WI: Green Bay council wants to maintain liquor license moratoriums, but allow exceptions

WBAY

By Andrea Hay and Brittany Schmidt

September 26, 2016

GREEN BAY, Wis. (WBAY) – Some members of Green Bay’s City Council are not ready to give up on liquor license moratoriums.

Years ago, the Green Bay City Council established moratoriums to limit the number of liquor licenses in troubled areas. The city council approves who gets licenses in those areas.

Members of the Protection and Welfare Committee thought about doing away with the liquor license moratoriums because they are not as needed as before saying the troublesome neighborhoods have noticeably gotten better.

After discussion at Monday night’s meeting, the members have decided to maintain the moratoriums but allow for exceptions.

“It makes sense and I think a lot of people realize that the moratoriums have been useful. They are not as needed as they were in the past, but no one is quite ready to give up on them,” said District 7 Alderman Randy Scannell. “There is still a use for them but we definitely need to be able to do exceptions.”

Scannell says the process will be the same for all businesses who try to get a liquor license as an exception.

“Like any other business for a liquor license, they will need a business plan, they will need to be checked out by the police department and our legal staff, and then they will have to come before the committee and entire city council,” said Scannell.

In order to get a liquor license, the business will have to be approved on a three-fourths vote by city council members.

This proposal now goes to Green Bay’s City Council for approval on Tuesday.

“With the moratoriums, those are just non-binding resolutions so in a sense we probably could do exceptions anyway, but our legal department decided it would be best if we came up with a procedure for an exception so we came up with a procedure for how a business can apply for an exception,” said Scannell.