we need to be proactive before it becomes something we can’t handle,” she said.

            Chiefland Fire Chief James Harris said his department responded to a fire behind BBQ Bill’s Restaurant and the fruit stand that he believes was caused by homeless people.

            Former city commissioner Alice Monyei wondered if the city charter could be amended to address the problem.

            City Attorney Blake Fugate said the city would have to address it through an ordinance, not by amending the charter. He said the charter sets up Chiefland’s form of government. Ordinances would be used to deal with criminality or to protect citizens and businesses.

            “Pass an ordinance to add to the code; have the police officers enforce it,” he said. “Now, I’m not here to say what that ordinance would say, what kind of ordinance would fix the problem we’re talking about. As a lawyer, I can tell you how to put the law on the books, but I haven’t done research to know what that law should say to fix the problem we’re talking about and there’s plenty of cities and towns that have dove off into that problem to try to fix things. It’s a really tricky problem. There’s a balance between – I don’t want to say doing the right thing – and putting a law on the books to handle this and it’s not easy.”

            “Cities have been dealing with this for decades and decades. The bigger cities have a huge problem with it. I think we’re lucky being in a small town, that it’s not as big a problem as Orlando or Miami. I don’t know much about Miami. These guys (city staff) are going to have to do the research to determine how to solve this.”

            Mayor Chris Jones was asked by a reporter what he thinks should be done about homelessness in Chiefland and if he felt an ordinance was needed to address the problem. He was asked if he was interested in making some type of ordinance.

            “Sure, if you’re asking me directly, I guess if I’m answering as the mayor, I’d say that’s going to be based on a consensus of the public with their input along with the businesses and the people who are dealing with that issue and yes, I’m fully aware on the south end of Chiefland there are some homeless issues. Yes, I would like to see some proactive concerns taking place if that’s what you’re asking,” Jones said.

            The reporter asked how Jones thinks the city should move forward on dealing with the issue of homelessness.

            “With the input of people like yourself, the public, and the board,” Jones responded.

            Cain offered to research how other cities are dealing with homelessness.

            Fugate recalled that the city dealt with panhandling a few years back. He remembered the judicial agencies in Gainesville taking an interest in what Chiefland was doing with regard to panhandling.

            “I don’t want to say we got some brushback, but we collaborated with the public defender and the state attorney’s offices,” he said.

            Laws can be adopted to allow arrests, Fugate said, but someone has to prosecute the person who violated the law “and you’re going to have to have someone in the judicial system on the other side to make sure they are going to be willing to prosecute something that you are trying to enforce.”

            Anderson said a few years back the city adopted an ordinance to control “aggressive panhandling.” Fugate said they tweaked the ordinance to make it work and put it on the books.

            Jones said he knows of people who are actually living at the vacant Sunoco station in the Chiefland area. Some have set up makeshift homes.

            “It’s definitely an issue in our city. The dynamics have definitely changed in the past two years,” Jones said. “The reason we faced it before was more about aggressive panhandling. It happened in many of our convenience stores and we needed something to deal with it. Some of these people you’re seeing are passing through, staying a few days.”

            Fugate recalled why the city addressed aggressive panhandling.

            “We had people coming into town and dumping off a dozen at the Walmart at one time. They were staying there for about an hour. You guys would get a call and they would load up and go across the street, and you all would get a call from there and they would load up and they would be going to the next place on U.S. 19 before we could catch them” Fugate said.

            Anderson said aggressive panhandling hasn’t been a problem for a while.

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City of Chiefland Regular Meeting November 22, 2021; Posted November 23, 2021