It turns out that Fredericksburg can't pick and choose who's allowed to ask for money from motorists on city streets.
As a result of a change the City Council made to its panhandling ordinance Tuesday, a 69-year-old tradition of the Fredericksburg Volunteer Rescue Squad will come to an end.
Three years ago, the council passed new rules to keep panhandlers from aggressively pursuing people, and from asking for money in public streets, a practice city police say is unsafe.
Council members at the time said they wouldn't pass the ordinance unless an exemption was carved out for the Rescue Squad, which has been conducting its "net drive" on Caroline Street since it was founded in 1939.
City Attorney Kathleen Dooley told the council Tuesday that, as it turns out, that exemption was an unfair restriction of free speech rights.
As Dooley said, solicitation is a form of speech protected by the Constitution's First Amendment.
Governments are allowed to restrict the "time, place and manner" of a form of speech.
In this case, the city is placing such restrictions on solicitation because the police believe it's unsafe to stand in the road and ask for money.
But government can't decide whose solicitation is OK and whose isn't.
"When we carved out that protection for the Rescue Squad, we violated that principal of content neutrality," Dooley said Tuesday.
The Rescue Squad hasn't figured out how it will replace the annual drive, which it regularly conducts the first Friday and Saturday of October.
Uniformed Rescue Squad volunteers wearing vests stand at Caroline's intersections with George, William and Amelia streets and take donations from motorists in nets.
Squad spokeswoman Carol Rice said motorists would put everything from checks to change dumped out of ash trays into the nets.
In its early years, the drive was known as a "moving tape" fundraiser.
Motorists would actually get out of their cars and lay their dollar bills on a tape stretched along Caroline Street. The event often included bands and parades, according to old newspaper accounts.
"It's been a tradition. It's a historic town, it's a historic rescue squad," Rice said.
She said the drive could bring in anywhere from $10,000 in a slow year to more than $20,000 in a "great" year.
The squad is one of several outside agencies the city funds in its budget. For next year, it requested a little more than $500,000 from the city, toward a projected $688,000 budget.
The council hasn't approved a budget yet, but as of now, the squad is slated to get $300,000 of its request.
The squad is also to share some of the new fees for ambulance service--which went into effect in October and are collected from Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers--with the city fire department.
It's not clear yet how much those fees will bring in, or how they will be divided.
Councilman Hashmel Turner cast the only vote against the ordinance change Tuesday, saying he didn't want to end the squad fundraiser.
Rice said the squad will meet next week and could discuss alternative fundraisers.
"We're going to have to be creative," she said. "I think we have our work cut out for us."
Emily Battle: 540/374-5413
Email: ebattle@freelancestar.com