A bad idea made bigger
Let me get this straight.
There’s now near unanimous agreement among Old Port restaurant and bar owners and city officials that the Old Port Overlay zoning system, created last decade to address public safety issues in the popular tourist and nightlife district, should be abolished.
It’s ineffective – there’s been no discernible decrease in problems due to the system. It’s unfair – whether an establishment caters to a mellow clientele or rowdy meatheads, it’s subject to the special “seat tax” used to cover the cost of beefier police patrols. And it’s unenforceable – only businesses that make more money from booze than food are subject to the tax, but the city can’t look at a bar’s books to determine that.
So what is the Portland City Council now considering in place of this failed mess? Yup, an even larger, more absurd special-tax zone extending from the waterfront to Bayside, and from Longfellow Square to India Street.
Any bar or restaurant owner with a liquor license whose business falls inside this new super-overlay area would pay hundreds of dollars more for that license every year. Though the fee hike is intended to cover the cost of extra cops in the Old Port, establishments blocks away from the district would be shelling out cash for extra protection they won’t get and don’t need.
And this at a time when, according to police, the Old Port has never been safer!
Maria’s Restaurant, on Cumberland Avenue, would see its annual fee jump $560, to $1,875, as would Uffa!, in Longfellow Square, Mesa Verde and Five Fifty-Five, on Congress Street, and Katahdin, on High Street. Sushi restaurants Benkay, on India Street, and Yosaku, on Danforth Street, would pony up an extra $600, pushing their annual fee over $2,000. The non-profit Space Gallery’s fee jumps $660 (to $2,215 every year); Portland Stage Company pays $310 more to offer beer and wine during intermissions; and Asmara, the tiny Eritrean eatery trying to survive on Oak Street, would get hit with a $270 annual fee increase.
Meanwhile, bar owners in the thick of the action save thousands of dollars under this proposal. It’s a windfall for Tom Manning, whose fees to serve booze at Digger’s/Liquid Blue and the Crazy Green Iguana drop by $6,340 combined. The Old Port Tavern sees its fees plummet by $7,670, and whoever buys The Pavilion is off the hook for nearly $11,000 every year.
Granted, these dramatic fee decreases would only come about because, in an earlier fit of idiocy last budget season, the Council tripled the “seat tax” on Old Port bars to raise about $60,000 for extra cops. As Councilor Jim Cohen has noted, the “savings” these bar owners would realize are akin to the “savings” customers get when a store raises its prices and then announces a “sale.”
There’s a saner way to pay for extra Old Port police coverage: the same way we pay cops now, through the general city budget. Adding this cost to the budget would raise the tax rate by less than a penny. The owner of a home or business worth $250,000 would pay an extra $2 per year. You can spend that sum in the time it takes to tip a server 20 percent rather than 15 for a good meal. It’s insignificant.
It’s also a far more equitable way to cover this cost. Responsible bar and restaurant owners don’t get socked with a big fee hike for services they don’t receive. People citywide who enjoy the Old Port for all its charms pitch in to help keep it safe on summer weekend nights.
The City Council is scheduled to take action on this matter this Wednesday, Feb. 21. An informal headcount indicates it’ll be a close vote between those who support the creation of a new super-overlay zone and those who’d add this cost to the general budget.
There are a couple other alternatives on the table, too, like one to create the super-overlay zone and raise the license fee for retail alcohol sales citywide. Another would raise the fee for any type of liquor license citywide.
Officials are wandering down this rabbit hole in an absurd attempt to link the fee hike to the source of the problem. It’s dawned on them that many people enter the Old Port having already ingested a few cocktails. That realization prompted the proposals to create the super-overlay zone, raise fees on corner stores and supermarkets that sell booze, and make every bar and restaurant in Portland pay for problems in this one area.
Why not follow this “reasoning” to its logical conclusion and tax barley farmers and grape-stompers?
It’s time to be done with all this nonsense and absorb this minor cost into the general city budget. Then, as the security situation continues to improve down there, start cutting overtime police patrols in the Old Port and focusing enforcement on the rowdy bars and clubs that are actually causing the problems.
— Chris Busby
Chris Busby is editor and publisher of The Bollard.
