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DeKalb city attorney Norma Guess presents revised standards and classifications for liquor licenses Monday evening at the city council liquor commission meeting.
Liquor commission discusses creation of new classes
Last updated on 00/00/0000 at 12:00 a.m.
Changes are on the horizon for DeKalb’s liquor licenses.
The DeKalb City Council held a special meeting Monday night to discuss changes recommended by the liquor commission for Chapter 38 of the DeKalb Municipal Code.
“This is a result of two to 2 1/2 years,” said Mayor Frank Van Buer. “I’ve been waiting for this for 19 months.”
The council was given an overview of the changes to the code by DeKalb City Attorney Norma Guess.
Increased fees for new licenses, including the possible addition of a campus license, were discussed.
In turn, a class AC license (which would be for a bar in the campus area), a class EC license (a restaurant within campus boundaries) and a PC license (a package liquor establishment within the campus boundaries) would be created.
With the creation of the new campus licenses, the staff recommended raising fees up to $60,000 for one to apply for a class A License within the campus boundaries, $11,000 for an EC license and $25,000 for a PC license.
“The reason for the rather large amount of the initial fee is to weed out those who cannot afford to run a good business,” Guess said.
Donna Gorski, 4th Ward Alderwoman, agrees with the increase.
“I would support higher fees in an area that requires more services,” Gorski said.
Matt Lundeen of Lundeen’s Discount Liquors, 1030 Arcadia Drive, noted that change is constant.
“If we were to propose a college zone 20 years ago, it would have been downtown,” Lundeen said. “Now, it’s Annie Glidden [Road].”
The new Chapter 38 would also include the creation of a catering license, server certification and adopting the International Fire Code (which would include occupancy issues).
The council will address the recommendations made by the liquor commission during the second City Council meeting in June.
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For three years the de facto liquor commissioner has sat back waiting to see if things would fix themselves. Instead of taking an active role as he was elected to do, he charged a fledgling city attorney with revamping a liquor code that had suffered decades of ill-consideration and corruption.
A revolving door of commission members and proceedings which discouraged public input did little justice to addressing the profound underlying issues: public and consumer safety, fair and open competition, and appropriate fees and penalties.
Despite campaign puffery that liquor control was high priority, the only real change in 3 years has been a bump in liquor pricing and theoretically eliminating 18 year olds from serving alcohol. The council will have little time to understand what they are passing and what it means for DeKalb.
Why not let the marketplace determine the value of a newly available license with an open auction (perhaps with a reserve price)? This is commonly done with taxi cabs in Chicago, NYC, elsewhere. The council has shown it is incapable of maintaining fee structures over the long haul.
Students should be outraged at this proposal from the City Attorney and opens the door to student profiling for all sorts of issues. Students are citizens too and deserve to be treated equally. This is a dangerous precedent!
The real question is why standards were allowed to be set into the liquor code which run counter to safe fire code standards? The real reason is that special interests were allowed to corrupt public good and safety thanks to political favor. This continues in many arenas of DeKalb affairs.
By making licensing schemes so complex and convoluted, the council does the bidding of existing licensees: maintaining their monopoly. DeKalb should be welcoming new investment instead of coddling existing owners with track records of lax adherence to laws and safety standards.
