Permits for Park Use Pondered in Orange : Ordinance: Proposed limits on group access are prompted by complaints about free-lunch program in W.O. Hart Park.

Seeking to ease mounting community tension over the presence of a lunch program for the homeless in W.O. Hart Park, the Police Department has asked for an ordinance that would require all groups to obtain permits to use city parks.

The ordinance, requested by Police Chief Merrill V. Duncan, would also limit group use of the park to one day a week for about five hours. The request was prompted by complaints about a privately run free-lunch program that feeds about 200 people each afternoon in Hart Park.

Neighbors and merchants near the park have complained that transients have taken over the park and that crime in the area has steadily risen since the lunch program began about five years ago.

Mary McAnena, the 88-year-old founder of the lunch program, recently received several letters blaming her for bringing “bums” to the neighborhood and destroying the park. An anonymous phone caller told her to “get out of the park.”

The city has been negotiating to move McAnena’s program to a facility run by the Orange County council of the St. Vincent de Paul Society. But those plans are in the early stages, and there is no date set for a move.

In the meantime, Duncan said, requiring permits “would allow all segments of the population to use the park and not have it taken over by one group day after day.”

“We’re not throwing these people out,” he said. “We just want to give other people a chance to use the park.”

Gary Wann, director of the Community Services Department, said he has received countless complaints from parents, sports organizations and others who want to use the park but are harassed by transients drawn to the lunch program.

“People feel threatened,” Wann said.

“The lunch program could still get a permit,” Duncan said. “But I don’t think they’ll get one Monday through Sunday. I don’t think that’s fair.”

The plan received a preliminary vote of approval from Lorna Deshane, a vocal critic of the lunch program.

“That’s what we’ve been after,” she said. “That’s what we’ve been waiting to hear.”

She “could live with (the lunch program) once a week,” Deshane said. “Truthfully, I think that once a week would probably bring it to a halt.”

But the idea of being able to serve food to the homeless only one day a week upset McAnena.

“It would be terrible, wouldn’t it?” she said. “The poor things would have no food. There’s not much humanity in (the plan). I hope to God it won’t pass.”