Mount Pleasant DC Forum

[jack]

At the April 2 meeting, the ANC passed this resolution:

Resolved, that ANC 1D requests the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board to extend the moratorium on specific single sales containers of alcohol AND to use this extension period to examine and study the overall impact, importance and extent the moratorium has played in the changing social landscape of Mount Pleasant Street, and to provide the legally required proof of the continuing need for the moratorium in Mount Pleasant.

Why

The Mt Pleasant moratorium presents a unique situation to the city in its effort to formulate a proper city wide policy.

Proof of the continuing need for the moratorium is a legal requirement for its extension.

Changes in Mount Pleasant demographics, policing, substance abuse treatment facilities, and social conditions make a study necessary to confirm the continuing need for the moratorium.

A study is needed because of the proposals for similar single-sales bans in other District neighborhoods.

A study is needed to determine whether the moratorium in Mount Pleasant is having effects on adjacent neighborhoods.

Questions that may be addressed:

What characteristics appear to make the moratorium necessary in some areas and not in others.

To what extent is a moratorium the prime mover in improvements compared to demographic changes or better community policing.

Is a moratorium on single sales to become a permanent fixture on the Mt Pleasant landscape or are there possibilities that the moratorium could be lifted in the future. What might those conditions be.

Chairman Burger of ABRA has stated:

“...Mount Pleasant is very important to ABRA, for the fact that we have never or there has not been documented a relationship between single sales of beers and environment. It is very important for the board to hear this type of information to make decisions for other areas in town”

“...the entire city can benefit by, if we pay attention to it and monitor it, and of course always ask questions”

“...I would really love to develop some sort of statistics on this”

Those are Chairman Burger’s own words. Mt Pleasant provides that opportunity.

[jack]

In support of the resolution above, I read this statement to the ABC Board at the hearing on April 20:

Advice to the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board by ANC-1D
Jack McKay, Ph.D., Chair
April 20, 2005

I’m Jack McKay, Chairperson of ANC 1-D, Mount Pleasant. My home is at 3200 19th Street NW in Mount Pleasant. That’s been my home for 31 years, since the days when Mount Pleasant was a neighborhood devastated by the flight of the middle class from neighborhoods near the 1968 riot corridor. No one imagined back then that we would become today’s hotbed of urban gentrification.

I am speaking for the Mount Pleasant ANC today. The instructions from my Commission are to provide testimony to the ABC Board “in support of, but not going beyond, the content of the resolution” passed by the ANC on April 2. I believe you have that resolution in your hands. You will understand that I must limit my remarks to explaining the reasoning behind that resolution, and I will refrain from offering my personal opinions in the matter.

I believe my Commission will permit me to thank the ABC Board for holding this rehearing of the matter of extending the single sales moratorium in Mount Pleasant. We understand that the failure to notify the Mount Pleasant ANC of the December hearing was inadvertent, and we appreciate the willingness of the Board to correct that oversight.

To quote from the resolution, ANC 1D calls on the ABC Board “to extend the moratorium on specific single sales containers of alcohol, and to use this extension period to examine and study the overall impact, importance and extent the moratorium has played in the changing social landscape of Mount Pleasant Street, and to provide the legally required proof of the continuing need for the moratorium in Mount Pleasant.” In short, while calling for the single-sales moratorium to continue, we advise the Board to conduct a study of the effects and operation of that moratorium.

Why do we advise such a study? We cite several reasons.

First, the continuation of the moratorium requires proof that it remains necessary, that is, appropriate, for Mount Pleasant. According to the testimony offered at the December hearing, the imposition of the moratorium four years ago resulted in apparent benefits to Mount Pleasant. But the citing of improvements four years ago is not proof that the moratorium is appropriate today. There have been substantial changes in Mount Pleasant during the past four years, including (1) changes in demographics, as increasing rents, and conversion of apartments to condominiums, have forced many people of very low incomes out of Mount Pleasant; (2) increased staffing and outreach to the alcohol-abusing population by our neighborhood substance abuse clinic; (3) improved policing, including several foot patrol officers, and innovative techniques for dealing with alcohol abusers; and (4) a significant decrease in the population of homeless on Mount Pleasant’s streets. It is possible that these changes render the moratorium neither necessary nor appropriate for Mount Pleasant today. The testimony of December does not address that possibility.

Second, similar single-sales bans are under consideration for other District neighborhoods. The Mount Pleasant experience of the past four years is a unique civic experiment, and the results of this experiment ought to be well and thoroughly understood before the experiment is replicated in other neighborhoods.

Third, there is no information at this time concerning the effect of the Mount Pleasant moratorium on adjacent neighborhoods. The population of troubled consumers of alcohol targeted by the moratorium need only walk a few blocks to Columbia Heights, or Adams Morgan, to obtain their drinks. Evidently the moratorium has improved conditions in Mount Pleasant, but has it done so at the expense of our neighboring communities? Arrests for drunk and disorderly conduct in Mount Pleasant may be down, but has the Mount Pleasant moratorium resulted in increased drunk and disorderly conduct in Columbia Heights? Alcohol-related litter may be down in Mount Pleasant, but is it consequently up in Adams Morgan? If a single sales ban simply transfers such problems into neighboring communities, is this a valid policy for the District of Columbia?

We call, therefore, for a careful and thorough study of the dynamics and effects of the single sales moratorium in Mount Pleasant, over the past four years, and continuing. This isn’t just about Mount Pleasant. It’s about the value and validity of a ban on the sale of single containers of alcohol as a means of controlling the adverse effects of alcohol abuse in many DC neighborhoods.

ANC 1-D thanks the ABC Board for listening to our advice on this very difficult problem.