For a city renowned for its permanent drunkenness, Madison’s policymakers and public affairs wonks aren’t exactly representative of Wisconsin’s beer-drinking population. In my experience at endless city meetings about the Alcohol License Density Ordinance, which restricts bars and taverns in the downtown core, the only spectators with the perseverance to stay until the end of the hearing were anti-alcohol advocates older than 65.
City Hall just isn’t an appealing place for students, unless you’re a student journalist.
But student success in keeping the City Council from extending ALDO, one of the city’s worst pieces of legislation in recent memory, indicates a change in student involvement after a year notable for student government gridlock.
The alcohol ordinance began in 2007 and effectively began a ban on new bars within a section of downtown east of Park Street, west of Blair Street and between Lake Monona and Lake Mendota. After postponing a renewal of the legislation for nearly a year to let more important issues like the renewal of public union contracts make it through city process briskly, the City Council finally passed a sweeping revision of ALDO earlier this month.
The revision includes many changes that officials like Ald. Mike Verveer and Ald. Scott Resnick have pushed for months, such as including an entertainment license, allowing well-behaving bars to increase their capacity according to fire code standards and making the license review process more lenient to establishments with their eyes on the concert-going crowd. This will open doors for well-intentioned bars like the on-hold Sconnie Bar, whose application has sat on the sidelines for almost a year because of ALDO’s red tape.
For almost any student or business-loving Madisonian, overhauling ALDO was a no-brainer. Our city is noted for its low crime, high culture and easygoing nature. ALDO may have decreased crime downtown, but it did nothing to prevent serious incidents at establishments outside downtown Madison and actually drew attention away from problem bars on the city’s outskirts.
But as debate in ASM’s Student Council raged on about the New Badger Partnership, the ALDO debate never made it out of Associated Student of Madison’s Legislative Affairs Committee, which made a valiant effort to make collaboration between ASM and municipal government a priority.
ALDO’s change, which Resnick said is essentially the death of the ordinance’s old restrictions, also signals what to expect for student relations between student and municipal government this year, as prominent ASM representatives like Chair Allie Gardner, Vice Chair Beth Huang and Representative Leland Pan showed up at this month’s council meeting to testify in favor of the changes to ALDO.
Although some ASM followers have tried to label ASM’s new leadership as too idealistic and liberal to make progress, the Gardner and Huang team have already done more for student issues than last year’s student council session. ASM’s left wing are ironically acting like Wisconsin Republicans; in the minority they endlessly whine and as a majority they effectively push through their agenda. That’s a compliment, not an insult.
For years student government has been plagued by needless tactics, from forces on the right and left: walking out of meetings to break quorum, rubber-stamping initiatives from Bascom Hall and literally calling each other “douchebags.”
Since Biddy Martin’s resignation as chancellor will likely postpone major campus initiatives demanding ASM’s attention, this year’s session should avoid the gridlock and continue focusing its attention where the real student-related issues will be tackled this year: City Hall.
