Tag Archives: 2 a.m. bar closing

Updated: Council approves 2 a.m. bar serving time

Posted on by
3

I promise this is my last blog update for today. I just wanted to include a link to the full article I wrote on tonight’s council decision to allow for a 2 a.m. bar closing time.

Readers will notice that the council did, kind of, end up discussing the 2 a.m. issue. Councilors did not state their positions prior to making their votes, but three councilors later discussed their opinions of the issue right before the council adjourned.

Personally, I would have rather seen councilors state their positions at the time at which they cast their votes – while members of the public were still in the audience – but I did appreciate the comments from Barb, Jerry and Greg (and the mayor, too, although he did not specifically address the 2 a.m. bar closing time).

So that’s enough for one day. Maybe tomorrow there will be more to say.

Live blog from council meeting: Council approves 2 a.m. bar serving time

Posted on by
Reply

The council has voted 4-3 to allows city bars the option of serving alcohol one hour later.

No discussion was held.

Bars that choose to obtain a state permit will be able to serve alcohol one hour later, until 2 a.m., once the ordinance takes effect.

Voting in favor of the change were Councilors Jerry Downs, Ron Johnson, Greg Negard and Kevin Waldhausen. Opposed were Mayor Richard Lehmann and Councilor Roger Hellquist and Barb Meuers.

My full article will be posted online at www.bemidjipioneer.com and will be in Tuesday’s Pioneer.

More to come.

A 2 a.m. question answered

Posted on by
Reply

What if Bemidji does vote to extend liquor hours? And then what happens if Beltrami County then votes to prohibit alcohol sales after 1 a.m.? Does one take precedence over the other?

This has been nagging at me all day. Well, actually, since Sunday.

I was going to just wait until tonight’s council meeting, but after discussing it with a few conversations with people smarter than myself, I decided to find out for certain.

This is what I learned: If the city approves the 2 a.m. bar time and if Beltrami County, after going through its ordinance process, votes to prohibit alcohol sales at county bars after 1 a.m., both ordinances would be in effect. The Beltrami County ordinance would not overrule the city ordinance, so a city bar could remain open until 2 a.m. while a county bar would not.

Again, though, that is based on two relatively large ifs.

Stay tuned.

It’s amazing what you can learn when you read the newspaper…

Posted on by
Reply

I don’t often read newspapers on weekends. I kind of take a news break for two days. But on Sunday, my family was going to, finally, finish all of our Christmas shopping. So I opened the Pioneer with the intention of just going through the advertisements and coupons.

But my eye was drawn to this story on the front page, the article I wrote on the retiring three city councilors. I saw that we had run with the story an older photo of Barb Meuers, when I asked specifically last week if we had something more recent, so I was a little perplexed to see the photo that ran.

And, as it happens, when I take one quick glance at the front page, I want to see all of the stories. So I flipped open the whole front page and saw this headline, below the fold: “Beltrami County considers 1 a.m. closing for bars.”

Um, what?

So our shopping excursion was delayed a bit longer as I read the story, written by Brad Swenson, who covers the Beltrami County Board of Commissioners, about a possible Beltrami County ordinance that would prohibit bars in the county from selling alcohol after 1 a.m.

If approved, the county’s ordinance could possibly conflict with the city of Bemidji’s alcohol ordinance. As most of my blog readers know, the city tonight is expected to hold the final reading and vote on an ordinance revision that would allow city bars the option of serving alcohol later, until 2 a.m.

Does that change anything for tonight? I don’t know. But I’m interested to hear if the council addresses it at all.

Yes, they held the first step toward approving a 2 a.m. bar closing…

Posted on by
6

Maybe I have attended too many council meetings. Or maybe I just assumed (bad idea) that readers know what I know. Either way, apparently, I did not make it very prominent news in today’s Pioneer that the Bemidji City Council did, in fact, hold the first reading of an ordinance that would allow for a 2 a.m. bar closing time.

I did a preview on the council meeting for Sunday’s Pioneer, so regular readers (I thought) would be aware that the the item was on the agenda for yesterday’s meeting. And then I included a very brief note in a a very brief story in today’s Pioneer saying the first reading was held.

Why not do more?

Well, I could have. I could have included the one paragraph that the council did hold the first reading and then a whole bunch of repeated information that already has been reported before. But, really, the whole first reading took up all of maybe 2 minutes of the council meeting. In fact, it went by so quickly that I missed it, because someone had come into the meeting a few minutes late and asked me a question about the agenda packet. I actually had to re-watch the 2-minute portion of the council meeting when I returned to the office to make sure that the first reading was, in fact, held.

Not that that is unusual. Most (not all) first readings of ordinances are held without discussion. Sometimes there are ordinances that prompt discussion or debate about definitions or terms (i.e. ordinances that govern the allowance of keeping chickens and farm animals). But, generally, most debate does not occur until the second reading, during which the council holds the public hearing on the proposed ordinance.

So come Dec. 6, I expect more debate. From both the public and the council.

And, really, that is what Councilor Kevin Waldhausen has been seeking from the beginning of this most recent 2 a.m. discussion. Whether you agree with him or not, Kevin all along has said he wants to see the ordinance process through to give the public a chance to voice its opinions.

Sure, the public could have before voiced its thoughts in letters, e-mails and phone calls during the previous work sessions that discussed the 2 a.m. bar closing time. But never before (that I am aware of) has the ordinance process on the proposed change been held. Never before was a formal public hearing held.

And that is slated for Dec. 6.

- Bethany

More follow-up on 2 a.m. bar closing time

Posted on by
3

First off, this is, mostly, related to a the editorial in today’s Pioneer. So if you haven’t read it, you might want to do so before you read any further. Just a thought.

Bemidji City Councilor Kevin Waldhausen, who is currently championing the current effort to have the city consider extending bar closing times from 1 to 2 a.m., called me this morning and pointed out that the editorial misstates previous council action on the 2 a.m. time.

The editorial states, “After voting twice against allowing Bemidji bars to stay open until 2 a.m. …”

Kevin questioned this morning whether this was accurate.

Yes, the council this year has twice before considered action on the 2 a.m. closing time, but it, technically, had only voted once on the issue (before Monday). The council voted 4-2 in February to no support a request from Zorbaz owner Tom Hanson to push back the bar closing time from 1 to 2 a.m. In April, the council was asked by developer Drew Olson to reconsider the February motion, but the council chose not to do so. To be clear, the council chose not to do so by overall consensus – no formal vote was taken during that April meeting.

That said, after Kevin and I finished our phone call, I remembered that there may have been one other vote taken on the issue by the council.  In 2003, after the 2 a.m. extended hours were made a possibility, the council considered – and rejected – the possibility of extending liquor sales from 1 to 2 a.m. Was that a formal vote, though, or just discussion? According to the minutes of the July 7, 2003, meeting, the council “expressed a lack of support for the 2:00 a.m. bar closing based on the increased cost to the city for law enforcement.”

So to sum up, to the best of my knowledge, Kevin is correct and two formal votes have not been taken to reject the 2 a.m. bar closing time.

- Bethany