By Kim McDarison
A municipal ordinance, mirroring state law and making licensed tavern operators responsible to ensure those consuming alcohol on their premises do not leave with an open container of alcohol, passed a fourth and final reading Tuesday.
The Fort Atkinson City Council, earlier this month, voted 4-1 to bring the ordinance back for a fourth reading before making its final decision. Councilman Brandon Housley cast the dissenting vote.
Typically, ordinances and amendments that change them undergo three readings before codification unless council opts to suspend its rules and approve language after a first or second reading.
The vote for a fourth reading came after several council members noted that they had been in conversations with business owners within the city, providing them with an understanding that more discussion was warranted.
During Tuesday’s meeting, Fort Atkinson Police Chief Adrian Bump addressed council, offering further explanation of what he saw as the need to create the ordinance and assurances that Fort Atkinson Police Department officers would use discretion when applying the new law enforcement tool.
“I just want to do a little bit better job of explaining why it is important to adopt an ordinance like this that is already a state law,” Bump said.
He offered several examples of city ordinances that, he said, “the city has adopted that are straight from Wisconsin criminal law or from Wisconsin laws.”
Bump said officers within the city write traffic tickets using code that was adopted from state statutes. The municipal ordinances allow those who have been issued a citation to appear before a municipal court and judge.
Another example, he said, is the system’s handling of OWI (operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated) first offense.
“It’s adopted under a city ordinance,” he said.
Other examples cited by Bump were criminal damage to property, theft, and disorderly conduct. All of those violations are adjudicated through city ordinances that have been adopted from state criminal law, he said.
“That’s why we want to have a more well-rounded set of ordinances that allows our officers to address issues locally so they go before our municipal judge and not before a circuit court judge. In adopting this ordinance, you take a criminal law and make it an ordinance. Therefore, if we do have to enforce this law, it’s not a criminal forfeiture or a violation of criminal law. It becomes a violation of city ordinance, which is a lot lower standard and a lot lower of a violation, and is better for the business; it’s better for our approach in our community policing,” Bump said, adding: “I hope you will look at it from a different perspective and I hope that takes away your nervousness of adopting this ordinance. It is something our officers can already enforce, but we don’t have the ability to enforce it at a municipal ordinance level, but only at a state level right now.”
Councilwoman Megan Hartwick thanked Bump for time taken in addressing council members’ concerns.
“I know I was certainly one of the ones who helped move this to a fourth reading; this was certainly something that I got a lot of public feedback on, but it was also something that I also sought feedback on because I wanted to get an understanding of how bar and restaurant owners were looking at this and what their concerns were,” she said.
Hartwick said after engaging in followup conversations with business owners since the council’s July 6 meeting, those conversations were “much different conversations.” She added: “I appreciate your taking the time to give probably lengthier explanations than you had initially planned on … but I certainly feel like the conversation and the feedback that I was getting are coming from a much different place now than they were initially when this information was put out. I appreciate you being patient with that process and I certainly appreciate your sharing the details you just gave out.”
Addressing Bump, Councilman Bruce Johnson, said: “I, too, liked your presentation tonight better than last time.”
Johnson asked: “A bar can be taken for this even if they are not complicit in the act?”
Bump responded by saying that bar operators would have to have knowledge of or be participatory in allowing open containers to leave their premise.
“It’s not something where we would go back to them if someone snuck it out,” he said.
Bump stressed what he described as the importance of maintaining the department’s positive relationships with the city’s bar and restaurant owners. For that reason, he said, “our goal is not to go after our establishment owners.”
Said Johnson: “I know in my youth I spent more time in a bar than I do in my old age, but I still have a lot of offerings from the bar owners.” He describing receiving invitations to provide a to-go cup.
“I could see where they (bar owners) would need a citation to stop that,” Johnson said, adding, conversely, “I see situations where they would have no clue that somebody put their beer up their coat sleeve and went out the door. I would hate to see them taken in for that.”
Said Bump: “Those things are going to be obvious. You know if they do a to-go cup, it’s pretty obvious that the bar or the bar employee assisted in that occurring. But if it’s one of their nice bar glasses or a bottle, we know that it was snuck out and was not with the knowledge of the establishment.”
Johnson asked: “Do you have a plan to issue more warnings to start out with?”
Bump responded by saying “yes.”
He continued: “It is not our goal to proactively go out and look for this violation … It’s more a matter of having the ability to address it when it comes to our attention. I see us giving lots of warnings like we currently do. We do bar checks sporadically, year-round, and sometimes we do run into violations that are on the fault of the bar or a restaurant. Since I’ve been here, for the last seven years, we have not written citations to bartenders or owners for these violations. We address it; we alter the behavior immediately, and then we move on with our day because we want to maintain that positive relationship that we have. But if we ever run into a problem where it’s continuous, repeated and our efforts to educate and to reduce the behavior are not working, we need to be able to step forward with enforcement action. And that’s really our goal.”
“I can be well on board with the idea that the slow learners need to get it figured out,” Johnson said.
Councilman Mason Becker said he appreciated the clarification brought by Bump.
“I think municipal judges are going to have a little bit more leeway and they are going to be able to recognize — not that I think this will happen — but if the police department were to be misapplying the law or if the judge felt that they were being overly punitive towards a local establishment, you know a local judge is going to have a lot more leeway in determining impressions versus a county judge,” Becker said.
“I think this makes sense and, as you (Bump) said, it’s state statute anyways, so I’m supportive of this ordinance,” Becker added.
Open intoxicants on city streets and sidewalks
A second proposed ordinance, making it unlawful to possess an open alcohol container on any public street, sidewalk or public right-of-way unless an appropriate permit or license has been granted by the city council — was tabled on July 6. The ordinance will be returned to council for further consideration in August, City Manager Rebecca Houseman LeMire said during Tuesday’s meeting.
An earlier story about the multipart alcohol consumption and public nuisance ordinance is found here: https://fortatkinsononline.com/alcohol-consumption-nuisance-ordinances-garner-varying-results/.
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