City considers 2am closings
A proposal to force bars and bottle stores to close one hour earlier in Palmerston North has left city councillors frustrated they cannot do more to reduce alcohol harm in the community.
The council is one of the late starters in New Zealand in putting up a draft Local Alcohol Policy, and the experience in other centres where policies have been appealed and delayed is one reason for a cautious approach.
Described as ‘‘the best of a bad deal’’ by Lorna Johnson at yesterday’s community development committee meeting, earlier closing is the only option staff said could be supported by local evidence.
Council strategy and policy manager Julie Macdonald said officials had considered whether the council should cap numbers of alcohol licences, control locations where they could be set up, and impose one-way door rules or other discretionary conditions.
But the local evidence was not there to support those moves.
There was also a concern that signalling there would be a cap on licence numbers at this stage would trigger a flood of licence applications that would have to be considered before the policy took effect.
The trading hours restriction would see bars and other onlicence premises in most of the business and industrial zones of the city close at 2am, clubs in other parts of the city close at midnight, and bottle stores, supermarkets and grocery stores stop selling alcohol at 10pm.
The reasoning was to encourage people to spend less time preloading at home before heading in to town, where they would be drinking in supervised premises.
A total of 28 on-licences and eight off-licences would lose an hour or more of trading.
Johnson said it was frustrating the law did not allow the council to go further. ‘‘It’s a flawed process. The legislation is just not a suitable tool for what we want to do.’’
Cr Karen Naylor argued unsuccessfully for a one-way door policy to be imposed for an hour before bars closed. She said earlier closing alone did not go far enough to fulfil the goal of minimising the harm caused by excessive and inappropriate drinking.
But policy analyst Peter Ridge said that could have the unintended consequence of discouraging people from coming in to town at all. ‘‘Therefore there would be more drinking at nonlicensed premises, which it the opposite of what we are trying to achieve.’’ Cr Brent Barrett said the council was trying to achieve a healthier outcome with ‘‘one hand tied behind our back’’ and was ending up with a policy that was largely the status quo, which was harming individuals, households and the wider community.
The committee adopted the draft policy for public consultation, with submissions closing in mid-december. It would be June by the time the council heard and considered submissions and adopted the policy.