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University of Wisconsin students won't be seeing any new bars downtown in the near future, as the Madison City Council passed an ordinance Tuesday night that will prohibit new liquor licenses from being granted in the downtown area.
The Alcohol Beverage License Density Ordinance was passed with the support of 13 council members, while some members withheld their votes.
An approximately three-hourlong debate on the issue preceded the vote, with 10 testimonies from Madison residents supporting the ordinance, four in opposition and a heavy round of questioning from council members.
"This is not just a downtown issue, this is a quality of life issue," said Dale Burke, assistant chief of the University of Wisconsin Police Department. "As a community, we have a responsibility to create an environment that does not promote excessive drinking."
Several members of the Madison Police Department also spoke in support of the ordinance.
Despite overwhelming support from Madison police officers, two UW students spoke at the meeting in opposition of the ordinance. Sophomore Steven Lawrence said he wanted to provide a student perspective for council members.
"Students are going to drink, whether there are bars, whether there are not bars," Lawrence said. "I want you to look at the fact that this is going to promote more house parties because students are going to drink whether they are at a bar or a house party."
Suchita Shah, the vice chair of UW College Democrats and a member of Associated Students of Madison, also testified that a limit on the amount of bars downtown would only push students into house parties that are less safe.
"As a female, I don't think this plan will make me any safer," Shah said.
However, representatives from both the UWPD and the MPD disagreed with the students' claim.
"I don't think it's a one-or-another situation," Burke said.
Sergeant Dave McCaw of the MPD emphasized the ordinance will not reduce the current number of bars in the downtown area, but simply limit new bars in the future.
The proposal for the ordinance was originally brought to the attention of the City Council by the Alcohol License Review Committee, which is responsible for granting licenses to both restaurants and bars in Madison.
According to several members of ALRC, the committee currently finds itself granting many more licenses than they would like simply because they don't have the means to say no.
"This was the request of the committee because we realized we have a problem," said Judy Olsen, a former alder who served on the ALRC for several years. "It's common sense that [alcohol] is part of the reason we have so many problems in downtown."
City Council President Mike Verveer, District 4, also emphasized that ALRC, which directly deals with the issues of alcohol licenses, feels the ordinance is necessary.
"The ALRC has been discussing this notion for at least a couple of years," Verveer said. "Additionally and informally, the ALRC does unanimously recommend this motion before us tonight."
During the debate, Verveer strongly urged his fellow council members to approve the ordinance primarily because of his concern that the downtown area of Madison is dealing with unprecedented public safety issues.
"I think public safety, first and foremost, is what this is all about," Verveer said. "I think it is one strategy that, since we have at our disposal, we should utilize."
Ald. Eli Judge, District 8, however, said he was strongly opposed to limiting the amount of liquor licenses available in the downtown area for the oft-cited reason that the ordinance would push students into house parties.
"There is an incredibly high rate of sexual assaults at house parties as compared to licensed institutions," Judge said.
However, by the end of the night and after much discussion with his fellow council members, Judge found himself in the minority.
Correction: Due to a reporting error, one paragraph was removed on Sept. 21, 2007, from the original story.
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Actually, there were 3 UW students who spoke. You forgot the iceman himself: David Lapidus.
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The problem isn’t the number of bars downtown, it’s night wallet burglars, and well, I’m sure you all know who COULD’VE taken care of that for us. For shame, Madison! - Germain Q. Stemme
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screw this. meet me at the speakeasy.
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If Eli Judge can’t even get Mike Verveer to join him in opposition, he must be very weak indeed. Kudos to him for fighting the good fight, though.
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With only three students present (not sure if they counted Ald. Judge as one of them), what do you expect?
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There can be new bars under the ordinance — they just have to replace existing bars that go out of business.
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what happens if a bar temporarily loses its license? can they no longer re-obtain it?
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The ban also applies to the scenario of an establishment closing and another seeking to take its place.
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as long as Hatters gets a license, who cares…it is a dumb law though
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Well, this is where preventive law gets us.
Deal with the actual problems, k? None of this ‘well, thing a might lead to thing b might lead to thing c might lead to thing d, and thing d is bad, so let’s ban thing a!’ That’s. Pantently. Idiotic. And I don’t care what your women’s studies professor says about babies in a river.
Why am I the only one that sees that this logic can be used to ban ANYTHING at all? Take for example, that latino frat’s hip hop party. The cops’ line of thinking was, it MIGHT cause a big crowd and it MIGHT not get dealt with adequately by the frat and union staff because they MIGHT be intimidated by people who like hip-hop who MIGHT become violent and it MIGHT become a problem. Why not just turn people away at the door when the venue got full? Oh, right, because the police were too busy trying to line their precinct’s, and by extension, their pockets with fines from underage drinking tickets at and around the game.
(Wake up, cops don’t protect us. They just take our money. Do y’all know there was a supreme court ruling that found police officers are not legally obligated to answer calls for help?)
I’m sure whatever lobbying current bar owners did had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with this. Right. They have no motivation to push for governmentally established restrictions on their potential competition. Right.
This will totally keep us safer. Totally. As would 30 new police officers who would patrol….. the areas where people party. It’s not a coincidence that that’s where they make the most money in the easiest way. It’s not hard to figure out that they’re not actually trying to curtail violence.
And furthermore, why aren’t we allowed to carry concealed weapons to defend ourselves if the cops won’t? Oh, I forgot; we MIGHT use them wrong or we MIGHT leave them within the reach of children who MIGHT be unsupervised and who MIGHT shoot someone. Legal grade pepper spray doesn’t do shit.
They’re trying to keep us scared so we accept their draconian bullshit. Either that or they’re really, really stupid and actually think this will work. I mean, if they are right in saying that a high number of bars causes a high level of violence, why in all hell would they try to KEEP THE NUMBER OF BARS THE SAME? If they actually are that stupid, I have to question the legitimacy of their authority over me. You should too.
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re: 3:32 and herald commentators generally,
When you use caps lock, I won’t/don’t read what you have to say.
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re: 4:18.
These comments don’t allow HTML tags, so how else was I supposed to emphasize words?
Thanks for being a closed-minded elitist douchebag, though. Every little bit helps. ; )
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mike verveer’s smile needs to be wiped off his face! now is when i wish i lived in Judge’s district!
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You’re all wrong.
There were more than 3 students there. That’s wrong. There were about 10. They were about a fourth of the meeting. Still, where is this assumption that # of students ====> decrease in ordinances passing? It doesn’t matter. This thing was going to pass 2 weeks ago.
Also, Judge had nothing to do with Verveer voting for the plan. Mike had a lot of in district pressures.
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Isn’t this putting a halt on the Madison economy?