There has been a lot of discussion on whether or not we need to refuse an alcohol license to a certain C-Store adjacent to the Bishop Dudley House. While I believe there are stores that sell alcohol responsibly and some that don’t, you almost have to ask if this is a location problem for the store or the Dudley House? The shelter was warned before moving into that neighborhood that, well, it was a ‘neighborhood’ that has bars, restaurants, C-stores etc. It never was an appropriate place for the shelter. NEVER! This was more obvious then building a Bunker Ramp with, well, with you know who.
Even if we deny the license to this store, there are dozens of other locations in the neighborhood that alcohol can be purchased.
There is also another discussion of having certain ‘zones’ in the city where single-serve malt beverages cannot be served or alcohol at all. Former councilor Karsky had this idea, but dropped it. Several current councilors have discussed it. I told two of them that it is ‘discrimination’ against a retailer who is in one of these zones. Let’s face it, you can pretty much buy alcohol in just about every corner of this town. I told them if you were to ban single-serve beverages, you would have to do it city-wide, you also may run into some road blocks with the state.
The real problem here isn’t who is selling alcohol, or even where, the problem is allowing a homeless shelter to be placed in the center of a neighborhood that was already providing these things before they showed up.