Outcry tanks license proposal

Requiring businesses to have permit, pay fee was designed to combat nuisances, loitering on property

Because of opposition voiced by citizens at a public hearing Thursday, a proposal to establish a new citywide business license is off the table in Texarkana, Ark.

“I have heard them loud and clear,” City Manager Kenny Haskin said about an hour after the hearing. “Based on the the public response, I have decided not to pursue the issue at this time.”

In the often heated, nearly two-hour City Hall meeting, local business owners criticized Haskin’s plan to make every city business have a license—and pay an accompanying fee—that would oblige them to prevent nuisances such as loitering on their property.

The idea was to create a mechanism for holding business owners accountable for allowing unruly behavior on their premises that could scare away potential customers, harming the local economy. Under the plan, they could be charged in District Court for failing to prevent it.

But business owners at the hearing asserted that doing so should not entail forcing them to pay a fee to finance the scheme, which some called “extortion.”

Haskin made an impassioned pitch to

a standing-room-only crowd but was met with only objections and jeers. No audience member spoke in favor of the proposal.

Law enforcement is stretched to its limit and needs help from the business community, Haskin argued. The current city nuisance ordinance does not have the “teeth” needed to give police the leverage they need, public safety and a healthy business environment are at risk, and addressing the problem will not be free, he said.

“We need to clean this city up,” Haskin said.

Audience members countered that they pay enough taxes and government fees already, and they should not have to pay to remedy problems they neither have nor cause. Any solution to the nuisance issue should start with police enforcing existing law at the businesses causing trouble, they said.

“All business owners, everybody raise your hand that’s having a loitering problem,” said Ben Brewer, owner of Southtown Liquor. No one raised their hand, and the crowd applauded Brewer’s point.

Sheila Osborne Wagnon also drew applause. She pointed out that city and state nuisance abatement laws are already on the books and said Haskin’s proposal misplaced responsibility.

“The real flaw in all of this is it’s putting the onus on us business owners for what happens on our property. How the heck can I help it if somebody walks across my parking lot and commits a crime? And so what they’re essentially saying is it puts more teeth in this because now they can come after me instead of they guy who committed the crime,” she said.

Haskin refused to name any of the businesses he says regularly act as “hosts” of disruptive behavior and criminal activity, but some audience members called out the Raceway convenience store at 4120 N. State Line Ave. as an obvious candidate. In recent years the store has been the site of murders and multiple other crimes, including a large fight in July that resulted in 10 arrest warrants. The fight was captured in a video spread widely on the internet.

The city Board of Directors will continue to pursue ways to address the underlying problem, Haskin said.

“We’re going to take a look at it and find out exactly if we can do something that doesn’t require the business community to feel as though they’re shouldering a burden here,” he said.