Watch Davanni's get off selling alcohol to kids again, this coming Monday...
From:
John Kysylyczyn
Date:
Jun 13 21:25 UTC
Short link
Dan, again I appreciate your willingness to respond. Your commentary provides
more food for thought.
The damming words of the administrative law judge are posted at the end of my
commentary along with some history of these laws that hopefully should put in
perspective why this Davanni's violation is something we rarely if ever see in
Roseville. I also offer some commentary on the secret report emailed to the
council on this issue just hours before the council meeting.
In reply to Mr. Roe's specific comments...
He mentions that while the council reduced the penalty for Davanni's by 97%
over the recommended penalty, this is a 6000% increase over the original
penalty.
Well this isn't exactly an apples to apples comparison. You put forward an
apples to oranges comparison. There is no comparison to the "original" penalty
because the two are not tied together to the level you seem to be implying. We
have an old penalty from last year that is over and done with, and now we have
a new violation of a different provision in law. Let me explain why I say
this.
The original penalty you refer to is the violation of the law of waiters
selling alcohol to kids. Davanni's has been given this ticket multiple times
over the past 8 years. Essentially what you have are minimum wage clerks
selling alcohol without checking id's, and who could care less because jobs are
a dime a dozen.
This most recent penalty given to Davanni's is something completely different.
That's isn't just my words, that is the words of council member Pust who gave
an excellent speech on this issue at the council meeting before she voted no in
reducing this new penalty by 97%.
This most recent penalty is one that as far as I know, no Roseville business
has ever been penalized with in at least 8 years if not in the entire history
of Roseville.
To very clear, in this case, it wasn't a minimum wage employee who could care
less about alcohol laws, selling a beer to a kid without carding someone. This
was the Roseville Police Department telling Davanni's that they were having
their license suspended for one day and that no alcohol sales could occur.
Then MANAGEMENT chose to do nothing and due to MANAGEMENT failures, waiters
were allowed to sell alcohol when their liquor license was suspended. To be
precise, it was the ASSISTANT MANAGER who actually made the sale. Davanni's
received a direct order from the Roseville Police Department and their
management team was so inept that they couldn't even follow it. It was pointed
out at the council meeting that other businesses have posted a sign a week
before a suspension date to alert customers. Davanni's management didn't even
do this. As Ms. Pust pointed out, this is a management failure. I want
readers of this posting to understand that this isn't some minimum wage 21 year
old kid selling a beer to someone without checking id first.
Mr. Roe's comments about Davanni's having $4500 in alcohol sales PER YEAR, as a
reason to defend that revocation of their license was too harsh, is actually
not something to raise if you want to defend lowering their penalty by 97%.
Supporting a 60 day suspension of Davanni's license only cost them a measly
$750 dollars of sales.
Now I might buy your argument if we were talking about Old Chicago, another
frequently violator of the law, but not as bad as Davanni's. A 60 day
suspension of Old Chicago's license would probably cost them over $200,000 in
sales, not a measly $750.
Even if this was Old Chicago that we were talking about, I still wouldn't buy
your argument in general. What Mr. Klausing, Ms. Ihlan, and yourself have
decided to do is look at the balance sheet of the business and for financial
reasons have decided to substantially bend the existing standards we have in
law.
You bent these standards for a business that didn't just have a waiter get
caught selling alcohol to kids. You have bent the standards for a business
that has a history of having waiters getting caught selling alcohol to kids,
placing them as the number one violator in the city of Roseville. This time,
it wasn't a 21 year old kid selling alcohol to a kid, but a management team so
incompetent that they ignored a direct order from the Roseville Police
Department that their liquor license was suspended.
A 21 year old waiter selling a beer to a kid, and having a management team that
is completely incompetent and ignores direct orders of the Roseville Police
Department are two completely different things.
This is why the penalties for both of these situations are different. Note
that it was the Roseville Police Department that recommended these issues be
treated differently and it was the Roseville Police Department that recommended
that revocation be the penalty for selling on a suspended license.
------Administrative judge comments
I do take note that the administrative judge did uphold the council's 97%
reduction in penalty to Davanni's. But on the other hand, what else did we
think was going to happen? Once you reduce a penalty by that much, how much
further down can you go?
I find the words of the administrative judge to be pretty damming upon Mr.
Klausing, Ms. Ihlan, and Mr. Roe's actions in my opinion.
The administrative judge states, "There is no inherent right to sell alcohol
beverages or hold a liquor license. Municipal authorities have broad
discretion to determine the manner in which liquor license are regulated, and
when fines are imposed, the review is limited to whether the city acted
capriciously, arbitrarily, or oppressively."
The Roseville City Council has now seemingly added the standard that the
businesses balance sheet must be reviewed and considered before a penalty was
levied.
So these three members have put the city in a position where they cut one
penalty by 97% for the biggest violator in the city, Davanni's, and now if they
don't do the same thing for everyone else who has violations in the future,
that newly cited business could bring a claim forward stating that the city
acted "capriciously, arbitrary, or oppressively." If the biggest violator in
the history of the city gets off with a 97% reduction in penalty, then they
will say why can't we all get that deal.
The poorly thought out decision of the city council also gives a clear
statement that gross mismanagement practices of a business who sells alcohol in
violation of a direct order from the Roseville Police Department, is now
apparently in the same penalty category as a 21 year old waiter who serves
alcohol to a kid.
-----Roseville city code
A past city council (8 years ago) determined that three offences were so
egregious that the standard penalty would be REVOCATION of your liquor license.
They are as follows (Roseville City Code 302.15):
"Commission of a felony related to the licensed activity."
"Sale of alcohol beverages while license is under suspension."
"Sale of intoxicating liquor where only license is for 3.2 percent malt
liquor."
To the best of my knowledge, no Roseville business has violated any one of
these three items in the past 8 years. It is quite possible that these three
activities have never been violated in the past 20 years. Unfortunately
historical research is not a strong point of staff so we probably will never
know.
To be clear, the current violation of the law before us is the second item in
this list. Davanni's sold alcohol while their license is under suspension. To
my knowledge, no Roseville business has done this in the past 8 years and quite
possibly in the past 20 or more years.
So while Mr. Klausing, Ms. Ihlan, and Mr. Roe have tried to paint Davanni's
actions as just being an extension of their existing violations of the law
(without pointing out to the public that they are the number one violator in
city history), this simply is not true. As Ms. Pust clearly pointed out at the
last council meeting this issue was discussed, these actions are two separate
issues. A minimum wage waiter selling to a kid is a completely different
category than what is clearly a management problem at Davanni's.
------Adding insult to injury
To add insult to injury was this stunt pulled by the council and the city
manager to change the report on the Davanni's penalty just hours before the
council meeting was held. They put one report in the council packet and posted
it on the internet for the public, which called for the standard penalty of
revocation of the license. Then just hours before the meeting, a secret
revised report calling for a 99% reduction in penalties was emailed to just the
council members just hours before the meeting.
I have to wonder what is actually going on behind the scenes. Clearly this
deception was done intentionally to cut down on the number of people who would
testify on the issue. I believe the people at Mothers Against Drunk Driving
would have testified in opposition to a 97% reduction in the recommended
penalty. They and other similar groups have testified before the council in
support of more stringent standards numerous times in the past. It appears
that some backroom deal was struck over the weekend or the morning the day of
the council meeting. It also appears that the city attorney played a role in
this. A lot of us would like to know who cut who a deal and for what personal
benefit. Common sense says that this wasn't any sort of accident. It was way
too orchestrated.
I would consider filing an ethics complaint against the city attorney, but Mr.
Klausing (an attorney himself) in his much self-praised ethics reforms, removed
the city attorney and all outside hired consultants from oversight of the
ethics commission and compliance with our ethical rules. (I believe that Mr.
Klausing, Mr. Maschka, and Ms. Pust passed that change over the objections of
Mr. Kough and Ms. Ihlan)
I personally feel the council's and city manager's actions to be dishonest,
unethical, and probably illegal. The public is owed an on camera apology and a
press release expressing this, at a very minimum.
John M. Kysylyczyn
K Solutions LLC, owner
3083 Victoria Street
Roseville, MN 55113
email: <email obscured>
home office: (651) 484-1384
www.ksolutionsllc.com
Mayor of Roseville, MN 2000-2004
-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Roe [mailto:dan.roe@comcast.net]
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2008 9:06 AM
To: Roseville Issues Forum
Subject: Re: [RIF] Watch Davanni's get off selling alcohol to kids again, this
coming Monday...
The original suspension for selling to the minor during our compliance check
was 1 day, plus a fine - the full provision of our code for the original
violation. Davanni's was found to have violated THAT suspension, which led to
the additional penalty.
While one can say that the 60-day suspension we imposed for violating the
original 1-day suspension is a 97% decrease in penalty over full revocation
(based on the statutory 5-year limit on revocation), I would point out that it
is also a 6000% (60x) INCREASE over the original penalty, plus another $2000 in
fines. I hardly see that as letting Davanni's "get off (for) selling alcohol
to kids." Especially when they claim something like $4500 in liquor sales per
year. Short of revocation of their license, the 60 days and $2000 fine is the
maximum allowed by law. I respect the opinion of those who believe that the
full license revocation is more appropriate, but believe that to be simply too
harsh in this instance.
The appeal hearing did not go in Davanni's favor - it upheld the city's
penalty. The action item on Monday's agenda is to agree with the
recommendation of the hearing officer, and re-affirm our penalty. Other than
perhaps Davanni's, I don't know of anyone proposing at this time to reduce our
original penalty.
Dan Roe
Info about Dan Roe: http://forums.e-democracy.org/p/danroe
This topic's messages may be viewed at:
http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/topic/4e1eC0Ro5TFR7GBiOqOkJe
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