By DAVE HAMRICK
Staff Writer

Thirty-day suspensions of alcohol licenses of 20 Fayetteville businesses caught last summer selling to minors will begin Jan. 1, after the holiday celebrations are over.

After hearing the pleas of seven restaurant owners for clemency, City Council Monday declared the businesses guilty of two code sections in city law that require license checks when selling alcohol and prohibit sales to minors.

Half the businesses in the city with beer and wine licenses were caught selling to minors in a police sting last June. Seven owners of affected restaurants and convenience stores Monday exercised their right to a hearing in the matter.

Failure to check a license, if it results in a sale to a minor, carries a minimum, nonnegotiable, 30-day license suspension, according to city attorney David Winkle. The law also provides for a suspension of “up to” 30 days for selling to a minor, he said, but added that the suspensions can run concurrently.

According to some of the restaurant owners, the suspensions are almost tantamount to a death sentence in their business.

“The ordinance is very harsh indeed,” said Cary Wiggins, a lawyer for the El Ranchero restaurant chain. The chain has served alcohol in restaurants all over the city for over 12 years without a similar violation, he said, adding that the company takes great pains to emphasize the need for alcohol license checks with its employees.

The theme was repeated by the other restaurant owners or the representatives. None disputed the facts in the cases — they admitted that their employees had failed to check licenses and had sold alcohol to the city Police Department's under-aged informant, but they urged City Council to consider reducing the penalty if possible, or to review the ordinance for possible changes in the future.

A month's suspension may not seem harsh, said Wiggins, but for many restaurants alcohol sales provide their only profit.

“Alcohol sales are 14 percent of our entire revenue,” said Susan Boutier, owner of Village Cafe, another restaurant caught in the sweep. “That's equal to our rent, our bank loan and [the owners'] salaries for a month.” And, she said, many customers will stay away if they can't have a glass of wine with their meals.

Worse, said owners, the law requires a 12-month suspension for a second offense, and there is no time limit after which the slate is wiped clean. If his client were to slip up a second time, said Wiggins, “they would be as good as dead.”

That provision puts owners in a position where they could be put out of business by a disgruntled employee, said Paul Carter, owner of Fayette Family Billiards. Carter's business was not one of those caught in the police sting, but he spoke up during the council's public comment period.

So did Richard Capella, representing Classic Cue, another business that did not sell to minors. “It's important to direct the legislation to the individuals who are committing the offense,” he said.

Many of the employees are underage themselves, said Wiggins, and if they are caught selling to minors they can't work in a business where alcohol is sold for five years, also a harsh provision, several restaurant owners argued.

The father of one such employee made his own plea to City Council to consider softening the ordinance. “My daughter was three weeks out of high school on her first job” when the violation occurred, he said. “And she knew the informant, and knew she had graduated three years earlier and believed her to be of age,” he added.

Council listened quietly to all those who spoke, but voted unanimously to enforce the ordinance as written.

The discussion grew vitriolic when Gil Osterloh, a consultant for Beverage Law Professionals, a lobbying group out of Florida, addressed the meeting.

Osterloh said the city's law doesn't pass the test of reasonableness, and added that when the state of Florida's alcohol laws were made more lenient recently, violations went down.

Councilman Larry Dell said he previously lived in Florida, and disputed Osterloh's claim. An argument ensued, bringing a loud bang of the gavel from Mayor Mike Wheat.

“We're all in the phone book,” he told Osterloh, indicating that the council meeting wasn't the proper forum to debate the statistics.