Council Asked To Reconsider Street Closures

Cookeville City Council Member Eric Walker asked the council Monday to reconsider allowing special event public street closures with alcohol sales so long as businesses have a say-so.

Council set to hear a second reading on the proposed ordinance Thursday night. As of now, outdoor events with alcohol on public property could only be held at the Putnam County Fairgrounds or the Leslie Town Centre parking lot. Walker wants to change the ordinance to allow streets to be closed if a business located in the closure area sponsors the non-profit event.

“That’s a major component of it being beneficial to the businesses in those streets that it would affect, and it would ultimately allow those businesses to partner with non-profits and achieve the goals that they’ve requested us to allow them to do, and that some of them felt like they’ve had the right to do in the past,” Walker said. “So I think that it overall could be a positive thing.”

Walker said he talked to several businesses who supported the sponsorship idea. But Council Member Chad Gilbert said nothing has changed, as the closure could make one business person happy and one across the street unhappy.

“That was one of the complaints was, ‘hey, I have no control of what’s happening being dumped at my doorstep,'” Gilbert said.

“I talked directly to the business owners and I believe the words they said, ‘we have good business relationships with our neighbors and we feel like that can be controlled,'” Walker responded.

“And there’s such a measure of presumption there that this business across the street is going to accept whatever the one across the street is sponsoring,” Gilbert said. “That just doesn’t seem the dynamic of that business.”

The city began the road toward an ordinance on alcohol-related events because previous events unknowingly violated the law. There were also concerns from local business leaders, particularly those on Broad Street, about the impact on business of closing streets.

Mayor Laurin Wheaton said she would like to hear from businesses about the sponsorship idea, but did not know if the council could get that done by Thursday.

The council could decide to table the ordinance for further changes or could consider language for an amendment proposed by Walker. Walker’s proposed change would be a significant alteration to the ordinance, meaning the process would start over on ordinance approval. City Attorney Dan Rader said that would mean another reading.

“Well, we’ve missed our opportunities this year to, like, there won’t be anything happen this year just because of the way the ordinance written,” Walker said. “So, really seasonably, nothing’s going to happen until next year. If there were to be an area for it to happen in right now, there’s nothing. So, ultimately, if we want businesses to partner with non-profits downtown and be able to close streets, raise awareness, or raise money, however they work it out, we need to include those streets into this.”

A committee worked on the proposed ordinance for just over six months. They considered the idea of allowing businesses impacted by a street closure to vote on such a move.

“Just reconsidering, allowing celebrations to happen in our community, ultimately, that’s what these are,” Walker said. “I mean, a lot of these are just celebrations. This is the public community coming together. And just because there’s going to be some alcohol at a celebration means that we’re not going to allow it to happen anymore. And we’ve narrowed it down to only two places that require other governing bodies to make decisions. And so there really is nowhere in Cookeville where we’re the only governing body that makes a decision on whether it can happen or not.”