HomeMy WebLinkAbout11-13-2014 BW1 ThyneCOUNCIL MEETING:_ 1 k I,1.7 1,14
ITEM NO.: !bV3 —1
Mejia, Anthony
From: Marx, Jan
Sent: Saturday, November 08, 2014 11:11 AM
To: Mejia, Anthony
Subject: Fwd: 2014 -17 Budget Process
Agenda cocorrespondence
Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE Smartphone '
-- - - - - -- Original message -- - - - - -- NOV 10 2014 eD.
From: Elizabeth Thyne
Date: 11/08/2014 10:55 AM (GMT- 08:00) SLO CITY CLERK
To: "Marx Jan" "Ashbaugh John" "Carpenter, Dan" "Christianson Carlyn" , "Smith Kathy" "Codron
Michael", "Davidson, Doug", "Johnson, Derek", "Lichtig, Katie"
Subject: 2014 -17 Budget Process
Honorable Mayor and Council Members -
Regarding your November 13, 2014 meeting, where you will be setting the stage for the 2015-
17 goal setting and financial plan process, Save Our Downtown urges you to make a minor
modification to staffs 2015 -17 Goals and Objectives chart.
Under "assessing and renewing the Downtown ", staff has included in its "action plan" the
following: "Alcohol Concentration Evaluation and Adoption of Code Amendments ". The current
"completion" time for this is November of 2014. Save Our Downtown has yet to see any
evidence of this "action plan" and would request that a revised "completion" date be assigned to
this or that completion be "on- going ". Our concern is that no clear guidelines in addressing
Downtown's alcohol concentration have resulted in contradictory decisions staff has made over
the past 10 months related to the approval and denial of two bar /tavern use permits.
When SLO City staff denied, in January 2014, a bar /tavern use permit at 1060 Osos Street, their
rationale was as follows: "A new bar /tavern, the 64th license downtown compounds the state of
over concentration and thwarts the City's recent progress in controlling the downtown alcohol
environment."
In spite of this, planning staff granted a use permit to a similar (both serving alcoholic beverages
without food; both located in basements) bar /tavern located at 1033 Chorro Street. The pretext
for City staff's approval was 1) that the bar will close at 10:00 P.M.(similar to 1060 Osos Street);
2) that bar - related crime Downtown (mostly related to assaults and vandalism in the evening) is
going down, and; 3) this bar is compatible with the neighborhood.
Save Our Downtown maintains that 1) this bar will clearly contribute to SLO's already out -of-
hand "pub crawl" which begins well before 10:00 P.M.; 2) bar - related assaults and vandalism in
the evening hours has not gone down over the past two years, and; 3) this bar, even by
Alcoholic Beverage Control's somewhat lax standards, is not compatible with its neighborhood
as it will be located a mere 200 feet from the entrance of the Old Mission Church.
As determined by Alcoholic Beverage Control, this bar is located within Census Tract 111.01
which has an "undue concentration" of alcohol outlets (63 in all). The CDC has determined that
there is a direct correlation between increasing crime and the increasing concentration of
alcohol outlets. Try Googling "Neighborhood Scout" on your browser and you will discover that
91 per cent of all cities in the U.S. are safer than San Luis Obispo. Yet staff was able to
convince the Council in August of 2013 that a moratorium on the approval of new alcohol outlets
was not necessary as there was no "immediate threat to the public health, safety and welfare ".
The importance of this is reconfirmed by the results of two recent polls. A 2011 Fairbank,
Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates public opinion poll found that 60% of residents consider
"alcohol- related crimes and problems "very serious" or "somewhat serious ". In 2012, a utility bill
survey found that 59% of the 2,200 respondents sought fewer bars in Downtown SLO.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Elizabeth Thyn% Chair
Save Our Downtown
San Luis Obispo,. CA