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Herndon: Giving the cold shoulder to day laborers
Revoking the ABC licenses of area convenience stores, confiscating bicycles and removing pay phones along Elden Street are but a few suggestions recently offered by Herndon Councilman Dennis Husch in an effort to "make Herndon unwelcoming to illegal aliens."In a July 16 memo from Husch to Herndon Mayor Steve DeBenedittis and other council members, Husch outlined his intention to reduce the numbers of day laborers who congregate near the intersection of Alabama Drive and Elden Street.
"When action is taken to reduce their numbers, they will seek employment elsewhere," he wrote in the memo.
At least three other council members – who along with Husch make up a majority of the seven-member council – agreed.
In e-mails obtained by the Fairfax Times, a sister-paper of the Times-Mirror, Vice Mayor Connie Haines Hutchinson and council members Bill Tirrell and David Kirby all voiced agreement that the issue should be addressed.
"Enough is enough," Kirby said in an e-mail addressed to the mayor and other council members. "I believe it is time to insist on our HPD Officers get out of the cruisers and walk or ride bicycles (save gas and bring back 'walking the beat') in that area and show their presence."
In a subsequent July 21 memo, Husch suggested several measures that "would contribute to the reduction in the number of day laborers."
"The list was a summation of suggestions I received from my constituents and deserves to be vetted by their elected representatives," Husch told The Times.
Among them are assigning a police officer and zoning inspector to the area; establishing a room rental permit program and a "pedestrian safety zone" that would prohibit standing along Elden Street between Herndon Parkway and Sterling Road; revoking the ability of "all quick marts in the area" to serve alcohol; establishing a town policy to confiscate all bicycles that are chained or tied to trees or sign posts in public rights-of-way; and removing pay phones along a section of Elden Street and other areas.
Dennis O'Donnell, a sometimes day laborer who was hired for nearly 50 day jobs at the Herndon Official Workers Center before it was closed last September, is a Gonzaga College High School classmate of former Herndon Mayor Mike O'Reilly.
O'Donnell said some of Husch's suggestions are "the right idea but the wrong approach." He said removing pay phones from the area is overkill because laborers only use the phones to receive job offers.
"All you would have to do is render them incapable of receiving calls," he said.
O'Donnell also said workers congregate at the Alabama Drive location because "illegal organizers undercut the wages" of laborers who congregate at the Alabama Drive Park location that was set up after the closing of the worker center last fall.
Contact the reporter a gmacdonald@timespapers.com
All of these sound like reasonable approaches to me. Would it also be possible for them to just pass a "no loitering" ordinance of some sort for the area as well?
At present my biggest concern over Herndon doing this is how it might impact certain areas of Loudoun County. While I applaud Herndon's initiatives, I would certainly hate to see this result in a larger non-legal resident population than Loudoun County already has.
Posted by clrankin
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