The Henderson City Council fell one vote short Monday night of making a “bold statement” about alcohol by blocking Alive After Five from a city street next month.
On a 5-3 vote, the council gave the Henderson-Vance County Chamber of Commerce permission to close Breckenridge Street between Garnett and Chestnut streets June 23 to hold the year’s second Alive After Five, a free concert that raises money for the Chamber through sales of food and beverages, including beer. The prime sponsor of the series is Anheuser-Busch distributor Harris Inc. of Henderson, and the concerts bear the Budweiser True Music banner.
Mary Emma Evans, Elissa Yount and Ranger Wilkerson voted against the Chamber’s proposal. Later, Mayor Clem Seifert said that if the council had voted 4-4, he would have broken the tie by voting no.
Seifert said he’s not anti-alcohol or pro-Prohibition, and he supports the Chamber. But “they don’t need to do it on city property.”
That has been a running debate for this City Council. Saying that allowing alcohol sales and consumption on city property puts Henderson in the position of encouraging alcoholism, Evans fought the Chamber’s initial request to hold Alive After Five at the Operations & Service Center in April and September.
With the Rev. Frank Sossamon of South Henderson Pentecostal Holiness Church fighting on her side and organizing a petition drive to bar the use of alcohol on city property, Evans persuaded the council to ask Yount’s Land Planning and Development Committee to develop such a policy.
Arguing that it was a business liability decision and not a moral maneuver, Yount brought to the council a policy to bar alcohol from any building, land or street owned by or co-owned by the city. But Seifert and council members Mike Rainey and Bernard Alston said the proposal went too far, so the council tabled it April 12.
The matter probably would have been dormant at least until July, after all of the budget battles, except for the Chamber’s plan to hold a third Alive After Five concert downtown, where the series began in 2001 more as a way to draw people into the business district in the evening than as a way to raise money for the Chamber.
On April 5, Chamber President Bill Edwards sent City Manager Eric Williams a request to close Breckenridge Street for the event, and Edwards’ request was on the council’s agenda the same night as Yount’s proposed alcohol policy. Had the council passed that ordinance, Edwards’ request would have been dead; because the council didn’t act, the same rules were in play that led to the approval of the other two Alive concerts.
But after all of the emotional council discussions and the petitions with hundreds of signatures, Williams wanted nothing to do with the decision to allow Alive After Five this time. He notified the council that without further instruction from the governing body, he would not grant the Chamber permission to proceed.
“I don’t think that’s fair to the council,” Rainey said, because Williams always has made such decisions. But Seifert and Wilkerson said anyone in Williams’ position would have done the same thing and let the elected officials, those directly answerable to the voters, make the decision and take any political heat.
Seifert said he was surprised to learn through Edwards’ request that Henderson has a policy within the city code to deal with alcohol on city property. The policy bans such alcohol consumption — except for special events that win the city’s permission and a state one-time alcohol permit.
In this case, Williams advised Edwards to pursue a special-event alcohol permit for a backup location as well as Breckenridge Street.
“We looked at the fact that … the city had a code in effect that said you could do this,” Edwards said. “Based on the that we have never had an incident, based on the fact that our events are fully insured, based on the fact that nobody can get in our event and consume alcohol under the legal age, based on the fact that ALE does a background check and helps police the event, we thought that if anybody could get permission from the city, it should be us.”
The Chamber long ago signed Liquid Pleasure to perform June 23 but left the location as a downtown site to be determined. The June event will not include the children’s activities provided at the other two concerts. Edwards did not specify Monday where the Chamber would have taken Alive After Five if the Breckenridge Street plan had failed, but he previously said he was looking at sites farther from downtown than the Operations & Service Center.
Monday’s event proved to be something a spectator event itself. A crowd, including a reporter from WRAL-TV, packed the council chambers for that one item on the agenda; most people left after the 5-3 vote.
The crowd quietly observed the debate between Edwards and Chamber Vice Chairman Trey Watkins on one side and Sossamon on the other. Some of the observers were Chamber officials, such as board member Nancy Smith of Lighthouse Entertainment; others were ministers there in support of Sossamon, such as Brenda Peace of Greater Little Zion Holiness Church. There was no public hearing on the matter, so it was hard to tell whether one side had an audience edge.
The debate itself covered no new ground.
Edwards talked about Alive After Five’s record of no alcohol-related problems and its extensive force of law enforcement officers to ensure no one gets out of line. Sossamon called for a “bold statement” to counter the bad message the city sends when it allows drinking in public, and he mixed statistics (such as 11,318 American youths per day try alcohol for the first time) with comments about alcohol’s role in such social problems as domestic violence and unemployment.
Edwards cited the popularity of the event and its importance in helping create a social environment that draws and retains businesses and people, including new teachers. He said two-thirds of the people at Alive After Five don’t drink beer there, but they wouldn’t have the opportunity to enjoy the music if not for the sponsorship of a beer distributorship.
Sossamon said longtime teachers, those who have devoted their lives to education, have encouraged his fight against public consumption of alcohol in Henderson. He also said the city and the Chamber are being used in a Budweiser marketing ploy. He said that when he looked around the room, he saw nothing but “victims” of the scheme.
Some of the debate strayed from the question of alcohol consumption on city property.
Rainey, for instance, noted that voters’ decision to allow alcohol to be sold by the glass in Vance County has been a boon for business and that the city grants permits to many businesses that sell alcohol in bulk, such as grocery stores. He asked whether those businesses would be targeted next.
Wilkerson and Evans reminded him that there’s a big difference between drinking beer on city land and buying beer at a city-permitted store and taking it home to drink.
John Wester raised the specter of Prohibition and said it didn’t work before and wouldn’t work now. Sossamon denied having any agenda to ban alcohol or pressure businesses to stop selling it.
On the other side, Sossamon again pointed to the city’s absolute ban on alcohol at recreational facilities as creating an inconsistency. Alston said the issue there is the inability to properly police who has alcohol at some locations; that wouldn’t be a factor at Alive After Five.
Sossamon and Evans also cited the city’s policies on employees’ substance abuse, but it was not clear how a ban on employees drinking on the job, for instance, conflicts with a permit for people to drink after work.
Evans finally forced the issue by reintroducing the Land Planning and Development Committee’s proposed ordinance to ban alcohol on city property without exception.
City Attorney John Zollicoffer said that ordinance would replace the policy on the books regarding alcohol. He said other options to accomplish the same goal were to delete the special-event provision from the existing ordinance and to start from scratch with a clear policy goal in mind.
Evans stuck with the handwritten proposal Yount had brought to the council six weeks earlier. The council rejected the proposal 5-3, with Evans, Yount and Wilkerson backing the change.
That still left the matter of the June 23 concert in doubt. Seifert said the council had to take positive action to allow the event. Otherwise, Williams would reject the Chamber’s request.
Wester, a member of the Chamber’s board of directors, made a motion to allow the Chamber to close Breckenridge Street and sell beer, pending state approval, at Alive After Five. It was his motion that passed 5-3, giving the Chamber a victory.
There’s a final complication that could make Monday night’s debate moot: Breckenridge Street between Garnett and Chestnut is in no condition to host a party, particularly one expected to draw at least 1,500 people.
The Embassy Square streetscape project, originally scheduled to be finished by the end of March, was thought to be 30 to 40 days behind schedule when Edwards made his request in early April; City Engineer Frank Frazier said the work would be done well before June 23.
“I’m beginning to have my doubts,” Frazier said Monday night.
While curbs and gutters remain to be finished on Wyche Street, the only task left on Breckenridge itself is to lay the brick pavers on the circle between the police station and the library. That’s a labor-intensive job, however.
“It will be close,” Frazier said, but contractor H.G. Reynolds should get the work done if the weather cooperates.