by Earl Williamson

The third License Review Board hearing regarding the Kirkwood Bar & Grill alcohol permit resulted in a vote of approval for the application by a vote of 2 for, 1 against and 1 abstained. The application will again go to the mayor for review.

The presentation on behalf of Neighborhood Planning Unit-O and Kirkwood was hampered by being restricted to the five points listed in the Mayor's remand letter (which we were not provided or advised of until the start of our presentation).

Efforts to use our available material to address the five points were prevented by the Board's refusal to accept 911 data even though substantiated by affidavits and/or police reports. The board chose instead to use only partial data from earlier hearings.

The board also refused to allow presentation of an affidavit from a former KBG employee that suggested free alcohol promotions and 2 for 1 drink specials under the applicant's direction as well as advertising them. Both are illegal.

As before, the board continued to ignore a wide range of errors and omissions in the application for alcohol permit, even those are grounds under City Code to deny the application. They literally did not respond when these were brought up.

The Mayor's October remand letter requested that APD re-examine KBG's operations and they did so in several follow up visits. Unfortunately these were all made after KBG ceased operations and the doors were locked. The board interpreted this to mean there were no longer any problems at KBG.

We would like to sincerely thank Kirkwood's response to this hearing. More than a dozen Kirkwood residents attended the hearing and in less than a day more than 100 e-mails were received by the License Review Board and mayor.

Mr. Williamson is chairman of NPU-O.