New Limits on Liquor Sales

City Councilman William Jones last week succeeded in getting passed a pair of ordinances that will give the city additional control over the establishment of new businesses that would sell alcoholic beverages in Southeast San Diego and the central part of the city. The ordinances are designed to help the police and law-abiding residents do battle with business owners who allow their places to become hotbeds of crime and hangouts for unsavory characters.

In essence, what the city has done is to assume authority over a function that previously was left solely to the state Alcoholic Beverage Commission. Once the ordinances take effect, most new businesses and existing businesses making substantial expansions will have to seek a conditional-use permit to sell alcohol. The permit will automatically be denied if the establishment would be within 300 feet of a public park, church, school or hospital. After a year, the council will look at the progress of the ordinances, but they will remain in effect unless the council decides to repeal them.

Jones, whose district includes Southeast, worked for more than a year to have the ordinances drafted and adopted. His principal goal was to create a club that the city could dangle over the heads of business owners who allow their establishments to become gathering spots for drug dealers and other trouble makers.

He also wanted to mitigate the problem older neighborhoods have when existing zoning allows bars and liquor stores to bump up against institutions with which they are not in character. This problem rarerly occurs in more modern, better planned neighborhoods, but in older areas it is not uncommon to find bars or liquor stores next to homes or parks.

The new ordinances won’t do much to clean up existing businesses that cause problems, but they will give the city the ability to keep additional purveyors of alcohol out of areas already saturated with them. Plus, the police will have more clout in dealing with those who cause problems. Although the legislation was opposed by the chains that run convenience stores, most of them and other businesses that are well-run should not be affected by the law.

The measures are certainly well-motivated and address real problems. But we do have some questions about the legislation that we hope the city will look at closesly. One is whether the Planning Department, which already is overworked and understaffed, can properly handle the additional work it has been given. Another is, given the uneven application of the ordinances, whether they will have enough impact to justify their cost. And, if the new restrictions do prove effective, why not extend them across the city?