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St. Louis Aldermen Seek to Ease Liquor License Process, But at What Cost? | St. Louis

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click to enlarge Mabel Suen Rebecca Schaaf mixes a cocktail at Rock Star Tacos.
For years St. Louis restaurateurs have dreaded the city’s liquor licensing process and hit roadblock after roadblock on their way to obtaining these licenses.
A new bill making its way through the Board of Aldermen seeks to change that, but opponents argue the bill hasn’t had enough public input and goes too far in removing neighborhood voices from the process.
Board Bill 60, sponsored by Aldermanic President Megan Green, 4th Ward Alderman Bret Narayan and 6th Ward Alderwoman Daniela Velazquez passed its second reading on February 9.
Under the current liquor licensing process, business owners must obtain a set number of signatures from the businesses and residents surrounding their establishment before they are approved to sell alcohol.
“If we were to boil down what we heard in committee it would come down to two things,” Narayan said at a committee hearing for the bill. “It’s hard for the right people to get liquor licenses for a restaurant, and it’s hard to take liquor licenses away from the wrong people when they have a restaurant.” (Neither Narayan nor Velazquez responded to requests for comment.)
Under current law, businesses must gather signatures from a majority of the property owners, occupants and tenants located within a 350-foot radius of the business, RFT previously reported. It’s called the “plat and petition process.”
Board Bill 60 would create a parallel pathway for restaurateurs by creating an alternative to the signature process.
Under the path it outlines, restaurants could apply for a 90-day temporary license after a conditional use hearing and a public hearing. At the end of the 90 days, the excise commissioner would have the option to renew the license for an additional 90 days after a second public hearing, Narayan said.
Once 180 days have passed, the excise commissioner would examine the business’ books to make sure they are in compliance with the license by making more than 50 percent of their revenue on food, and would take into consideration how many times police were called to the business for complaints. If there is no reason not to grant the license, the business would then be given a permanent one.
Several community members oppose the bill, saying that the ability to circumvent the plat and petition process removes their voice from the process.
“The solution to the issue in the delay of the petitions and hearings should be to improve the administration process by the Excise Division, not to disenfranchise the rest (of us),” Dan Pistor, chair of the St. Louis Downtown Neighborhood Association said at the bill’s last committee hearing. “The neighborhood should have a voice in determining the compatibility of an establishment that is going to reside in their neighborhood.”
At the hearing, Narayan said while some might argue that circumvention of plat and petition could be a way to “backdoor” nightclubs into approval, that isn’t the case. One of the more notorious nightclubs in recent city history would have been shut down on the 91st day if it went through this process, he said. (While he didn’t name the club, he was clearly talking about Reign.)
The bill also allows a 72-hour “cool down period” where a restaurant can have its liquor license revoked by the Excise Commissioner for 48-72 hours following an emergency “consisting of an imminent danger to the health, safety and welfare of the public.”
The bill states that if a business has its liquor license permanently revoked it cannot re-apply for a new one for a full year.
Danni Eickenhorst, one of the restaurateurs who helped spur the proposal, says she supports the intent of the bill but it still needs some work.
Eickenhorst describes the city’s current licensing process as “inefficient, dangerous, discriminatory, and broken.” That’s an opinion shared by constituents at the committee hearing and by her fellow business owners.
“This process can take up to nine months to get a liquor license,” Eickenhorst says. “It’s extremely costly, you have to hire a consultant to navigate the process for you, and even when you pay thousands of dollars for a consultant, you have to be taken out of your own business for between 20 and 60 hours to go through it.”
Eickenhorst has gone through the process four times with her own restaurants as CEO of HUSTL Hospitality Group.
It’s also extremely difficult and time consuming, if not impossible, to locate all of the individuals and businesses needed to sign a petition for a liquor license based on the city’s bad data, Eickenhorst said.
Proponents of ending the plat and petition process also argue that it is unfair to those with language barriers, unsafe for those uncomfortable with going door to door and invites discrimination if neighbors don’t want someone of a certain race or ethnicity to open a business near them.
Yet on both sides of the bill, constituents, including Eickenhorst, are asking for aldermen to spend more time with the bill to make changes to its provisions.
“It definitely has done some things very well, it has added enforcement, it has increased penalties for operating without a liquor license, it feels like it’s headed in the right direction,” Eickenhorst says. “But there are definitely some things that need to be tweaked.”
One of the items in the bill that needs to be adapted is the 50 percent threshold for food sales to be considered a restaurant, she said.
“If a neighborhood is going to approve a 50-50 ratio, that’s going to have much more of the feel of a bar than a restaurant,” Eickenhorst said. “Typically, restaurants are about 75 percent food, maybe 70 percent food.”
One reason why opponents are asking that the bill be held for further consideration is that the most recent version was only available to the public 48 hours ahead of its final February 8 hearing in front of the Special Committee on Reducing Red Tape.
One of those asking to hold the bill is Ward 8 Alderwoman Cara Spencer, who voted not to move the bill out of committee.
“If what we are doing is eliminating the need for public engagement, we are basically saying we don’t need to hear from the public and we’re not even giving the public an opportunity to see the bill here,” Spencer said. “I just don’t understand why we couldn’t have the opportunity to build some consensus around the bill.”
The next steps for Board Bill 60 are perfection, a third reading, and then a vote by the full board to determine whether it will move to Mayor Tishaura Jones’ desk.
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Fenton Man Charged in Sword Attack on Roommate

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A warrant is out for a Fenton man’s arrest after he allegedly attacked his roommate with a sword.
Police say that on Sunday, Angelus Scott spoke openly about “slicing his roommate’s head” before he grabbed a sword, raised it up and then swung it down at the roommate.
The roommate grabbed Scott’s hand in time to prevent injury. When police arrived at the scene, they found the weapon used in the assault.
The sword in question was a katana, which is a Japanese sword recognizable for its curved blade.
This isn’t the first time a samurai-style sword has been used to violent effect in St. Louis. In 2018, a man hearing voices slaughtered his ex-boyfriend with a samurai sword. His mother said he suffered from schizoaffective disorder.
As for Scott, 35, the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office was charged yesterday with two felonies, assault first degree and armed criminal action. The warrant for his arrest says he is to be held on $200,000 bond.
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Caught on Video, Sheriff Says He’s Ready to ‘Turn It All Over’ to Deputy

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Video of St. Louis Sheriff Vernon Betts taken by a former deputy suggests that the sheriff has a successor in mind to hand the reins of the department over to, even as Betts is in an increasingly heated campaign for reelection.
“I ain’t here for all this rigmarole,” Betts says in the video while seated behind his desk at the Carnahan Courthouse. “The Lord sent me here to turn this department around and I’m doing the best I can and I think I’ve done a good job. I’ve got about eight months and I’m going to qualify for my fourth pension.”
He goes on, “Right now I can walk up out of here and live happily ever after and forget about all this…and live like a king.”
The sheriff then says his wife has been in Atlanta looking at houses and that the other deputy in the room, Donald Hawkins, is someone Betts has been training “to turn it all over to him.”
Asked about the video, Betts tells the RFT, “My future plans are to win reelection on August 6th by a wide margin and to continue my mission as the top elected law enforcement official to make St. Louis safer and stronger. Serving the people of St. Louis with integrity, honor and professional law enforcement qualifications is a sacred responsibility, and I intend to complete that mission.”
The video of Betts was taken by Barbara Chavers, who retired from the sheriff’s office in 2016 after 24 years of service. Chavers now works security at Schnucks at Grand and Gravois. Betts’ brother Howard works security there, too.
Chavers tells the RFT that she was summoned to Betts’ office last week after Betts’ brother made the sheriff aware that she was supporting Montgomery. It was no secret: Chavers had filmed a Facebook live video in which she said she was supporting Betts’ opponent Alfred Montgomery in the election this fall. “Make the judges safe,” she says in the video, standing in front of a large Montgomery sign on Gravois Avenue. “They need a sheriff who is going to make their courtrooms safe.”
In his office, even as Chavers made clear she was filming him, Betts told Chavers he was “flabbergasted” and “stunned” she was supporting Montgomery.
“I don’t know what I did that would make you go against the preacher man,” he says, referring to himself. He then refers to Montgomery as “ungodly.”
Betts goes on to say that not long ago, he was walking in his neighborhood on St. Louis Avenue near 20th Street when suddenly Montgomery pulled up in his car and, according to Betts, shouted, “You motherfucker, you this, you that. You’re taking my signs down.”
Montgomery tells the RFT that he’s never interacted with Betts outside of candidate forums and neighborhood meetings.
“I don’t think anyone with good sense would do something like that to a sitting sheriff,” Montgomery says.
Montgomery has had campaign signs missing and on at least two occasions has obtained video of people tearing them down. (Chavers notes that the sign that she filmed her original Facebook video in front of is itself now missing.)
One man who lives near Columbus Square says that he recently put out two Montgomery signs, which later went missing. “If they keep taking them, I’ll keep putting them up,” he said.
Betts says he has nothing to do with the missing signs. In the video Chavers filmed in Betts’ office, Betts says that his campaign isn’t in a spot where it needs to resort to tearing down opponents’ signs.
“If you sit here long enough, a man is getting ready to come across the street from City Hall bringing me $500, today,” Betts says. “I’m getting that kind of support. I don’t need to tear down signs.”
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St. Louis to Develop First Citywide Transportation Plan in Decades

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The City of St. Louis is working to develop its first citywide mobility plan in decades, Mayor Tishaura Jones’ office announced Tuesday. This plan seeks to make it easier for everyone — drivers, pedestrians, bikers and public transit users — to safely commute within the city.
The plan will bring together other city projects like the Brickline Greenway, Future64, the MetroLink Green Line, and more, “while establishing new priorities for a safer, more efficient and better-maintained transportation network across the City,” according to the release.
The key elements in the plan will be public engagement, the development of a safety action plan, future infrastructure priorities and transportation network mapping, according to Jones’ office.
The overarching goals are to create a vision for citywide mobility, plan a mixture of short and long-term mobility projects and to develop improved communication tools with the public to receive transportation updates. In recent years, both people who use public transit and cyclists have been outspoken about the difficulties — and dangers — of navigating St. Louis streets, citing both cuts to public transit and traffic violence.
To garner public input and participation for the plan, Jones’ office said there will be community meetings, focus groups and a survey for residents to share their concerns. The city will also be establishing a Community Advisory Committee. Those interested in learning more should check out at tmp-stl.com/
“Everyone deserves to feel safe when getting around St. Louis, whether they’re driving, biking, walking or taking public transit,” Jones said in a news release. “Creating a comprehensive transportation and mobility plan allows us to make intentional and strategic investments so that moving around St. Louis for jobs, education, and entertainment becomes easier, safer and more enjoyable.”
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