Las Vegas City Manager Doug Selby’s decision to close Huntridge Circle Park on Maryland Parkway will certainly be viewed by cynics as a response not to the Friday stabbing of a homeless man by another, but to a U.S. District Court’s order that the city’s Please-Don’t-Feed-The-Homeless ordinance was struck down.

Which is to say, that’s how we view it.

But the city, in a city statement released Monday night, maintains it was Friday’s homicide — and other violent crimes that have taken place in the park — that promoted Selby to use his authority to close the park.

"It breaks my heart that we have to close the park, but I have to make sure the people in the park are safe," said Councilman Gary Reese, in the statement. "We can’t take the chance that someone else gets hurt there. We’ll look at the issues and try to find a solution that works for everyone."

First, please. If Reese wanted the park open, it would be open. Because while the city may operate under a strong city manager form of government — in which Selby runs day-to-day operations — he has pretty much proven that "strong city manager" is nothing but a political theory in Las Vegas. If Reese or Mayor Oscar Goodman told him to keep the park open, he’d do it in a second.

Second, please, again. Plenty of places in town are the scenes of violent crime, and they have not been closed to the public. This is a radical overreaction to a problem, which cast against the backdrop of the city’s antipathy toward homeless people and those who help them, looks nothing if not monumentally petty.

Third, mega-please: Finding a solution that works for everyone has never been the city’s goal. Herding the homeless to a place whey they’re comfortably out of sight and out of mind has been the city’s goal. If the city is really committing to looking at the issues and finding a solution that works for everyone, that would represent a major change of policy. A welcome one, to be sure, but undeniably a new course.

No matter how much the city protests, we simply cannot see this as anything other than a drastic action taken in response to the fact that a blatantly unconstitutional city ordinance was struck down, as it should have been. But while lawyers argue in court, and the city posts guards at our city parks, the homeless problem remains unresolved. Whether that’s because of stubbornness, ignorance or the lack of serious leadership is immaterial.