June 2 – Tempe, AZ – Volunteers with the private club, the “New Deal Meal,” work each week at Tempe’s  Moeur Park to help meet the needs of homeless members by providing food and clothing, and connecting people with services. Club organizers and volunteers  have diligently followed the existing Special Event ordinance by remaining a private event that cleans up thoroughly after each meeting.

After the City of Tempe tried to use its Special Event ordinance against the group in January by citing organizer Ron Tapscott, Tapscott became a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit filed in April by the Pacific Legal Foundation. The lawsuit asserts that the City’s actions were  unconstitutional. In a surprise twist last month, the City dropped charges against Tapscott “in the interest of justice.”

Although Tempe faith leaders have been advocating to the City manager since  September 2024 to resolve the impasse over Moeur Park, the City manager has instead proposed to change the rules so they can shut down the New Deal Meal.

On Thursday, June 5th, the Tempe CIty Council will  have a first reading of the  dramatic revision to the City’s special event ordinance, which the faith community and the club organizers believe is designed to target New Deal Meal.

“A few months ago after one of the faith community’s  meetings with the city, a deputy city manager made an exaggerated  assertion about how many people attended our gatherings which I disputed, then he mentioned, but it is over 30. Now I know where the 30 number came from. No wonder the city refused to engage seriously about Moeur Park,” said Dave Wells, a Quaker and one of the founders of the New Deal Meal.

New Deal Meal is already under City’s camera surveillance and, this week, the City removed all the grills from Moeur Park—even though the Park hosts 22 picnic tables (see pictures–the top picture is a post gathering clean up photo before the grills were removed–the second was taken on Sunday, June 1).

The proposed ordinance would require special event permits – which include a nonrefundable application fee of $500 and proof of insurance and need to be filed 60 days in advance for circumstances including:

• When 30 or more people attend (New Deal Meal gatherings usually involve 60 to 80 people over 3 hours)
• Changes definition of public events to include “functionally public in nature, including but not limited to any event where the organizers do not verify or restrict attendees to a pre-registered or private list.” (New Deal Meal does have membership cards and sign-ins – but this rule  would interfere with having guests or new members or new volunteers)
• It also provides greater discretion for City officials to deny applications, requires a special event permit for each and every occurrence, and gives the City Manager  the power to limit the frequency of any activity.

Although the proposed ordinance aims to shut down the New Deal Meal, it will also shut down other free loosely organized weekly park gatherings that often involve more than 30 people and regularly advertise on Facebook and Instagram–such as the Thursday Papago Jam and the Sunday Tempe Flow Jam, and other uses of the parks. 

As a recent Grand Canyon Institute policy brief noted, people who are homeless are 200 to 300 times more likely to die from heat-related causes. New Deal Meal provides cold water and sports drinks to those exposed to extreme heat.

Given that the faith community, including members of the New Deal Meal, were meeting with the City over homeless outreach, one wonders why City management chose not to create an inclusive stakeholder process to compose a more mutually agreeable solution. A rubber stamp of the proposed ordinance by the City Council will sign the death warrant for some people who are homeless in Tempe.

The City Council needs to put the brakes on their unelected managers and send this proposal back to stakeholders for reconsideration 

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