Downtown Barrie’s uphill fight

Mayoral candidates chime in on Lehman motion
By RAYMOND BOWE BARRIE EXAMINER August 30 2010
Coun. Jeff Lehman’s plan to fix downtown Barrie’s bar scene has been called everything from early campaigning and too little too late, to “better than nothing” and a Band-Aid solution.
The downtown councillor’s motion, part of Monday night’s council agenda, asks that Barrie city council sends a letter to the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) regarding over-serving alcohol in licenced establishments, while also asking for more Liquor Licence Act inspectors to patrol the downtown bar scene.
Lehman, who’s running for mayor in the upcoming municipal election, also wants the City Clerk’s Office to investigate the merits of a liquor licence review committee, similar to Kitchener’s, which has faced similar problems with its downtown bar scene.
The city’s other mayoral candidates — Mike Ramsay, Rob Hamilton, Joe Tascona and Harry Ahmed — all chimed in on Lehman’s plan to clean up the downtown bar scene, which has been plagued by plenty of bad press in recent weeks.
“It looks like a last-minute election gimmick,” said Tascona, a former city councillor and Barrie-Simcoe-Bradford MPP. “It’s too little too late, and only weeks before the election starts, the councillor that has been responsible for the downtown for four years starts talking about this issue when everyone else knows we’ve needed change at city hall for years.
“It hasn’t happened,” he added. “It has to be dealt with now, with concrete measures.”
Without the power to deny a liquor licence, Coun. Mike Ramsay says a review committee wouldn’t be any more effective than concerns voiced by city council or the average citizen.
“If it’s better than what we have now, I’m all for it,” Ramsay said. “But if it’s just another layer of useless bureaucracy to shuttle off a controversial issue to a committee, then come on. This is a serious matter we’re dealing with in the downtown core.
“Citizens are demanding immediate, tough action.”
Hamilton, a former Barrie mayor who owns two of the city’s largest downtown nightclubs, says the marketplace drives the number of bars, not the AGCO.
“If they’re all busy and there’s demand, then are there too many bars? If they’re not busy and they’re starving to death, and there’s not enough demand to keep them all going,” he said, “just the marketplace will ultimately determine how many there will be.
“The root of the problem is that when a building becomes vacant right now, there’s no other interest in that building except from the hospitality industry,” Hamilton said. “The retail is moving out and the bars are moving in. In the last four years, due to lack of leadership at city hall, we’ve gone backwards.”
Hamilton also questioned the legal ramifications surrounding a liquor licence review committee — noting the details are “kind of vague” — and what would happen if challenges went before the Ontario Municipal Board.
The AGCO has five inspectors — three civilians and two Ontario Provincial Police officers — who work in the commission’s central region office, a district that stretches east-west from Brighton to Collingwood, and north-south from the Huntsville area to Bradford.
Under the AGCO’s “risk-based enforcement” system, spokesperson Lisa Murray said inspectors focus on businesses that have had compliance issues in the past.
The AGCO needs to send more inspectors to Barrie, Ramsay said, “and we need them actually do their job and lay charges.
“We need a clean sweep of the bad bars,” he added. “I know there are some good, responsible bar owners, and they do their best to follow all the serving laws, but then there are the bad apples. We need to weed out the bad apples.”
There should also be a point where the AGCO refuses liquor licences based on concentration, Ramsay says.
“It’s ludicrous how many liquor licences the AGCO will issue,” he said. “They want the tax revenue, but they have to realize the implication it has on cities and communities.
“If they really cared, they’d have 10 times the number of inspectors,” Ramsay said. “They’re raking in enough money as it is, with all the beer and booze being sold, that they could take even 1% of those billions they’re collecting in taxes and spend it on proper enforcement.
“The public is demanding action and we need a mayor who will take on the powerful interests, the bar owners, and deal with this matter,” Ramsay added.
As the owner of the The Queen’s and The Roxx, Hamilton sees the issue from inside the nightclub.
“We see the AGCO inspector on a regular basis, virtually every weekend,” he said. “The AGCO is here and they know exactly what is going on.”
Hamilton, the city’s mayor from 2003 until 2006, says it’s the patron behaviour that needs to be addressed.
“Controlling the number of bars? I don’t know how effective that would be,” he said. “If it’s effective, it solves the problem and it works, then good on it.”
Ahmed, meanwhile, questions what good Lehman’s motion would do for the average Barrie citizen.
“There’s nothing wrong with the things he’s trying to do, but my question is this,” he said. “Is it going to get anywhere? If we’re going to have more enforcement in downtown, who’s going to pay for that? As far as looking into liquor licences, who’s going to manage that, too?
“There’s so many things involved,” Ahmed added.
Tascona says there needs to be a clear direction from city hall about how to combat the problems.
“The bottom line is that (Lehman’s) motion is not going to solve the problem at the ninth hour,” Tascona said. “It should have been addressed years ago, but I think we can do some concrete things and it is solvable.”
Tascona says he doesn’t believe the problems are too far gone.
“Everything’s solvable, if there’s a will and if you have a sound plan to deal with it,” he said. “We have the resources to solve it. It’s not just the city council showing leadership and resolving this — they have to bring in the stakeholders into the plan. Obviously, the bar owners are probably the biggest stakeholder, because they’re the ones who are in business. They have to take some of the responsibility.”
However, Hamilton points to the patron.
“These young people, primarily, who are in the bars and on the street at closing time are our sons and daughters,” Hamilton said. “They’re not from outer space. They’re the ones who make the decision to have drink No. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
“They have to exercise some responsible behaviour and parents have to counsel them … (when they’re) going away to school,” he added. “Everyone’s got a responsibility. It’s everyone’s problem.”
Almost every candidate also pointed to the need for a more consistent police presence downtown, as well, with a zero-tolerance approach to unwanted and unsafe behaviour.
“I’ve been down here (doing business for) a long time,” Hamilton said. “You don’t want all the cops down here this weekend and none the next.”
Ramsay says undercover police — “people from outside the city so they’re not known to the local bouncers and owners” — should also be brought in to Barrie to investigate and potentially lay charges if needed.
“I also think the bar owners should be responsible for their own actions in this area,” Tascona said. “Council should press them towards that in a very hard way.”
In some municipalities, Tascona said bar owners contribute to a fund to pay for off-duty uniformed police officers to patrol their premises, not unlike what happens at Barrie Colts games or similar events.
The downtown bar problems won’t fix themselves, Ramsay said.
“It’s been a problem simmering for years, yet nothing’s been done,” he said. “A mayor needs to go into office and pick up the phone every week and call the police, call the AGCO, and find out how many people have been charged, how many places were inspected.
“You have to keep the light shone on the problem,” he added. “It is solvable through much stricter enforcement and a reduction in how many liquor licences are being issued.”
Hamilton says there are plenty of ways to reverse the downtown bar/nightclub proliferation, many of which were addressed in the Patty Xenos model.
“The real solution here, because everything else is kind of a Band- Aid, is we need more people living downtown and more people working downtown,” he said.
“As soon as we reach that critical mass … of people living and working downtown, people will identify the services that they need,” Hamilton said, such as grocery stores and pharmacies. “When a building becomes empty, there will be other people interested in acquiring it for other purposes other than the service of beverage alcohol.”
Hamilton said Xenos’ downtown commercial master plan was put in motion, but has stalled the last four years.
“Nothing has been built, nothing has happened,” he said. “It’s been a total shutdown and people lose hope. They don’t see anything positive happening … but I don’t see anything on the horizon, nothing’s going to change.
“So, the good retailers leave, they locate in the power centres or the malls, and buildings are available,” Hamilton added. “Because there’s no competition for them, (the buildings) are cheap and everyone thinks they can run a bar and a restaurant.”