Brentwood Looks to Redefine “Schools” to Limit Liquor Licenses

On Tuesday, the Brentwood City Council agreed to directed staff to work on a definition of “schools” and how it pertains to liquor licenses.

By changing the definition of schools to potentially now include daycare’s, it now impacts those potentially seeking a license to serve alcohol as they face limitations based on distance from a school/daycare or limiting hours of alcohol sales or have mitigation plans depending on the type of liquor license it is seeking.

Councilmember Jovita Mendoza brought the future agenda item to the council saying when she moved here the town was 20,000 people with a lot of open space and was not an issue like they are seeing lately. She said there are state laws on the books for distances but said the city needs an ordinance to decide what they want liquor licenses to look at.

“There are parts of our town that are inundated with liquor licenses and not just talking about downtown and I find it disheartening that some of them are in the lower income places that are finding liquor stores so I want something that when someone applies for a license they know this is our standard,” stated Mendoza. “If you want a liquor license within 600-ft, please justify how you are going to mitigate any negative ramifications to a youth sensitive area. If you are going to do it within 100 ft of homes, what are you going to do to mitigate anything that is going to happen there.”

Mendoza expressed concerns that they need an ordinance because she believed the city was going to see a lot more applications coming to Brentwood. She also shared she has friends at the Walnut Creek Police Department  who say they are inundated with “drunk in public” on the weekends—saying the officer wishes the council would do something to help out the police department because the police is dealing with a big case workload.

“I just want to reflect what the state says so its very clear that we follow the state,” explained Mendoza. “If you want to do it within 600 ft, you have to come, you have to explain it. Tell us what you are going to do to keep it safe.”

After public comments which spoke in support, Mendoza brought up the recent action the council took on a Taqueria and their liquor license so they need to define what a “school means” to our city–in that application, the council chose to significantly limit hours alcohol could be sold, even though a neighboring restaurant two doors down has no limitations.

“There was some discrepancy of what a school means,” said Mendoza. “Is the presence of children everyday considered a school versus a youth center versus a day care. So its clear to me or everyone else coming in.”

City Manager Tim Ogden shared that Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) issues the licenses and check in with the city to see if its zoned for it and see if it needs a Conditional Use Permit (CUP)—they are the ones who makes the determination about the definition of schools. Ogden said the council could choose to create a standard higher than what ABC allows.

Ogden asked if Mendoza was trying to create standards higher than ABC in which she replied she wanted to keep them the same.

“If someone wants to open a business 100 feet of a house right now, what is our process for that? Do we leave it on the shoulders of the state who are sometimes just pushing papers or do we take an active role and say our ordinance matches the state and we don’t think it should be there,” stated Mendoza. “Or we think it should be there with certain guidelines. So what is this operator going to do to ensure that there isn’t drunk people on the lawns across the street. I just want it to match, it may be double dipping but I think the last one was confusing.”

Alexis Morris, Community Development Director, shared not every business who sells alcohol requires a CUP, but when they do we have the ability to provide conditions of approval.

“Right now, there are no separation requirements in our zoning code between alcohol sales or sensitive uses whether its schools or a day care,” stated Morris. “Its very wide open in our zoning code. In order to regulate a match of ABC or be stricture, we would need to introduce new land use regulations and define what types of alcohol sales that applies to. There are dozens of different types of alcohol licenses that a business can get… so we would need to define what types of ABC licenses we want to regulate differently.”

Morris said there was a lot of ways Brentwood could regulate alcohol sales but it was up to how the city council wanted to regulate—while pointing out ABC 600 ft and 100 ft rules are not definite and may be enforced but they also may not by ABC.  She said if council wanted to mimic ABC they can change language out from “may” to “should” if they wanted to be more strict. But stated again they often overlook the rule because its not definitive.

“I recommend we get specific about what type of alcohol sales we are talking about, how we want to restrict it. Is it a CUP for certain types or most types of alcohol sales? Distance requirements and define sensitive uses they want to have separation from and those are all things we can do but they are not standard in our code,” explained Morris. “But this can get pretty detailed and specific.”

Morris also pointed out ABC has control over the licenses, but Brentwood has control over the land use while every city has own regulation on bars, night clubs, liquor stores—with different separation requirements.

Mendoza urged the need to define “sensitive uses” so when people apply they know what the city means—while focusing on businesses around homes, such as giving notice to residents if something is opening.

Morris also pointed out that ABC does have rules on over saturation of liquor licenses of different types.

Mendoza asked if the city could define its own guideline on what over saturation would be. Ogden replied when there is an over saturation the city says “no”.

Brentwood Police Chief Tim Herbert shared that if its not an over saturation, ABC will approve the license. If there is an over saturation, ABC forwards the application to the police department which they review they are trying to open, the ramifications.  He provided the example of restaurants at the Streets of Brentwood wanting to serve alcohol, if they all want to do it, they would have to approve it based on the saturation levels—then ABC would approve it based on determination.

“If there is no over saturation, we don’t even see it. They just stick it in the window, that the license is coming,” said Herbet.

Councilmember PA’Tamisha Pierson said she liked the process they have now and should take it situation by situation. She called the taqueria decision hard because they didn’t have a definition for schools and advocated to define schools in municipal code.

“Is it a daycare? They are in day care learning ABC’s, this is a school to me,” said Pierson noting she didn’t want to restrict bringing businesses to Brentwood and they can make requirements like they did with the taqueria as to when they can sell alcohol.

Mendoza agreed that they needed to better define schools and better understand saturation laws because they see so many in District 2.

“It’s just weird to me how many we have over there,” said Mendoza.

Herbert said Brentwood Blvd is dealing with multiple census tracts along with crime which plays into saturation. For example, Kohls is on a census tract which with the retail theft shoots it up above where ABC can simply approve a business based on those numbers alone.

Assistant City Manager Darin Gale brought up the law of unintended consequences and the council needed to consider the downtown and a current restaurant looking to go downtown could be impacted and not be able to open up downtown.  He also brought up the technology center that will have mixed use development but the council wants mixed use vertical with businesses below and housing above which could restrict many uses. He also brought up PA-1 areas.

He urged the council to consider treating the downtown specific plan differently than the Brentwood Blvd specific plan and the innovation center.

“We will implement whatever the council wants, but at the same time there will be an impact,” said Gale.

Mendoza said they needed to move forward with defining a school.

Morris clarified that defining a school does not create a separation from it so it would still go to the planning commission if a CUP was included—but does not create a requirement on distances, which if the council wants that, just know its still discretionary.

Mendoza said the applicant would still have to go through the process and steps of how they would mitigate anything that might happen negatively versus a “yes” and we deal with it later—they have to have a plan before they get a license.

Morris again stated not everyone is seeking a CUP so they would not always have that discussion based on zoning.

Mendoza said she wanted a definition so that everyone knows what Brentwood defines a school as.

“I absolutely agree, clarity helps everyone,” said Morris. “But as the person who is going to be administering this code I have a feeling that is not going to be sufficient for council because its not going to prevent or limit the sale of alcohol near schools. If council is that concerned about it, just defining it may help when people push back on ABC but does not give us any regulatory teeth to say you cannot sell alcohol near schools.”

Mendoza clarified if that included anyone seeking a CUP.

Morris replied, it was still discretionary because just defining it doesn’t tell the planning commission one way or another they should deny it.

“They can vote on or we can call for review like we did last time,” stated Mendoza.

City Legal shared the city ordinances define schools and where they allow them or what can be allowed around them—suggest the council consider defining schools separately for alcohol versus how they generally define them which would impact everything else where schools/daycares are referenced in all land uses.

The council then approved in a 5-0 vote to direct staff to define schools and how it pertains to liquor licenses.