In September, when some downtown bar owners voluntarily decided to ban weekend drink specials for a short period of time, the fight over a city drink-special ban was forgotten.

In its place, the Madison City Council focused its attention on other issues. Sadly, however, the Council this semester often spent its time on issues outside its sphere of influence instead of efficiently addressing important issues such as the smoking ban and Section 8, which were instead tabled for numerous weeks because no one could come to a compromise.

The Council did have some successes this semester in passing legislation; unfortunately, every decision it made went against the best interest of its constituents.

Most notable is the smoking ban. Established not to go into effect until 2008, the smoking ban passed by the Council makes it illegal to smoke in an establishment that makes 50 percent of its revenue from alcohol. When the Council passed this ban, it not only took the rights of a large part of its constituents — the bar and tavern owners — to make business decisions regarding their establishments, it also ensured that it would become harder for downtown bars to control their patrons.

With the ban, smokers will have to travel in and out of bars to smoke. Drinks will be left unattended, bouncers will have a harder time keeping track of everyone, and chaos will ensue. More importantly, as it stands now, there are places for people to go if they do not want to deal with secondhand smoke. Since customers are not currently forced to be around smoke, the City Council should allow business owners to decide for themselves if they wish to allow smoking.

Mainly, the Council must focus on curbing panhandling on State Street. In the past few years, the number of panhandlers has notably increased. The council must seriously look at solutions to get these people off the streets. Its focus should be to find these people help and rehabilitation services — not simply force them off the street into jail or other locations.

Finally, the Halloween riots. On the first weekend in November, 65,000 masked revelers gathered on State Street to partake in the time-honored tradition of Halloween: Madison-style. Toward the end of the night, the fun went too far, riots broke out and the police had to use tear gas to bring the crowd under control. What happened the weekend of Halloween is not representative of the relationship State Street has with students. Breaking store windows and inciting riots will only cause more of a crackdown on Halloween celebrations by police.

Next semester will prove to be a deciding and changing time for the city. Elections in April could yield a new mayor and new City Council representatives. In addition to panhandling, the issue of drink specials will reemerge for consideration; there is also the suggestion of combining the city, Capitol and UW police forces into one department.

Our biggest hope is that the Council will not waste time, as it was apt to do this year, in debating and deciding upon legislation. The more efficiently the city addresses these issues, the sooner they will be solved.