The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Mar 11, 2014 11:03 PM

Dave “Stickman” Cortiana rubbed his tattooed hand along his dog’s side as she shut her eyes and stretched out on the warm brick sidewalk just off Mill Avenue in Tempe.

“She’s my Ruby,” Cortiana said. “She’s my blessing.”

It was the kind of Arizona weather that natives and transplants brag about. The time of year when tourists take refuge from winter and watch their favorite baseball team play a spring-training game.

Tempe is a favorite among tourists because of its central location between ballparks, and because of the historic feel of Mill Avenue mixed with its modern shops and restaurants.

The season usually is a good time of the year for Cortiana, too. He’s been homeless in Tempe for about nine years.

When the tourists are in town, he makes a little cash selling dream catchers that he weaves around dried devil’s claw plants.

But this year hasn’t been the same. In recent weeks, Cortiana said Tempe police have started kicking him out of his spot on Mill.

The reason is an ordinance approved in January by the Tempe City Council that bans sitting and lying down on Tempe public rights of way, such as streets, sidewalks, alleys and highways. The ordinance, approved 6-1, establishes a civil offense with fines up to $2,500. It also bans people who don’t reside on or own a property from using adjacent alleys as a thoroughfare.

National advocates for the homeless said such ordinances criminalize homelessness.

A 1999 Tempe ordinance that made it a misdemeanor to sit on a sidewalk downtown spurred a sit-in protest on Mill by advocates and people living on the streets. But that law had several exceptions, including requiring a warning first and limiting the sitting ban to the downtown area during certain hours.

Several Valley municipalities, including Phoenix, Mesa and Gilbert, have similar ordinances that ban obstruction of public rights of way. Scottsdale and Glendale officials told The Arizona Republic that they do not have such an ordinance.

“But if someone blocks a sidewalk, it could be a violation of ... state law” Scottsdale spokesman Kelly Corsette said.

State law is narrower than Tempe’s ordinance and makes it a misdemeanor to “recklessly” interfere with passage on a highway or public thoroughfare by creating an “unreasonable inconvenience or hazard.”

After the meeting in January, Tempe Councilman Kolby Granville, who voted against the ordinance, posted on his Facebook page that passage of the ordinance means it is illegal in Tempe to sit on your neighborhood sidewalk. The post inflamed respondents. Some said the measure amounted to government heavy-handedness and could result in receiving a citation for sitting on the sidewalk while waiting for a bus or for their child playing on the sidewalk.

At the meeting, council members said they were not worried, because they were confident Tempe police would use common sense when enforcing the law.

Others were angry that Tempe was unfairly targeting homeless people when the city has no permanent homeless shelter. The city has a makeshift shelter that rotates among local churches. But the refuge is often not large enough to house everyone hoping to find a bed.

Advocates said that more cities, including Phoenix, which is investing in housing programs for veterans and others, are moving away from criminalization of homelessness. Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton said the city has laws for extreme circumstances but prefers alternatives because citations are not going to help people who need human services to get back on their feet and into permanent housing.

Tempe Mayor Mark Mitchell and Councilman Corey Woods said the downtown business community supported the ordinance.

“We heard from a lot of the businesses that people were blocking the entrances to their businesses,” Mitchell said. “It was geared more for the people loitering. It has nothing to do with people who are homeless.”

Granville said that it would be disingenuous to say the measure has nothing to do with steering homeless people away from business hubs.

“What this really is, is a way to tell homeless people to move on and non-homeless people, they’re fine,” he said.

Granville said he would have supported the ordinance if it said that someone would only be cited if they were obstructing the sidewalk.

He believes the more narrow definition would prevent police from asking a person who is homeless and sitting on the sidewalk to move, as long as pedestrians could still make their way around them.

Woods said that he is working with Granville to revise the ordinance to state more clearly that someone would be in violation only if he or she were obstructing the public thoroughfare.

Cortiana thinks the revision won’t change some people’s attitude toward the homeless.

He said he’s struggled with alcohol and drugs.

He’s lost friends over his addiction and is separated from family.

“But I’m not hurting anyone,” he said. “It’s not easy out here anymore.” Plus, he has Ruby to worry about.

“The scariest thing about being homeless now is what will happen to Ruby if I get arrested.”