Beggars will be asking for trouble from Colorado Springs police if they continue to panhandle downtown.

They won’t be alone.

Salvation Army bell ringers and the Girl Scouts could also end up on the wrong side of the law under an ordinance the City Council approved Tuesday that bans all forms of solicitation in a 12-square block zone in the heart of downtown, including Acacia Park.

The no-solicitation zone, a controversial idea to fight panhandling that merchants say is hurting business, is part of a larger plan by Mayor Steve Bach to increase safety downtown — or at least the perception of it.

Other efforts include increased foot patrols and 13 surveillance cameras that are scheduled to be up and running Dec. 7. The cameras will be installed mostly on intersections on Tejon Street and in and around Acacia Park, police Chief Pete Carey said.

“Before we actually go live and operational, I’m going to have an open house at the Gold Hill station to show the media and elected officials and the public the capabilities of it and what our game plan is for using it appropriately,” Carey said.

Approval of the no-solicitation zone, which had been in the works for months, was not unanimous.

City Councilman Val Snider cast the lone dissenting vote, saying the public process had been derailed when Bach asked the council to vote on the no-solicitation zone two weeks ahead of schedule.

“Council gave specific direction on the public process that was to be followed on this ordinance, and at the last minute it was bypassed. It was jammed through,” Snider said. “I just choose not to encourage that kind of behavior on this issue.”

Loring Wirbel, co-chairman of the Pikes Peak chapter of the ACLU, promised a fight in court.

“I can assure you that we will seek to challenge this,” he told the mayor and council before the vote.

“The ACLU, local and state level, is fully committed to challenging this ordinance as long as there’s any concept of a total solicitation-free zone involved,” he said. Later Tuesday, the ACLU sent a release about a news conference Wednesday on the subject.

Bach said the city was prepared to defend itself.

“We’re prepared as an executive branch to represent our position as far as we need to in the courts,” the mayor said. “We’d love to work with you on an informal basis and would hope you would reconsider and give us a chance to see how this ordinance works and work with us in making sure that it’s not truly infringing on First Amendment rights.”

Bach said everyone was concerned about First Amendment rights but that the city had to “draw the line” when panhandling “rises to the level of coercion and intimidation.”

While the ordinance bans all forms of solicitation, the mayor noted that groups such as Salvation Army bell ringers would be allowed to solicit on private property.

The mayor also said the city needed to do more to help homeless people and promised to come back in the first quarter of 2013 with a “specific plan of action.”

“This is not intended to simply brush aside those people who are down and out,” he said.

Not everyone was convinced.

“When you criminalize a noncriminal act of necessity like panhandling, you greatly increase the possibility of that person committing other crimes and decrease their ability to obtain employment or housing. Therefore, you, the city government, have become a part of the problem rather than the solution,” said Springs resident Raven Martinez, one of several people who spoke in opposition. “Out of sight, out of mind is not a solution.”

But downtown business owners and representatives, including developer Chuck Murphy, chairman of the mayor’s Downtown Solutions Team, said the panhandling problem had gotten out of control. Murphy called it “pathetic” and “shameful.”

“It’s not healthy, and there’s plenty of other cities across the United States that I’ve been to or that you’ve been to, they don’t tolerate it, nor should we,” he said.

Eric Verlo, Daniel Kontoff, and other protestors stand outside Colorado Springs City Hall earlier this month in protest of the solicitation ordinance covering downtown. Photo by JERILEE BENNETT/The Gazette file