Adding more liquor licenses from outside Royal Oak will further exasperate our already depleted police resources and continue to negatively unbalance our mix of downtown businesses. I applaud the City Commissioners who blocked adding another “mega” bar into our downtown and who voted to establish a moratorium on outside liquor license transfers. Perhaps they comprehend the reality of our City’s future budget deficit, understand the importance of properly managing risk, and appreciate the need to diversify our downtown tenant base.

Royal Oak currently exceeds the state recommended liquor license quota and already has a dense concentration of over 30 liquor serving establishments compacted into a six block area. There are multiple liquor licenses that are being held in escrow by former Royal Oak establishments. By adding more outside liquor license transfers, Royal Oak will continue to stockpile liquor licenses and over saturate our downtown with just bars.

The recent request of 526 Main Street Pub to add another outside liquor license would have required the use of bouncers and had the capacity to serve alcohol to over 450 occupants. Police records indicate these types of establishments generate a greater number of police calls and visits. Today, our Police force operates with 81 officers, 23 less officers than in 2003. This is largely why our very own Police Department recommended against approving this request. In the near future, police staffing is expected to continue to decrease through attrition. That means our residents and neighborhoods could be exposed to increased response times if our limited number of officers are dealing with incidents downtown. This is unacceptable.

I support utilizing the Bistro Ordinance to spur new ideas and attract less risky liquor developments that limits an establishment’s capacity to 75 people, closes the operation by midnight, and doesn’t require the use of a bouncers or police services.

Andrew Androff
Candidate for Royal Oak City Commission

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 3rd, 2009 at 9:47 am and is filed under Royal Oak Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.