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By Jorge Casuso

July 28 -- Panhandlers will no longer be allowed to solicit money while sitting on public seats and benches in the heart of the Downtown, after the City Council last week unanimously voted to bar such activity on the Promenade and two neighboring streets.

At the urging of the Bayside District Board, the council on Wednesday expanded the proposed ordinance targeting the Promenade to the Transit Mall, which stretches along Broadway and Santa Monica Boulevard between 2nd and 4th streets.

The council agreed that panhandlers driven away from the Promenade benches by the ban would monopolize the transit mall seating, which also is in high demand.

“I think this is a positive step forward,” said Mayor Pro Tem Richard Bloom.

Bloom noted that a study in Denver found that panhandlers in the Mile High City brought in some $4 million a year and that most were not homeless.

"In addition to the need to stop monopolizing the public benches. . . there are also strong policy reasons" to impose the ban, Bloom said.

The ordinance is expected to free up seats and benches that are often monopolized by panhandlers who sit for hours at a time soliciting funds from the large Promenade crowds, which can swell to as many as 10,000 pedestrians on busy summer weekends, City officials said.

While the Promenade has only enough seating for about 100 people, many of the visitors “have special needs for respite, including the very young, the elderly and the disabled,” staff wrote in its report to the council

Although the proposed measure is aimed at discouraging panhandlers, many of whom are homeless, from monopolizing chairs and benches on Santa Monica’s thriving commercial center, City officials said it does not target a particular group.

The ordinance, staff wrote, “would apply to all types of solicitation, without regard to the content of the solicitors’ message.

“Thus, the proposed ordinance would prohibit seeking charitable donations or selling Girl Scout cookies from the benches and chairs,” staff wrote.

The new law, which must be approved on second reading, allows “those visiting the Promenade to panhandle or engage in some other form of solicitation. . . to use the street furniture to take breaks from that activity.”

The ordinance was expanded to include the Transit Mall after the Bayside Board voted in April not to support a law that only targeted the Promenade, fearing it would only shift the activity to neighboring streets.

On Wednesday, a Police Department representative urged the council to expand the ordinance to the Transit Mall, which has seating not only at bus stops, but also up and down Broadway and Santa Monica Boulevard.