Raleigh Council blinks on drinking rules

The Raleigh City Council should not have backed down on rules curtailing the use of public sidewalks as “patios” by some downtown bars catering to late-night drinkers.

The rules, instituted because of raucous behavior by patrons and a disinterest in controlling them by bar owners, were a recognition that downtown residents, of whom the city wants more, had a right to protection from noise and from the sidewalk debris that greeted those residents in the morning, particularly on weekend mornings.

The other peculiar thing about this decision, which will allow sidewalk “dining” until 2 a.m. instead of 1 a.m., which was a perfectly reasonable rule, is that city voters basically supported the limits that the council had temporarily imposed. Voters rejected an organized effort to replace council members who had supported the limits. Why the council backs away now is a mystery. Council member Wayne Maiorano, who’s retiring, had it right in saying, “I fail to appreciate why we’d now take the guardrails down.”

What now needs to happen is a strict enforcement of rules as they exist, and if the disruption caused by the sidewalk establishments continues, the city should come forth with even stronger rules, perhaps even a midnight curfew for sidewalk drinking and dining.

The objections presented by bar owners were ridiculous. First, public sidewalks aren’t their private patios. Second, the notion that the rule somehow curbed dining was just silly. At 1 and 2 a.m., people on the sidewalks are drinking. They aren’t ordering dinner.

Third, the argument by bar owners that the rules were hurting downtown revitalization was preposterous. The bar owners have a single self-interest here, and that’s in selling more alcohol. The council needs to pay more attention to the clear intention of voters who elected a council dominated by people who supported the rules. So let us hope the city will patrol the area more and not hesitate to come down hard on establishments that tolerate disturbing the peace of downtown residents.

A good decision, in the same council meeting, was to lighten new parking fees. Now, people will pay $5 to park in city decks on Friday and Saturday nights, rather than weekday nights and all day on weekends. It’s felt the city can get enough money from those fees to cover additional cleaning expenses. The city needs to make downtown accessible, particularly if it wants to draw retail space, so the less charged for parking the better.

Of course, there’s some irony in the fact that the fees were instituted because of the additional problems created by the downtown sidewalk bar customers.

The Raleigh council is a good one, make no mistake. But sometimes, getting down in the weeds of rules, or being bombarded with vociferous complaints by special interests, causes members to make bad decisions. They made one on the bar rules.

This story was originally published November 4, 2015 at 6:47 PM with the headline "Raleigh Council blinks on drinking rules."