In the blur of the last month, there are a few things that I haven’t paid enough attention to. I was reminded of one of them when I was reading tha agenda for tonight’s Council meeting. I have to say, I really don’t understand the proposed moratorium on downtown alcohol licenses, even after reading the 5 page draft from September 20th. (This isn’t on the agenda tonight, but several downtown alcohol licenses are.)
The proposal is based on the premise that “The density of alcohol-licensed establishments has been shown to direcly affect the volume and severity of alcohol-related problems within a specific area.” Well, of course., that makes alot of sense. However, I am curious, are they measuring the density of the alcohol-licensed establishments with the density of the surrounding population? And if so, how are they measuring that “surrounding population”?
I am also curious why we would limit the number of licenses, why aren’t we looking at capacity? I mean, fewer licenses with bigger establishments seem to be a bigger problem than more licenses with lower capacity. With a lower capacity you can have a more watchful eye on what is going on inside the bar and you don’t build up that critical mob mass at the end of the night that tends to become a problem. Also, the bartenders can also keep a better eye on the people they are serving.
If the “police officers, firefighters and apramedics routinely report that they spend between 50%, and in some cases, 100% of their time responding to alcohol-related incidents after midnight on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays”, perhaps the problem is over-serving in establishments and there can be some behavior modification achieved by holding people who are drinking in these establishments to a little higher standard of accountability before they are served another drink.
I also haven’t yet heard a good explanation about why or how having less drinking establishments is really going to decrease the consumption of alcohol in the downtown area. I mean, the houseparty is an art form of many in the downtown areas and if the bars are crowded downtown, call me crazy but, I don’t think people are going to stop drinking . . . and if they don’t do it in their homes and can’t walk to the bars, I think we would be encouraging other bad behaviors like drinking and driving, slamming drinks at home prior to going to the bars and the noisy houseparty where IDs are not checked. As I said, I really don’t see how this will reduce drinking that causes the resources needed in our dense downtown on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
A few other theories to support this plan are that
1) “Bona fide restaurants [50% food sales] do not impose as significant a burden on public resources.” The theory is that “This is due in part to their focus on food sales and in part to the fact that they generally are not open until the state-permitted bar time.”
2) If the supply of alcohol goes down in relation to the supply, the price will go up and then people will drink less.
Ahem . . . it’s been a while since I”ve been in college but . . . when the drinks are expensive, most college kids who want to get drunk figure out to go buy hard liquor at the store and drink that before going out . . . encouraging the binge drinking type activities that I believe, we are trying to avoid. Also when the restaurant/bar is closing early, it also tends to encourage people to drink more, faster, before the place closes.
I think the better option is to provide alternative activities . . . as an aside, a co-worker came in my office and asked what I’d recommend to do if you had two friends coming to town, one of which was very pregnant and the other very broke. So, drinking was out and so was shopping. Hmmmmm . . . good question. A bike ride around the lake was likely also out . . . ok – back on topic.
I understand the problems in the downtown and find the police resources unacceptable, but I think there are other ways to crack this nut. Just off the top of my head, with very little thought we could:
– Require longer times between last call and closing time to prevent that last minute slamming of drinks.
– Encourage more entertainment venues where there is something to do besides drink.
– Lower capacity and have smaller drinking venues.
– Hold bars responsible for overserving.
– Require more bartenders on staff in relation to capacity.
I’m sure there are numerous other suggestions that could be explored before we jump on this one idea which seems to be a great anti-competition law for existing bars and probably won’t help bring more retail downtown and “provide opportunities in the downtown area for businesses not associated with the sale of alcohol”.
