New festival permit applications are being crafted

Leavenworth city officials are crafting new permits for festivals, which asks more of the applicant. The council discussed the issue at the June 12 study session. City Administrator Joel Walinski brought back a revised ordinance for council review.
“There were questions about some kind of estimate for the number of vehicles or estimated traffic. That is actually a question in the application. There is the beginnings of a suggested parking plan with a brief description of what they had in mind. We tried to give some definitions about what a safety plan is,” Walinski said.
Walinski explained there were two parts, the ordinance and the application. The ordinance is the more fixed piece, while the application can be modified fairly easily. It will be more complicated if there are changes to the ordinance.
“There are couple of things I want to make sure everyone understands on the ordinance. If the Neo-Nazi organization wants to come and put on an event downtown or some far left wing group want to come and put on an event, the city doesn’t have authorization in this ordinance to stop that,” Walinski said.
Councilman Clint Strand asked if the city could stop hate speech.
“There are actions that might be hate speech and that might be enforceable as an actual criminal complaint, but in terms on not granting a permit, we don’t have the legal grounds to do that,” Walinski said. “You can’t stop the permit from being issued because you don’t like the group or you don’t like what the group represents.”
The city can’t presume something not in evidence, Mayor Cheri Kelley Farivar said.
“You can’t presume hate speech, but we can patrol it heavily and respond at the actual event,” Farivar said.
The other piece of the ordinance is that the council is the judge and jury rather than the hearing examiner, Walinski said.  
“In the past, we’ve moved toward a hearing examiner. Of course, our city attorney prefers to use a hearing examiner. The general consensus is, hopefully, we won’t have to use that,” Walinski said. “At least the first go round, we go through the council. This really focuses in on the festival part. We had information on what are things in place when there is a festival.”
Councilwoman Sharon Waters asked why the city wasn’t using the hearing examiner, if the city attorney is recommending it.
“The hearing examiner process takes a long time and very expensive. What if a volunteer group came in and said we want to put on a festival, but we can’t meet all your steps. If they have to go to a hearing examiner, it wouldn’t be heard until after the festival would have occurred. So time and cost,” Farivar said.
Councilman Jason Lundgren suggested doing a test run on the ordinance for a year, then have Walinski come back with a presentation on how things went. Walinski said they will try to make the code language clear so the applicants understand it.
“When we will hand them is the application, but we will probably have a cover on the application that goes into the code language, why this is and what the process is and give some definitions to that. We could include the definitions in that piece,” Walinski said.
Ian Dunn can be reached at 548-5286 or editor@leavenworthecho.com.