For those who don't know how these things work, essentially if someone gets a citation for any number of "quality of life" type issues, they'd be sent immediately to a community court. At the court will be a public defender and a district attorney as well as volunteers from the community to try the case and a social worker offering help to those who ask for help. If found guilty, the court will assess whether the person will have to do community service or pay a fine. Usually, those social services will mirror the crime, so if somebody does graffiti, they'll go graffiti cleaning. Or if they litter, they clean up litter. We're not sure what'll happen if they get caught pissing on the street and we're not sure we want to know.

This is different from our (other) current policy, which is essentially nothing. Actually, those offered citations have to show up in traffic court within 45 days but nobody shows up, no penalties are assessed, and cops don't hand anything out anyways because they don't think it's worth the hassle.

The community court idea is all the rage these days in city management and is found in around thirty cities throughout the country. It was popularized by Rudy Guiliani who's using his cred as proto-fascist Mayor to appeal to the proto-fascist base of the Republican Party. It does appear to work in cities where it's used, except for apparently here.

Negatives? Well, it "criminalizes" the homeless and as commenters have pointed out, quality of life issues might not be in the cities best interests as we have other crime related issues to worry about (others would argue the opposite). Also, as Beyond Chron points out, the program is set up to do something about serial inebriates and proposed by a serial inebriate and that's hypocrisy so we shouldn't do anything about it.