Well it looks like bar owners will win the battle of alcohol and liquor with the Naperville city council. As expected, Naperville city officials will acquiesce and shrink to miniscule size against the Naperville Restaurant Association and bar owners. This is a battle that never really began. It’s a battle city officials didn’t want to win. By winning the Naperville city council would actually be losing. Losing tax revenue, losing favor from the high-rollers, and losing clout from donations and special deals.
The agenda for Tuesday’s city council meeting is available, and it appears the council will look to approve only four of the necessary recommendations for gaining control of the late-night chaos in the downtown area. They include amending the following:
- Late night entry
- Maximize single serving size of beer
- Service of shots
- BASSET training for security personnel
Basically city officials will be rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, or in other words, socially acceptable non-productive decisions. The real result of council’s actions will be to encourage the ‘trouble makers’ to drink more, drink sooner, drink faster, and pay more. It’s the ‘pay more’ that bar owners and council members really like….more profit and more tax dollars.
Other stronger remedies were left on the shelf to collect dust including:
- Rolling back the hours of service
- Scanning ID’s
- Reducing the number of downtown liquor licenses
- Increasing the late night permit fees to offset police presence
- Pulling liquor licenses from repeat offenders (bars)
This comes as an investigation continues regarding the fatal car accident on July 19 that took the lives of two young men, while the survivor (the alleged driver) will be heading to court. Information surfaced, that the three-some spent a number of hours from about 9pm til closing at a downtown Naperville bar, having no problem being served. Prosecutors said the trio drank a number of beers along with rum shots before departing around 1:30am. Within a half-hour the Chevy went off the road near the Municipal Center, plowed through a fence, down a short hill, and into the water-filled quarry resulting in the two deaths.
It was just a few years ago that a teacher was stabbed to death in a downtown bar which is still in business, and frequented by city council members. On September 9, 2009, a member of the Naperville Liquor Commission, ( a bar owner), had the audacity to proclaim, “We don’t over-serve in Naperville.” That was five years ago, when the problem was escalating exponentially.
City officials didn’t want to look at the problem then, and apparently they only want to glance at it now. What has changed, is the fence near the fatal accident by the quarry has been re-enforced.
I’m kind of torn on this one. I don’t want this pack of nincompoops telling business owners how to run their businesses, but agree that they clearly want to money that comes from drinking, so that makes their concern dubious.
I think that the bar owners do a decent job of keeping things under control. It’s just a lot of young people drinking in a small area. Also, from what I’ve seen, they seem to drink differently than I remember. Lots of shots and drinking before they go out to save money and be blasted when they get to bars.
Finally, the quarry incident is a red herring. It’s their fault that they got drunk, got behind the wheel and crashed. We can’t save everyone from themselves.