New alcohol ordinance targets sellers
Published: Wednesday, Dec 19, 2007
By DAN JOHNSON
ARGUS-COURIER STAFF
Since the Petaluma City Council passed the Alcohol-Related Nuisance Ordinance last month, more than 100 local servers and sellers of alcohol have taken a course designed to insure that they all are complying with the same standards.
“This is a good start, but there are over 1,000 of them in Petaluma, and we want them all to have Responsible Beverage Service training by Nov. 15, 2008. So, we need to be on a fast track,” said Pat Landrum, the executive director of the Healthy Community Consortium and a facilitator for the Petaluma Coalition to Prevent Underage and High-Risk Drinking.
The training is an essential component of ARNO, which aims to make stores and restaurants involved in alcohol sales responsible for activities that take place inside and around their business.
“The focus is on holding merchants accountable to contributing to public nuisances. Serving an underage or obviously intoxicated drinker can create a nuisance, such as someone breaking a window or getting in a fight,” Landrum said.
She feels that the training also will help to assure that all alcohol outlets are held to the same safe and well-managed standards. Outlets must be sure that all managers, servers and sellers receive training by Nov. 15, 2008 or within 90 days of employment, whichever is later.
The four-hour training is taught by Pam Granger, a co-coordinator for the coaliton, and either Alcohol Control and Enforcement Officer Jim Hughes or one of four other Petaluma Police Department officers.
“When a training session starts, many people aren’t very excited, and they wish they were somewhere else,” Granger said. “But when they leave, they’re happy they came, and have a better understanding of the consequences of their behavior.
“They have the tools to avoid any personal problems, such as losing their job, and have a better sense of community responsibility.”
Hughes is coordinating inspections of the restaurants and stores to make sure that they are complying with the ordinance and other existing laws.
“Jim is discovering that merchants and their staffs are noticing the relationship between RBS training and how their businesses do on compliance checks. The training is providing the understanding that they need,” Landrum said.
Violations of ARNO can be prosecuted as misdemeanors punishable by a fine of up to $1,000, imprisonment not to exceed six months or both a fine and imprisonment. Also, at the discretion of the officer involved and/or city attorney, violations can also be charged as infractions that are not subject to imprisonment, and are subject to a fine up to $500.
“We haven’t cited anyone yet,” said Capt. Dave Sears of the Petaluma Police Department. “We’re concentrating on inspections to get everyone up to code, and this will last until we cover all the local businesses involved.”
Police decoy operations — in which minors work with officers to see if adults will buy alcohol for them — and DUI checkpoints also will boost ARNO, Landrum said.
“At DUI checkpoints, officers ask (inebriated) people where they had their last drink,” Landrum said. “If it was, say, at a local bar, police can then do an on-sale operations check there.”
ARNO is the most recent effort of the Petaluma Coalition to Prevent Underage and High-Risk Drinking, which formed in 2004 to address local underage drinking issues and later collaborated with police to devise a Social Host Ordinance passed by the Petaluma City Council. This ordinance targets underage drinking and the adults who facilitate it, and since Hughes was assigned full-time to alcohol control and enforcement on July 1, 20 people have been arrested for related violations, compared with eight during the preceding 12 months.
The coalition also has sought to get parents of Petaluma’s 7,500 high school and junior high school students to sign a Parent/Community Pledge that commits them to keep minors from consuming alcohol at home parties or other properties for which they are responsible, and to be at home, visible and aware of what is going on when hosting a party.
Last school year, around 800 parents returned the pledge, and this year, around 1,600 have done so.
“We’re expecting to have another drive soon,” Landrum said. “We would like to have a community town meeting, and would invite parents and youth. We would ask some young people to speak out about alcohol problems, and hopefully bring more parents on board.”
So, what’s next on the horizon for the coalition?
“We would like to begin a collaboration with managers of events to identify ways they can adopt practices attuned to their organizational needs while becoming more aware of their responsibilities (involving alcohol),” Landrum said. “The city can’t regulate how a party is managed, as long as people are safe, so we’re not trying to pass an ordinance for this: We’re seeking to produce a special event planners’ guide.
“We want to continue to raise public awareness about alcohol abuse.”
(Contact Dan Johnson at dan.johnson@arguscourier. com.)
