Joshua City Council - January 2012

The January regular session of the Joshua City Council was tough and challenging.  It was an historic meeting in one sense as we took up our first agenda items related to variances to our newly passed alcohol ordinance.  We had two variance requests submitted by convenience stores in the city.  Both fell short of the 300' distance requirement from a school.  That's where the similarities end.

The ordinance passed by the council last fall takes up the power afforded us from the state and mimics the state law in distances from churches and schools.  There are several different measurements depending on the entity, but the ones before the council last month were in regards to public schools in which the distance is measured property line to property line between the school and the merchant in question.  State law allows us to consider variances to the law as we see fit.

The first store we addressed was requesting a 300' variance.  Wait, doesn't the ordinance require 300' feet, you may be asking?  Yes.  They share a property line with the High School and were asking for a variance to go down to zero distance from a school.  The council voted to deny this request, though not unanimously.  For me it was just too much to ask so I voted against it.  Still, I believe each situation is unique and I'll consider each variance on it's own merits.

The second one before us that night was also in relation to a school.  This one was requesting about a 50' variance.  They sit about 250' away from an elementary school.  Another difference I considered was that there are two public streets and a business in between the school and the store.  Kids will not be off campus here like they might be at the high school and the interest in obtaining alcohol by that age group would not be nearly what it would be from the high school population.  When I put it all together I was comfortable voting to approve this variance.

These two cases were both tough for me and I considered them both for a long time before making my decision.  It's troubling to me to have to deny something to one business owner that his competitor may receive.  There's a component here that disrupts the free market that I so fully believe in, but the fact is we were dealing with a highly regulated substance and public safety had to be considered.

Challenging decisions like this don't come up too often in Joshua, but when they do no matter how agonizing they may seem before raising my hand in favor or opposition I'm still thankful to be contributing to the vote.

A.J.