Mifflin residents and University of Wisconsin students may have one last chance to discourage the Madison Police Department from enforcing a new four-keg-per-house rule at Saturday’s Mifflin Street block party.
City Council President Mike Verveer will hold a meeting Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. in the Madison Senior Center, located at 330 W. Mifflin St., to address the issue.
The meeting, which Verveer has held every year since the 1996 riots, is for Mifflin Street residents to hear first-hand the city’s expectations for the annual event. Verveer said representatives from the police and fire departments will be in attendance to answer the questions students and residents may have.
“This is the police department’s first-ever attempt to limit the number of kegs residents can have,” Verveer said. “I expect this will be a major topic of interest at the meeting.”
Verveer said the reasoning behind the new keg limit is due to the growing size of the event. After riots in 1996, the number of people in attendance at the annual drinking event decreased.
However, in recent years, the event has regained popularity. Last year’s attendance of around 40,000 people was the largest since the riots, according to Verveer.
“There is a concern the event will be more popular than last year,” Verveer said.
He does not, however, feel that four kegs is an acceptable limit to impose on Mifflin residents.
“It is unreasonably low,” Verveer said, adding after speaking to numerous Mifflin Street residents that most have said almost all houses having parties expect to offer more than four kegs.
“Every house I was at last year had more than four kegs,” UW sophomore Emily Reardon said. Reardon, who is also a Mifflin Street resident, said most of her neighbors were planning on exceeding the four-keg limit this year, despite the police department’s regulation.
Verveer said the police department needs to hear from the residents if they want the limit changed. However, there is only a potential of getting the four-keg limit changed, he said.
Police have also proclaimed Mifflin Street a “glass-free zone” on Saturday, as State Street was last Halloween.
