"Nobody wants it in their back yard," said Gail Sacco, who began offering the six free meals a week last year.

The closure moved the homeless issue to Goodman's back yard.

Sacco now brings food to the homeless in another park — this one across the street from City Hall. On a recent afternoon, her delivery brought a dozen people to huddle around a bucket of vegetable soup sending steam up toward the mayor's 10th floor offices.

"Obviously, there are people there who are dangerous, but they don't have to be homeless to be dangerous. And being homeless does not make you a criminal," Sacco said.

"Oscar has the idea that every homeless person is public enemy No. 1," said Greg Malm, a 58-year-old homeless man who says he played in Circle Park as child and has passed out there as adult. "He wants this city to be lily white, for the tourists."

Goodman rebuts the characterizations and shows little patience for Sacco and her work.

"To give a sandwich in the park doesn't do anything," Goodman said. He calls advocates like Sacco "enablers crying like bleeding sheep."

"I'm trying to get these people to a shelter, that's where the services take place, not in a park," he said. "I won't coddle them."

Goodman is not alone in his frustration with Sacco and volunteers with the advocacy group Food Not Bombs that was involved in meal efforts in Circle Park.

The park had recently received a $1.5 million face lift that became a community project. That sort of civic involvement can be scarce in a region filled with newcomers and gated communities. Residents said they wanted to feel comfortable using the new space. Some complained the free food was drawing the poor to the park and away from the "homeless corridor" about three miles away, where most social services and shelters are concentrated.

After a meeting in which residents suggested several remedies, including more policing, an unanimous City Council chose to make it a misdemeanor to feed anyone "who a reasonable ordinary person" would believe to be entitled to public assistance, punishable with up to a $1,000 fine.

The American Civil Liberties Union challenged the ordinance, and a federal judge ruled the law was unconstitutional because it singled out a specific group of people. City officials promised to rewrite the law to make the ban stand up.

And when a homeless man was stabbed in the park Nov. 24, city officials ordered it closed indefinitely, although they acknowledge they didn't review crime statistics.

ACLU executive director Gary Peck describes the city's approach as "political theater of the absurd."