GAINESVILLE – City Manager Bryan Lackey told members of the Gainesville City Council at their work session Thursday morning that he wanted to update several city ordinances to better comply with new state law.
“Mainly dealing with our alcoholic beverage ordinance, but also dealing with a few other ordinances and how we interact with our business community,” Lackey told the council.
“As you know state law changed this past year addressing breweries and brew pubs,” he continued, “so that they can sell the product they make onsite and also allow people to take some…and take it home with them.”
In all, four ordinances will undergo modification and update, with the result that over the next several weeks they are subject to required public readings and public comment in order to execute the desired changes. First reading of the ordinance amendments will happen Tuesday, August 1, at the city council's voting meeting in the Gainesville Justice Center on Queen City Parkway.
“I like the simplification,” Councilwoman Barbara Brooks told Lackey. “I applaud you all for taking that step.”
“The changes in state law, by the way, take effect September 1st so we’ll have this done in time…and we’ll be compliant with state law,” Lackey added.
Lackey explained that some of the amendments don’t specifically reflect changes in state law, but since amending an ordinance is such a time-consuming process (two public readings and hearings as well as mandated advertising in the local newspaper) Lackey said it was prudent to make the ancillary changes at the same time.
“Since we were going to dig into the ordinance…when you dig into an ordinance it is kind of a big deal, you might as well go ahead and take a look at it and clean it up,” he explained.
"In fact, what we're doing, instead of trying to build our own rules and regulations, we're simply referring to state law. That's really what the 'clean-up' is, it's just to say that it (the local ordinance) is what state law is...so that if state law does change in the next couple of years we don't have to do this again."
Click here to view the four ordinances under amendment consideration.
