Friday, Oct. 17, 2008

Highland Village City Alcohol Hours Tabled

Highland Village Public Meeting Scheduled for Nov. 11

By Adrian McCandless

Staff Writer

Highland Village City Council members postponed considering extending the hours of alcohol sales on Tuesday until Nov. 11 to conduct a public hearing.

"I personally support this, but I don’t know if we have had enough exposure to the pubic to fully gauge how the public feels on both sides of the issue," Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Louis Robichuax said. "We have an active community, and I just don’t know if this has been publicized broadly enough."

Currently, Highland Village bars and restaurants are prohibited from selling alcohol past midnight Sunday through Friday, and past 1 a.m. on Saturday. Highland Village bars and restaurants compete with businesses in Lewisville, and other nearby communities, that sell alcohol for extended hours.

Council member Jon Calvin said there should be an equal playing field for bars and restaurants in Highland Village and Lewisville.

"If we are saying, 'we are open for business in Highland Village’ – I think we are open for business in Highland Village," Calvin said. "We need to compete with Lewisville. If they are open until 2 a.m., I think our businesses should have that right."

Highland Village Police Chief Ed O’Bara said that extending hours for bars and restaurants to sell alcohol will change the way the Police Department operates.

"At about 12:30 a.m. — we would be in the neighborhoods doing our routine patrols, and putting everyone to bed until morning," he said. "We would now have to divert that time back to the borders of the retail district."

He added that redirecting patrol routes to the retail district could potentially increase criminal activity.

"It’s kind of like you’re robbing Peter to pay Paul," O’Bara said.

He said a request for information about changes in Lewisville police activity after passage of the extended hour ordinance in March of 2005 was inconclusive.

"We tried to find out whether their responses or calls for service had increased to the bar or restaurant locations," he said. "Lewisville was unable to give us queries by specific locations."

O’Bara added that Lewisville’s public intoxication arrests went from 434 to 532 in a one year period.

"DWIs decreased a little bit, and they said that was related mainly to the fact that they were spending all of their time responding to calls for service — rather than patrolling streets and looking for DWIs like they had done previous to the ordinance," he said.

Mayor Dianne Costa and council member Austin Adams recused themselves from discussion of the extended hours ordinance citing a conflict of interest.

amccandless@alliancenews.net 972-724-3158