Alcohol ordinance may return

March 25, 2005

KATE GOLDEN/Frontiersman reporter

WASILLA - Drinking and smoking might kill you, but you can still do those things in Wasilla city parks.

At Tuesday's city council meeting, the council discussed banning both activities. On the table was a new version of the city parks ordinance, revised by staff members.

In both extant and revised versions of the ordinance, selling or consuming alcohol is not permitted - "except in an area and at a time designated in a permit issued by the mayor or the mayor's designee."

At the public-comment period, citizen Steve Gloss argued that to allow alcohol sales in parks is hypocritical.

"We spend a lot of time telling kids you don't need alcohol to have fun," Gloss said.His plea struck home with council members. Ron Cox moved to remove the "except" clause.

"To me, this is encouraging what you don't want," he said.

But Recreational and Cultural Services Manager Bruce Urban said that the clause doesn't mean just anyone can bring a six-pack to the lake. Currently, the only group with a permit is the Mat-Su Softball Association, which sells and consumes intoxicants at its Bumpus Ballfields games.

Part of the decision not to ban alcohol was economic. Council Member Diana Straub argued that groups looking to hold banquets at the Multi-Use Sports Complex, a Wasilla park facility, wouldn't be as interested in a teetotaling space. Banning alcohol would hurt the city's marketing of MUSC.

After Straub spoke, one council member suggested that perhaps MUSC, but not the rest of Wasilla parks, could be exempt from the ban.

But the idea of hypocrisy reared once again, as council member Noel Lowe suggested it would be hypocritical for the city to offer alcohol only in circumstances in which the city profited from it.

For Lowe, the issue was a matter of personal freedom.

"I think adults can decide whether they're going to drink alcohol or not drink alcohol," Lowe said. "We don't allow alcohol consumption as a general rule at any of our parks today. I think we have to trust that the people who are selling alcohol are complying with the law."

Council members Cox and Rob Sande supported the ban; Mark Ewing, Noel Lowe and Diana Straub voted to keep the existing language.

Banning butts in buildings

Personal freedom stops when other people are affected, the council decided on the question of smoking.

High-school student Kyle Miller noted for the council that a ban on smoking in buildings had been deleted from the version at hand.

"It should be written down in black and white in the bill," he said.

State law bans smoking in buildings, but council members agreed that redundancy in the city code would strengthen the policy. Lowe moved to add the prohibition. Anyone with a copy of Wasilla municipal code, he argued, should know not to smoke in park

buildings.

The question was whether any outdoor spaces should be included. Cox's intransigence covered smoking and drinking equally, while Sande moved to ban smoking specifically in bathrooms, pavilions and "designated play areas."

Mark Ewing suggested defining designated play areas might be difficult in a park.

Lowe, however, discriminated between the drinking and smoking. Drunken behavior affects everyone, Lowe argued, while smoking is a personal choice that, if kept in open-air spaces, doesn't infringe on anyone else.

"As much as I don't like smoking, I like liberty Š This amendment goes too far," he said.

The council agreed with him unanimously after the discussion. It voted only to ban smoking in buildings.

$250 for a flower?

The parks ordinance vote didn't hinge only on the presence of vice.

Citizen Steve Stoll told the council he thought the blanket fine for all parks infractions was too restrictive.

"There's some serious things that people can do in a public park," he said, noting that firearms violations are included in the fine.

Ewing agreed. He thought the code should lay out specific fines for each possible infraction, so that a small child picking flowers and someone shooting a bow and arrow in the park wouldn't get the same fine.

But Ewing's fellow council members didn't agree. The mayor noted that such a rewrite would cause the bill to go back through a multi-department-and-commission process that could take many months. The council refused even to second Ewing's amendment to allow discussion. "I don't think this is broke," Lowe said.

At that time, however, some council members seemed to think that code compliance officers had some discretion to issue a ticket for a lesser amount.

City attorney Tom Klinkner and Police Chief Don Savage cleared up the confusion. An officer, Klinkner said, can issue tickets only for $250 for the infractions listed. Only a judge, if a ticket is contested, can reduce the fine. Yet there is leeway, according to Savage.

"Officers routinely use discretion when taking enforcement action," Savage said.

Even with that discretion, Ewing contended that if only those who go to court can get a fine reduced, the code needs more specificity. He wanted the ordinance to go back to the Division of Parks and Recreation to "have them define it a little more." Mayor Dianne M. Keller requested "clear and specific directions" for the writers.

In the end, Ewing, Cox and Straub opposed adoption of the amended ordinance, which allowed drinking by permit and prohibited smoking in buildings. Lowe and Sande approved it. The ordinance failed, but the council, loath to put the ordinance through more months of revision, may reconsider it at its March 31 meeting.