Lawrenceville Residents to Vote on Sunday Alcohol Sales

City Council August 1, 2011 Business Meeting

OLD BUSINESS:

I. Public Hearings

Item 1: 2nd Reading of Sunday Sales of Alcohol by the Package--- City Attorney Lee Thompson, Jr. presented the ordinance that would allow voters to decide if . The hours of sales in the ordinance are from 12:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m.

This ordinance, if approved becomes a referendum which will then be placed on the ballot of the General Election to be held on November 8, 2011, as a question. (Early voting will take place from Monday, October 17 to Friday, November 4, 2011.)

Councilman Tony Powell restated his opposition to the city’s moving forward with this vote. He said no one in the industry has come forth to ask for Sunday alcohol sales and that as this bill was going through the state legislative process that the industry was split, with those against voicing concern over having to staff their businesses on Sundays in order to compete. Powell also referenced the city of Snellville as an example of the division caused in the community over this type of referendum.

In response to Powell’s reasoning to vote against this ordinance, Councilwoman Katie Hart Smith said because the city does not have beverage warehouse stores or liquor stores, the businesses that would be impacted would be and which are already staffed and operating on Sundays. She said would have to decide if they wanted to open or not.

“The purpose of this reading is to allow you (the public) to vote on the issue. And for you to have a voice that is heard in the November election,” said Smith.

The motion to vote this ordinance onto the November 8, 2011 General Election ballot as a referendum passed 3-1; with Councilman Powell casting the vote against this item.

 *City Attorney Thompson in presenting another item before the council said this election will also have two council members, Peter Martin and Katie Hart Smith, seats on the ballot. 

OLD BUSINESS:

II. Council Business Meeting

Item 2: Hotel/Motel Ordinance Enforcement---Councilman Powell said when he asked that this item be put on the agenda he was asking for a discussion in an Executive Session. But due to drawing “a crowd of some of the best attorneys in Atlanta” from three of the largest law firms, Powell made a motion to hold an open debate.

“We have had a debate on housing and homelessness and now this is a subsidiary issue of hotel/motel (stays). I guess my view is someone is paying a lot of money (to have representation of this caliber in dealing with this ordinance),” said Powell. “Richard Hubert is probably the best lawyer…the known lawyer handling…hotel/motel tax issues in the state of Georgia. It is not the homeless people fronting the money…there is an economical issue involved.”

Representing , Harold Buckley with Alston & Bird as follow up to agreeing to turn over redacted business records showing corporate accounts visits in the Extended Stay located in the city, distributed a one page document. The document entitled “Top Account Report” showed the amount of visits from January 1 to July 27, 2011.

According to this document Extended Stay corporate accounts, with number of bookings, include Waffle House (80), Sage Software (53), Hotels.com (144), Expedia, Inc. (97) and O’Reily Auto Parts (18).

In addressing the city’ statue and the , Richard Hubert of Chamberlain, Hrdlicka, White, Williams & Aughtry, said having looked at the ordinance and carefully considered it, that his opinion is that the city should closely scrutinize the ordinance to determine if it violates “the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment of the Unites States Constitution”.

Hubert referenced a similar case that dealt with the “displacement of Japanese immigrants” in this country during World War II.  He said these immigrants were interned and imprisoned solely due to their Japanese ancestry, regardless of them being a threat to the country or not.

This statue, he said, is roughly doing the same in that people who are lawfully situated in hotel/motels are asked to move, not for any specific reasons, but just because they fall into a certain class of people that council considers to be not amicable to the best interest of the community.  There are no ascertainable standards of guilt; there are no determinations by anyone that what they are doing violates the statue or is illegal in any way.

He said this ordinance comes dangerously close to requiring that an innkeeper become a law enforcement officer in making inquiries into who and why they are acquiring shelter. In recent months, Hubert said an enforcement body of the city has come to the place of business (Extended Stay) to request records of tenets that are staying there.

“That is an imposition of a requirement that is not required of anyone else that I know of, under no circumstances,” said Hubert. “This sweep of a law enforcement agency is not interested in a specific crime or specific violation of law, but deals with people as a category. And I suggest to you that the Regency Hotel has no obligations such as that, nor does the Sheraton, nor does the Hyatt…this statue seems to carve out a category of persons that because of their circumstances are deemed to be subject to scrutiny that others are not subject to.”

Anytime you get a classification of people that requires additional scrutiny by law enforcement or other enforcement agency of the government you have issues dealing with equal protection, said Hubert. He said although this ordinance may appear to be impartial on its face, it identifies people that are disadvantaged, people that are probably of Mexican American descent, people that are poor and people that are subject to the requirements of finding temporary accommodations somewhere.

In response to Powell’s assertion that building codes are being violated with people using undersized hotel rooms as apartments, Hubert said this is not about building codes, but more about putting people out on the street in 45 days based on an ordinance that has been on the books for (15) years without being enforced until now.

Powell said that if challenged on the equal protection issue, that the city is prepared to stack up four well built Section 8 housing complexes to dispel any notion that it has ever treated anyone unfairly.

The question Hubert said is whether or not these property owners and their tenets are being treated fairly. These people have been asked to have their mail and school buses re-routed. They are by government in general and by this ordinance specifically being treated unfairly.

Hubert said he doesn’t think this needs to be litigated, but the ordinance needs to be amended or changed to deal with this issue in a way that meets a means test to say when someone has overstayed.

Mayor Johnson said this issue will continue to be discussed by the council.