No special liquor zones in downtown Portland after all
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PORTLAND, Ore. - Two years of work has gone down the drain as plans for a zone that would limit certain types of liquor sales in parts of downtown Portland goes by the wayside.
Back in September of 2010, the City of Portland asked the Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC) to look into whether it could restrict the type of alcohol that is sold in certain areas of downtown Portland.
Since then, both sides have committed time and money to the proposal but on Friday, the OLCC told the city that it doesn't have the power to make the changes. They said a ruling by the Attorney General prevents not only the OLCC, but the city, from restricting the volume and type of alcohol that is sold in downtown Portland.
According to City Commissioner Amanda Fritz, the city devoted around 1,200 hours of staff time to put the plan together and she is highly disappointed that all of that was for naught.
"I'm appalled that we were asked to do all of this work and yet apparently the commission now feels that they don't have the basis to make use of the studies and the city staff time that the taxpayers paid our city staff to do," Fritz said.
Now of course not everyone agrees that restricting alcohol sales at some downtown shops would help a public intoxication problem.
"As long as you have this many bars in a neighborhood, you're going to have public intoxication," said Chad Tout, who lives and works in the area. "I don't think the city cutting down is going to make a difference."
This is how government "creates jobs" by setting up crazy studies and ruling bureaucracies. This does not generate wealth only saps the wealth. Government no longer serves the people and now only serves itself. This is an in your face example.
This new forum sucks. You can't paste a link. You can't paste anything. Spell checker doesn't offer corrections it just underlines misspelled words in red. I notice a huge drop in comments since the switch. I guess I'm not the only one. Actually I am going to find another site to get my news, this site and this ridiculously crippled forum is frustrating. Maybe KOINÂ or KGW are not taking steps top alienate their viewers like KATU. It could be much worse.
Maybe it's just Firefox. Is anyone able to PASTE text into these text boxes????? Do I have to buy a special plug-in to copy and paste???OMFG
 @campergeneral This is definitely a PEBKAC error.
I need a drink.
Good! Laws like that don't do anything but move the problem around. If they outlaw it in one area, and people still want it, they will just move around to areas that do have it.Â
Wow, is it just me or does this new commenting system really suck?
 It is like they went backwards, you can't even edit posts?Â
"...the city devoted around 1,200 hours of staff time..."
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Say what? Twelve hundred hours? That's about $40,000. Why not just pick up the phone and call the OLCC and ask them if it can be done. Time would be about 15 minutes.
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I guess government can spend that much money on asking a simple question.
joke hahaha  its like having a no pee area in a pool.  outlaw booze now!
Could be what happens when you view your city as a state and try to make your own laws! Good show Sammy and Randy - now you know how some of the business community feels.
Seems to me that a simple phone call could have been made to the AG's office, asking a simple, direct, "yes or no" question:   "Can the City of Portand and/or the OLCC legally restrict the volume or type of alcohol allowed to be sold in downtown Portland?"    If the answer was "yes" (or "yes, but we need to see a specific plan before final approval", THEN proceed with plans. Â
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Leave it to bureaucrats to unnecessarily complicate something beyond all belief..! Â
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I wonder how much of the Portland tax-payers' money was wasted on THAT piece of nonsense..! ...sigh...
All anyone would have had to do is look at how 'dry' counties go about kicking booze out:
It has to be referred to the voters to decide...and they'll NEVER approve it for two reasons.
A) Any ordinance targeting a certain segment of town, as opposed to the whole city or county would be tossed out as discriminatory.
B) The people who vote outnumber the people who own businesses in the effected area. THEY don't want their ability to stop off at a corner market on the way home for hooch to be hamstrung. Plus, Portland being Portland, this smacks too much of (local) Government-Knows-Best, and if Amanda Fritz were to talk to more of her constituents, rather than just business owners, she could have seen that this was a waste of time and money before she cut the checks.
They didn't go to their assigned AAG to verify authority before initiating rule development? *sigh*
Don't want them to compete with those special pot zones !