After an hour and a half of heated discussion, Chapel Hill Town Council voted Monday to enact an interim ordinance on the use of Peace and Justice Plaza.
The changes come after Town Manager Roger Stancil released a memo in January saying that rules overlooked during the Occupy Chapel Hill/Carrboro encampment should be revisited for future enforcement.
With the new ordinance, residents must have permits to hold events in the plaza that last more than three hours. Those permits must be applied for 48 hours in advance of the event — a point of contempt among council members because it would disallow spontaneous protests.
In the past, occupiers and others spent entire nights in the space, but now protesters can stay in the plaza only from 7 a.m. to 2 a.m.
Council members were clear that those times are preliminary and could change.
The ordinance will also split the plaza into two areas, both of which protesters can reserve. But one group cannot reserve both spaces if another group expresses interest.
Some who spoke at the meeting said the changes are much needed.
“What we have here, folks, is a classic case of the slippery slope,” said Brandy McDonald, co-owner of East End. “We chose to overlook the violations of current town regulations, and now you don’t have the availability to go back and enforce them.”
Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt agreed that regulations were broken during the encampment.
“I knew I didn’t want regulations enforced because I had sympathy with Occupy, and that’s a problem,” he said. “The government can’t behave that way, that’s not right. We have to have rules that are applied equally to anyone in that space.”
