{"id":5582,"date":"2013-05-13T18:16:09","date_gmt":"2013-05-13T22:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/?p=5582"},"modified":"2013-05-15T08:17:25","modified_gmt":"2013-05-15T12:17:25","slug":"this-weeks-savannah-city-council-agenda-peppered-with-tricky-items","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/2013\/05\/13\/this-weeks-savannah-city-council-agenda-peppered-with-tricky-items\/","title":{"rendered":"This week&#8217;s Savannah city council agenda peppered with tricky items"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><div class=\"e26b170012445c56d240655bdd03f7bf\" data-index=\"10\" style=\"float: right; margin:10px 0 10px 10px;\">\n<script async src=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script>\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:inline-block;width:300px;height:600px\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-5595881567027133\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"8268618372\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<br \/>\nWhenever I hear complaints about governance in the city of Savannah, I try to point out that elected officials and fulltime staff have a lot of really tough decisions to tackle. I don&#8217;t agree with all their choices and am not afraid to say when I disagree, but it often seems reductive when public commentators act like every single issue is or was a no-brainer.<\/p>\n<p>Just consider a few of the tricky items on this week&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/savannahga.gov\/AgendaCenter\/ViewFile\/Agenda\/05162013-150\" target=\"_blank\">preliminary agenda<\/a> for the May 16 city council meeting.<\/p>\n<p>Item #9: the request for a full liquor license at World of Beer at 112 West Broughton St. When World of Beer opened and I realized that they literally only served beer and a little wine, I even noted in a column that the menu &#8220;is problematic for us mixed-drink drinkers who make up a sizable chunk of Savannah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bar goers.&#8221; I&#8217;m assuming council will approve the license, but, if memory serves, there&#8217;s only one other bar (by definition, an establishment that serves more alcohol than food throughout the day) on Broughton Street right now &#8212; Dosha on West Broughton. A decision to expand the bar presence on Broughton is sort of a big deal, even if there&#8217;s no clear reason to deny the request.<\/p>\n<p>Item #14: the rezoning of 300 Drayton St. (corner of Liberty) to allow restaurants, hotels, and bars. The owner wishes to open a restaurant but has been fought by some forces in the neighborhood. I support the rezoning, but I expect some downtown residents to speak out against it. I don&#8217;t think their concerns, primarily about parking, are adequate to limit a reasonable use of a key corner along two significant downtown streets. UPDATE: For more background and a statement from the man who wants to open a restaurant there, check out the comments <a href=\"http:\/\/savannahred.blogspot.com\/2013\/03\/e-shaver-bookseller-tapas-bar.html\" target=\"_blank\">on this post by Savannah Red<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Item #15: the rezoning of the old <del datetime=\"2013-05-14T02:15:52+00:00\">Ramona<\/del> <del datetime=\"2013-05-14T02:44:50+00:00\">Roman<\/del> Romana Riley school on Anderson Street. Finally &#8212; maybe &#8212; a developer really wants to reuse that old building and large lot. But current zoning precludes a dense enough residential development for the project to be viable. There&#8217;s not going to be any significant controversy about this, but it&#8217;s a big deal for a struggling area on the east side. UPDATE: <a href=\"http:\/\/savannahnow.com\/news\/2013-05-14\/savannah-considering-support-low-income-housing-project#.UZN8wRUFrcQ.facebook\" target=\"_blank\">Click here<\/a> for a piece in Wednesday&#8217;s paper by Eric Curl about the plan for low-income housing. <\/p>\n<p>Item #19: Wet Willie&#8217;s wants to put awnings along Jefferson and Bryan, plus a very large one extending 16-feet into City Market. Before coming to a decision on that, I&#8217;d want to compare the look and depth of that large awning to others in City Market. That just seems an awfully large intrusion into public space &#8212; how would City Market look if every property owner chose to do that? City staff has recommended denial of that largest of awnings because of potential issues regarding tree maintenance and liability.<\/p>\n<p>And there&#8217;s item #37: a show cause hearing for Taco Abajo. Here&#8217;s the text: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A hearing for Robert Hauft to show cause why his liquor, beer and wine (drink) license with Sunday sales at 217 \u00c2\u00bd W. Broughton Street, located between Jefferson and Barnard Streets in District 1, should not be suspended or revoked on grounds that the operation of the establishment has constituted a nuisance requiring an unusual amount of police and enforcement activity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know enough about the issues at Taco Abajo to have a clear opinion, but decisions like this are especially difficult. Also note that this is the exact location of Frozen Paradise years ago, which created all sorts of issues in the Broughton Street corridor. Any decision to suspend a restaurant&#8217;s liquor license can imperil the business&#8217; very survival, but clearly city staff thought such a drastic measure needed consideration. <\/p>\n<p>With the exception of the rezoning of <del datetime=\"2013-05-14T02:15:52+00:00\">Ramona<\/del> Romana Riley, all of these items could have the potential to generate considerable controversy at the meeting. Depending on the details surrounding some of these issues, it&#8217;s entirely possible that reasonable people could disagree on some of these.<\/p>\n<p>And there are other items that could prove contentious. It&#8217;s a full agenda.<\/p>\n<div class=\"e26b170012445c56d240655bdd03f7bf\" data-index=\"2\" style=\"float: none; margin:0px 0 0px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script>\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:inline-block;width:300px;height:250px\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-5595881567027133\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"4374909701\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Whenever I hear complaints about governance in the city of Savannah, I try to point out that elected officials and fulltime staff have a lot of really tough decisions to tackle. I don&#8217;t agree with all their choices and am&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/2013\/05\/13\/this-weeks-savannah-city-council-agenda-peppered-with-tricky-items\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[8],"tags":[1414],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gN9R-1s2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5582"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5582\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}