Council votes to boot people off Tucson medians, rejects wash-camping ban

The Tucson City Council Tuesday night OK’d amending an ordinance related to banning people from occupying medians at busy traffic intersections.

But, the council did not pass two other proposals, for a new law and an ordinance amendment, relating to camping in city washes and parks.

The changes proposed Tuesday night were prompted by Proposition 312, which Arizona voters approved in November, which allows property owners to get a property tax rebate if the local jurisdiction fails to enforce its own laws on misbehavior such as loitering, illegal camping or drug use.

The amendment approved updates an ordinance that originally barred people from soliciting in traffic medians. That ordinance, passed in 2000, has become unenforceable in the 20-plus years since because of federal court rulings finding “that the act of soliciting is a protected First Amendment activity,” City Attorney Mike Rankin said.

Approved by a 5-1 vote, the amendment strikes language from the ordinance pertaining to “expressive conduct” such as soliciting, but bars people from occupying or remaining at a traffic median for longer than one traffic light cycle on any roadway with a posted speed limit of 30 miles per hour or greater. Vice Mayor and Ward 1 councilmember Lane Santa Cruz was the sole no-vote.

The penalty for violating this is a misdemeanor, “punishable by community services or fines” up to $250 and/or up to 24 hours imprisonment.

The purpose “is really about traffic safety,” Rankin said, as the ordinance doesn’t extend to sidewalks “and other areas where expressive activity can still take place.”

The median ordinance also now has a section included, that if it’s the basis of a successful claim against the city through Prop. 312, Rankin is “directed to notify the Mayor and Council” so they can consider changing it to limit the city’s risk in the future.

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One new law up for a vote Tuesday night would have created a new city code prohibiting camping in city washes.

This ordinance had been put on a City Council agenda, then removed, numerous times since February 2024. Originally, consideration was paused pending what was then a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

In June last year, the Supreme Court, in a split decision, ruled that laws banning camping on public property do not violate the Eight Amendment ban against “cruel and unusual punishment.”

But the proposed ordinance failed Tuesday night in a 3-3 vote. Councilmembers Santa Cruz, Paul Cunningham and Kevin Dahl voted against it, while Mayor Regina Romero and Councilmembers Nikki Lee and Karin Uhlich voted for it.

Dahl, while saying the median ordinance made sense to him, thought the washes ordinance would be “criminalizing homelessness.”

Cunningham was concerned that the city, if the ordinance passed, would not have the resources to transition these people from living in a wash because “we don’t have anywhere for them to go.”

“If we don’t have places for folks to go, we have no place to camp, all we’re going to be doing is chasing people from one place to another,” he said. “I don’t know how that is productive.”

Another ordinance amendment was up for a vote Tuesday night, relating to the city’s prohibition on camping in parks, which is already on the books. Rankin suggested that it not be considered because it was “primarily based on having a consistent definition of camping” across the two ordinances, he said.