Thursday, March 20, 2008
Denver to try Park Permit Lottery again today
WE’VE MOVED! Democratic Convention Watch is now at http://www.DemocraticConventionWatch.com
If you saw our story yesterday about the Park Permit Lottery Mess you may be interested to know they’re going to try again today
A lottery to determine which groups will receive permits to use Denver parks around the time of the Democratic National Convention in August is scheduled to take place Thursday.
The process was halted Tuesday as city officials responded to complaints that members of a protest group were left out of the process.
A member of Denver-based Recreate 68 says her name was left off applications for four of the five days she sought a permit for Civic Center Park in downtown Denver. City officials then suspended the lottery while they verified their lists.
The dispute added another hitch to the contentious race for access to public areas near the convention, which will be held at the Pepsi Center west of downtown August 25 through 28. – KKTV
One thing that hasn’t been brought up is that the same protest group complaining of being left off the list admitted last week to applying multiple times for permits which is against the rules. Is that why they were originally left off the list?
A group that has promised a lively street scene of “old hippies,” anarchists and others during the Democratic National Convention may have doubled its chances of getting a permit to protest in city parks.
Mark Cohen and his wife, Barbara, organizers for the Recreate 68 Alliance, have filed separate applications under different organizational names.
“I don’t see anything unfair about it,” Mark Cohen said Tuesday. “If (other organizations applying for permits) wanted to submit more than one application, they could, since the form allows people to submit as individuals.”
But Erin Trapp, director of the Denver Office of Cultural Affairs, which is accepting the applications, said the city has told organizations to submit one request per event. – RMN
Posted by Matt at 9:09 AM 
Denver to try Park Permit Lottery again today2008-03-20T09:09:00-04:00Mattprotests|