Safety And Licensing Committee Reverses Course And Votes 3-2 To Grant Corner Pub Owner Extension To Deadline To Get Bar Operational And Not Lose License

The Safety and Licensing Committee met 07/24/2024 and took up the request to not renew the alcohol license for the Corner Pub on the grounds that it had not been used for over a year and should therefore be considered abandoned.

The committee initially, by a vote of 3-2, recommended that the license not be renewed, but when it came in front of the Common Council for a final vote, Alderperson Nate Wolff (District 10) referred it back to the committee for further discussion, giving his reason for doing so as, “Just based on the date they were told that they had to have a professional install, and I feel like there’s some information missing and maybe miscommunication, but this has been a good tenant. So, I think that they, they deserve a little more time to talk about it and try to figure it out.”

This time the Safety and Licensing Committee voted 3-2 to recommend a final deadline of 08/15/2024 for the Corner Pub to be up and running in order for it to not lose its license, pointing to “the catastrophic circumstances that the owner and family endured after the catastrophic circumstances that destroyed the licensed establishment” as good cause to grant this extension. Alderpersons William Siebers (District 1), Denise Fenton (District 6), and Alex Schultz (District 9) voted in favor of the extension, and Alderpersons Chris Croatt (District 14) and Chad Doran (District 15) voted against granting an extension.

I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:

There was not much new information provided on top of what was discussed during the 06/26/2024 committee meeting and the 07/10/2024 committee meeting and the public comments provided during the 07/17/2024 Common Council meeting.

Really, the only three new items of information that were brought to the attention of the committee were (1) the broken water pipe that catastrophically damaged the bar happened in February of 2023, just before February 3, nearly 4 months before 05/30/2023 when the city became aware of the issue and the Health Department determined significant repairs would need to take place before the business could reopen, (2) the bar owner had continued working to restore the building and had repaired multiple issues although they were still not approved to be reopened, and (3) there were currently 3 available alcohol licenses (not counting the one currently held by Corner Pub) and 6 applicants that were all working to get those licenses on a first opened first served basis.

The basic timeline of events seems to be:

• 02/03/2023 – a burst water pipe caused catastrophic damage to the interior of this building resulting in the business being unable to operate.
• 05/30/2023 – The Appleton Health Department inspected the building and informed the owner that there were “several significant areas of concern and several city departments that would need to approve of the repairs and conditions of the bar before it would be able to reopen.”
• 06/28/2023 – The City Clerk sent a letter to the owner letting her know that if the business was not reopened by 05/30/2024 her alcohol license would be in danger of being revoked or not renewed.
• 03/11/2024 – The business applied to renew its alcohol license for the 2024-25 licensing year
• 05/30-2023 – 05/30-2024 – The owner did not take out any permits to carry out work or seek any inspections from the city to identify what issues needed to be addressed.
• 05/30/2024 – The Appleton Health Department inspected the building again, noted the business did not appear to be open, and determined that it was not in a state to be opened and had not been approved to be open by the Fire and Inspections Departments.
• 05/31/2024 – The City provided notice to the owner of its intention to refuse to renew the alcohol license
• Sometime between 05/31/2024 and 06/28/2024 – The owner started making a concerted effort to fix the building
• 06/28/2024 – The owner appeared before the Safety and Licensing Committee and said she thought all the work had been completed and they were just waiting for the inspectors to approve it. The committee voted to hold the item until the 07/10/2024 meeting in order to give her time to get the final inspection completed.
• 07/08/2024 – An inspection of the building was carried out by several departments which identified multiple violations that still existed.
• 07/10/2024 – The owner appeared before the Safety and Licensing Committee and requested 60 more days to complete the work. The committee voted 3-2 to recommend the license not be renewed.
• 07/17/2024 – The owner appeared before the Common Council and requested an additional 6-weeks or 2 months to complete the work. Alderperson Wolff referred the item back to the committee for further discussion.

Alderperson Wolff asked Kim, the owner of the Corner Pub what had prevented her from starting the repairs on the building last year. She answered, “We’ve had, like, five family deaths, my health issues, my husband’s. We were dealing with all of that for the last year and a half. We pretty much got over all that. We’re kind of moving forward, and this is where we’re at?”

She also had the following exchange with Alderperson Schultz:

Alderperson Schultz: [W]ere you aware that at the end of one year, you might be facing a situation you’d have to for—forfeit your license because you haven’t been open for a year?

Kim: No. No.

Alderperson Schultz: Was anybody else as part of the establishment aware of that situation?

Kim: No, we just got the letter that we got in the mail saying that we needed to be open by whatever the date was.

Kim told the committee that they were making progress on the building repairs “So, we’re just asking for a couple more weeks, because we will have the furnace to wrap yet.” Her daughter-in-law Crystal also indicated she believed two weeks would be enough time.

Inspections Supervisor Kurt Craanen told the committee that Kim’s husband Rick had been doing most of the work. He then  outlined some of the work that was still outstanding. The biggest issue was the need to install a one-hour fire separation between the bar on the first floor and the residential unit on the second floor. He noted that Rick had done a lot of work already to reestablish Inspector Craanen stressed that that was a life safety issue. They also needed to put a two-hour fire separation around the furnace. There was also a window that was severely warped from water damage; although it wasn’t a life safety issue, it was a violation that needed to be fixed.

The city’s Commercial Building Inspector Daniel Meissner told the committee that he thought the major things from the list had been done and from what he had seen they had been done to code. He did indicate that the city would have to go back as a team and conduct another inspection.

Inspections Supervisor Craanen said that they could conduct that inspection any time whenever the owner told them the work was done.

Alderperson Doran initially made a motion to recommend the license renewal be denied, but that failed by a vote of 2-3. Alderperson Schultz then made a motion to extend the abandonment period to 08/15/2024. This ended up being approved by a vote of 3-2. Alderperson Fenton tried to amend it to extend the abandonment period to 08/31/2024, but that failed by a vote of 2-3.

Alderperson Doran opposed granting any extension and was worried about the precedent such an action would create. “The new information I think we have today is somewhat irrelevant to the discussion here, because the issue with the non-renewal is that we have a set deadline for that. They had one year to address that. This Council gave them an extension already. Having a license comes with a responsibility to understand what the rules around that license are, and whether they didn’t understand those or disregarded those rules, is not an issue for us. Our issue is to follow what the ordinance says, and I think what some of my colleagues seem to be doing here is poking around the edges looking for excuses or reasons to give them another further extension when what their issue really is, is with the way the ordinance might be written. And so, if that’s the concern, then I would encourage my colleagues to bring the ordinance forward for changes. But I’m really concerned about setting a precedent here that we’re going to then have to follow that we are essentially just disregarding what our ordinance says by continuing to grant extensions for reasons that are not really covered under what our current ordinance says or allows.”

Alderperson Schultz understood that the property owner had taken no action for a year, but once she received notice after that year that her license was going to not be renewed, she made “copious efforts to remediate the issue and try and reopen.” Alderperson Schultz stated that her husband had been working until 5AM on some nights to fix everything, and Alderperson Schultz believed the remaining issues could be taken care of in short order. “I’m going to defer to the spirit of law versus the letter and essentially say, look, we have the opportunity as a committee to grant some license to the owner, because there has been so much effort, since the notification was made to bring this space back into operation. Yes, it’s taken longer than a year; I get that. And yes, they didn’t act as quickly as they could. But when you hear the story about what this family has gone through, and the fact that the person who is before us has gone through chemotherapy and is dealing with a lot of stuff, I feel personally, that’s just cause for allowing a little bit extra time, particularly because they’re getting really close to being reopened.”

Alderperson Fenton likened granting an extension to this business to the city granting extensions to deadlines laid out in development agreements when developers ran into extraordinary circumstances that prevented them from meeting those deadlines initially agreed upon.

Alderperson Siebers understood that, even if she lost her license, Kim could apply for a new one as soon as the business was ready to open; however, he was worried about the financial impact that would have on her, saying, “[T]hey’ve already spent money on their renewal, and applying for a license after their license has been taken away is a considerable amount of money. It’s not $500, you know.”

The committee ended up voting 3-2 to extend the deadline for Kim to reopen the Corner Pub and not lose her license to 08/15/2024. The Municipal Code allows the Common Council to extend the deadline “for good cause shown.” There was some discussion as to what the “good cause” was in this case. The alderpersons who voted in favor of the extension pointed to “the catastrophic circumstances that the owner and family endured after the catastrophic circumstances that destroyed the licensed establishment” as the demonstration of “good cause.”

[If the Common Council approves this extension, I think it would set a really bad precedent.

First off, the idea that “good cause” is somehow shown by “the catastrophic circumstances that destroyed the licensed establishment” makes no logical sense. They’re essentially pointing to the bar being closed as a reason why the one-year time limit shouldn’t be enforced in this situation, which seems like circular thinking to me.

Secondly, pointing to difficult personal circumstances as a reason to grant an extension when the bar was literally closed for over a year and the deadline had already passed before seems like an arbitrary reason to not enforce the rules comes across as arbitrary favoritism. If cancer, general illness, or the deaths of family members is a reason for the Municipal Code to not be applied to a business owner, then that should actually be placed into the Municipal Code in a clear and transparent way so that that exception applies to everyone and not just to this specific business owner who was given ample notice of the potential loss of her license and simply didn’t take the steps necessary to maintain that license.

I’m going to present a few examples of situations that have happened in the city that, I think, could have turned out differently if this precedent of deferring to people suffering from illness and family loss had been in place at the time:

• In February of 2023 the Municipal Services Committee upheld a snow removal assessment fee levied against a resident. That resident had asked for it to be removed, pointing to illness as the reason why she had not been able to remove the snow herself. It would seem to me that temporary snow on the sidewalk causes less harm to others than a business holding onto an alcohol license for 19 months without using it, preventing another business from being able to use it.
• In 2022, the owner of Houdini’s Escape was assessed $400 by the city for snow removal services the city did not actually perform because he removed the snow himself. Because the properties along certain arterial streets generally do not have any place to put their snow, the city charges a banket fee to the property owners to remove the snow and cart it away. The owner of Houdini’s Escape, however, had ample space on his property to put snow so he plowed and shoveled everything himself and did not utilize the city’s services. The city still assessed him the fee however, and that fee was upheld by the Municipal Services Committee, in spite of the fact that he actually presented a fairly reasonable case on the merits for why he should not be assessed a fee. Would his case have been improved if he had pleaded cancer or family loss? It sounds like it possibly would have.
• In May of this year two businesses received 150 demerit points each on their alcohol licenses because they had gambling machines on their premises. Like the owner of the Corner Pub, they each received ample warning that these demerits were a possibility if they did not take action. Like the owner of the Corner Pub, they chose to not do anything even in the face of these warnings. Like the owner of the Corner Pub, when the possibility of serious repercussions to their licenses due to their inaction became a reality, they each took immediate action to rectify the situation. Unlike the owner of the Corner Pub, each of these business owners was able to come into compliance with their licensing requirements almost immediately, whereas the Corner Pub is still not in compliance even 2 months after the deadline. Those two other owners, however, were still assessed 150 demerit points each. Had they been able to plead cancer and family loss as a way to minimize the general irresponsible business decisions that led to the violations in question, would they have still had charges brought against them and demerit points levied?
• Per Clerk Lynch, there are currently 3 alcohol licenses available and 6 businesses hoping to snag one. Those licenses are given on a first come first served basis. Under the rules as written, whichever three businesses are ready first will be the three of the six that get those licenses. Under this new ad hoc rule, if one of those business owners has cancer or has experienced the death of family members in the last year, should they be given preferential status and get to go to the front of the line?

I would argue that the very fact that there are not 4 licenses currently available and 7 businesses vying for them is evidence that Appleton is showing preferential treatment to one specific business specifically for reasons not laid out in the Municipal Code. It seems to me it would be worth double checking with the City Attorney as to whether the city is opening itself up to potential legal action due to the fact that it is showing preferential treatment to the owner of the Corner Pub because of her personal circumstances while not doing so for the 6 business owners currently vying for those 3 remaining licenses.]

View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1205569&GUID=13AC4A9A-364A-408B-9795-EC9581E88C32