High-alcohol beer ban likely for East Central

Former City Council member Bev Numbers says the street in front of her house in the East Central neighborhood has become a busy thoroughfare for chronic inebriates.

“Some of these folks – bless their hearts – are making five or six trips a day to get alcohol,” Numbers said.

Numbers is one of many in the neighborhood seeking to clamp down on public drunkenness by pushing for the formation of a mandatory alcohol impact area that would ban 46 beers with alcohol contents of 5.7 percent or more in nearby stores.

The Liquor Control Board listened to public testimony on the matter Wednesday at City Hall. Former Spokane Sen. Chris Marr, who now serves on the board, expects it to vote on whether to amp up the ban sometime in the next couple weeks.

The board will likely support the proposal, Marr said, as long as the city can prove that it has made good faith efforts to control public drunkenness in the East Central area.

“I can’t recall a situation when we have not agreed to add an AIA,” he said.

The board granted the city’s request to create a mandatory alcohol impact area for downtown in May 2010. The prior year, the City Council approved the formation of a voluntary alcohol impact area in the East Central neighborhood.

But there was little compliance among most of the owners of the 13 stores that sell fortified beer in the East Central area, said police Officer Max Hewitt, who monitors the impact areas.

With the mandatory ban in downtown, police have witnessed public inebriation largely shift to East and West Central instead, with medical calls for intoxication increasing 80 percent in East Central since the downtown ban was put in place.

Some store owners told the board that the ban will be too much for their businesses to handle.

Mo Habte, who owns the Hico and Mo’s markets, said he recently bought new coolers and that losing the beer sales would be tough for business.

Habte presented photos he’d taken of transients drinking in public in areas of downtown.

“They will drink anywhere they want,” he said. “So, we’re not solving the problem.”

Board chair Sharon Foster suggested that the issue doesn’t end with banning fortified beer. She recommended adding small liquor bottles to the list of banned products.

“I would urge you to keep a close watch on small bottles of liquor, whether it be the pints or the minis,” Foster said, “because if this is approved, this may push them (inebriates) to that.”