City legal staff and police presented a multi-month review of existing tools and possible ordinances to address aggressive panhandling, loitering and soliciting, with a focus on creating narrowly tailored rules that could survive constitutional scrutiny.

Assistant City Manager Ryan Elam opened the discussion and said staff had coordinated legal review with police to identify enforcement challenges. Legal counsel Rucker explained the constitutional constraints and the need for careful drafting. “Reed versus Town of Gilbert” was cited by Rucker as limiting government restrictions on speech and requiring narrow tailoring; Rucker said the effective, defensible approach is to distinguish between a single request for money and repeated or aggressive requests. “You don't get to ask the second time,” Rucker said, describing a model in which the second solicitation would be the offense.

Rucker asked the committee to identify problem locations the city might treat differently, listing five categories staff has observed: in front of convenience stores, on public streets, inside the downtown corridor, in city parks, and door-to-door or house-to-house. He said staff believes the city can reasonably protect some areas that represent substantial public investments — specifically Downtown Lee's Summit, Green Street Market and city parks — with clearly stated predicate findings to justify any restrictions.

Police Captain Schafer told the committee officers have used education and deterrence as primary tools and said enforcement data would be prepared for a future meeting; he emphasized the department’s goal is to connect unhoused people to services rather than incarceration. Schafer noted a recurring downtown group that had relocated onto private property, raising different enforcement issues.

Committee members asked about practical enforcement details, including whether private businesses could remove people from their property, whether civilian witnesses would be required for prosecutions and how any new ordinance would interact with existing harassment, disturbance-of-peace and peddler/solicitor codes. Rucker said requiring a civilian witness could strengthen cases likely to be reviewed de novo in circuit court; staff intends to review enforcement statistics and craft predicate “whereas” findings for any draft ordinance.

No motion was made; staff said it would prepare draft ordinance language reflecting the committee's feedback and return with proposed language and enforcement data at a future meeting. Members urged staff to engage downtown partners and community groups as drafts are prepared. The committee also discussed related public-safety tools such as loitering provisions that would allow property owners or managers to ask persistent individuals to leave private premises.