La Crosse County Republican Party shares unsourced flyer on homeless in parks; City council member Janssen discusses “no camping” amendment

Republicans in La Crosse County are publicizing what appears to be an effort to prevent homeless people or others from camping in city parks.

On its Facebook page, the La Crosse County Republican Party shows a picture of a flyer with the headline ‘Save Our Parks!’

The flyer shows no affiliation to any group and mentions a council plan at a park that is not on any city agenda.

La Crosse City Council member Barb Janssen was on La Crosse Talk PM on Monday and said the council is actually discussing the opposite.

Last week, the council tried amending camping rules in parks to allow for better enforcement.

“So the amendment to the ordinance provides a little more detail to what would actually be considered camping,” Janssen said. “It also makes changes so that we don’t have to have a physical sign that says “Park closed” or “No camping.” “It seems that those signs keep disappearing.

“It’s actually just making some fine tuning to the current ordinance that the parks do close at 11 p.m. and there is no camping. There never has been camping allowed in parks and we’re not doing anything new, we’re just making it easier to enforce.”

In the spring of 2022, Houska Park was designated a campground and, therefore, camping was then allowed there, but that ended last fall and cleanup for the park began last spring.

The city council did not vote on amending the camping ordinance at last week’s monthly meeting, instead putting it off until next month so it could go through the committee process.

The amendment had been, as Janssen described, “short circuited” to go straight to the city council for vote last week.

“My understanding is they felt that it was urgent to get this taken care of,” Janssen said. “I personally felt that, because it was such a controversial item, that it needed the full time allocation for public input, so that’s why I recommended that we refer it and that did pass.”

The camping bill is on the Judiciary and Administration Committee’s agenda for July 5. It defines camping and campsites and adds verbiage that it’s illegal to camp after 11 p.m. whether there’s a sign there or not.

Janssen noted that the ‘No camping’ signs “keep disappearing.”

So far, there are 14 letters on the agenda in support of the amendment and 38 in opposition. At last week’s meeting, 30 people submitted letters to the council in opposition and nine more came to the meeting, while six wrote letters in support and two supporters came ot the meeting.

Meanwhile, the flyer shared (shown below) by the La Crosse County Republican Party states, “The council is now considering a counter proposal to establish officially designated homeless encampments in public parks throughout the city such as Weigent Park!”

But, nowhere on any committee agenda, at this point, does it show the council looking to recreate anything like a Houska Park campground or “encampments.”

The La Crosse County Republican Party also called the news release of a city-county joint effort to take a leadership role in helping homeless “essentially nothing.”

The party also then criticized the release, stating, “What doesn’t the plan mention? “Oh… let’s see. Maybe the main causes of homelessness? -Drug and alcohol addiction. -Mental illness.”

Over the past week, Janssen, La Crosse Mayor Mitch Reynolds and both the city of La Crosse homeless coordinator, Brian Sampson, and La Crosse County Supervisor of Prevention and Community Programming, Isaac Hoffman, have discussed the situation in various ways — from the city council’s perspective to the city-county announcement of creating a five-year plan to help the homeless.