



In a move that seems designed to keep Occupy L.A. demonstrators from resuming nighttime protest at the park outside City Hall, a Los Angeles city councilman is calling for the park’s hours of operation to be shortened, and for rules regarding tents to be clarified.

Councilman Jose Huizar on Wednesday introduced a motion that asks the city attorney to prepare an ordinance that would limit access to 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Current hours of operation are 5 a.m. to 10 p.m.

The 1.7-acre park is expected to reopen in May after city crews finish a nearly $400,000 restoration job. It has been closed since December, when police arrested hundreds of demonstrators who had been camped there as part of a national protest against income inequality and other economic and social issues.

Overnight camping is not allowed in city parks, and neither are tents that have more than two sides. But protesters were initially granted an exemption to those laws by sympathetic city leaders, including Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and then-City Council President Eric Garcetti.

Lawmakers allowed the protesters -- and the hundreds of tents they erected -- to stay for two months before evicting them.