‘No-panhandling’ sign offends man

Associated Press

WHITEHALL, Ohio

He first noticed the no-panhandling sign because of the guy begging for money beneath it.

Ironic, he thought, amused. Then Don Sarubbi read the words on that mustard-yellow placard. And he was angry.

“KEEP THE CHANGE,” read the signs posted near a few street corners in Whitehall. “Don’t support Panhandling. The majority of your change goes to Drugs & Alcohol. Help more by giving to charity.”

Since that day late last year, Sarubbi has waged a one-man war against those signs, hoping he can persuade Whitehall Mayor Kim Maggard to remove them. He has been so aggressive in his fight that Maggard once hung up on him and later locked down her Twitter account.

“I just don’t think it’s a position of the government to sit there and ... make assumptions,” Sarubbi said. “How do you know they buy drugs and alcohol?”

Maggard authorized the signs in 2012 after she was elected in a landslide over a write-in candidate. She said the complaints about beggars were constant.

“That’s one of the first things I heard when I became mayor: ‘I’m getting panhandled, it’s everywhere, it needs to stop,’” she said.

And so the signs, similar to those in other communities across the country, went up. The city spent about $250 on them, Maggard said. It spent $500 or so on brochures detailing myths and facts of panhandling and what’s legal and what isn’t.

In Whitehall, begging for money isn’t against the law, but the way it is done can be.

A panhandler who blocks pedestrian or vehicle traffic, is too aggressive or begs too close to, say, a bank or ATM could face a charge ranging from a minor misdemeanor to a second-degree misdemeanor.

The city had 30 panhandling offenses last year, according to Whitehall police. That was up from 18 in 2013, eight in 2012 and three in 2011.

The rising number of charges doesn’t reflect a growing problem, police Sgt. Dan Kelso said, but rather a city-mandated crackdown. He thinks panhandling troubles actually might be on the decline.

“I don’t think that we field the call-in complaints that we used to,” Kelso said.

Now, the complaint is coming from a different direction.

Sarubbi, 35, is a senior network engineer with Time Warner Cable with some time on his hands. In September, he moved from Chicago to Hilliard.

A few weeks ago, he and fellow engineers went to lunch at King Gyros in Whitehall, which is when he saw those signs that offended him. Since then, he has discovered Twitter — his friends laughed at him when he asked if they’d heard of it — and created the account @I—Beg—4—Change.

“Making giant signs in preparation of my peaceful protest,” he tweeted Dec. 31.

“I—Beg—4—Change is a play on words, I want to see CHANGE in attitude from (Mayor) @KJmagg.”

Sarubbi said he typically doesn’t give money to panhandlers, but he doesn’t want to see them dehumanized, either. And he objected to Maggard having decided, on her own, to post the signs.

He called her, but — according to him — Maggard seemed unmoved by his pleas.

“It was, ‘No, I don’t care what you think. I heard your opinion, those signs are there, those signs work,’” Sarubbi said, recalling the phone conversation. “So that’s when I said to her, ‘It sounds like you’re running a kingdom there.’”

Maggard remembers the phone call slightly differently.

“He was angry the whole time, so I really didn’t get a chance to talk that much to him,” she said. “When he really got aggressive with his speech, I hung up on him.”

On Jan. 1, Sarubbi posted this on Twitter: “Welcome 2015, the year I will personally campaign against @KJmagg due to her dictatorship-type personality & hypocritical views of morality!”

Maggard said Sarubbi started following some of her relatives on Twitter and sending them comments, too, prompting her to close down her account to the public.

The mayor said she does not plan to take down the signs. Before this, she never had a complaint.

Maggard said she understands Sarubbi’s concern about linking drugs and alcohol to panhandling, but she’s seen enough studies and statistics to feel comfortable with putting that sentence out there.

“The reason that I OK’d the signs that way is, I did my research,” she said.

Besides, she said, the city does seem to be curbing its panhandling problem. She doesn’t know whether the signs are making a difference, but a combination of factors seems to be driving away beggars.

“I think the word’s getting out that it’s not going to be tolerated in Whitehall,” she said.