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Show Bountiful stiffens beer ordinance By GARY R. BLODGETT BOUNTIFUL - City officials decided last Wednesday night to crack down even more on stores which sell beer to minors. Bountiful City Council voted 4-1 to tighten its beer-selling ordinance which will place more emphasis on the store owner. The dissenting vote was cast by Councilman Harold Shafter who said, "I like the ordinance or-dinance to a point, but it (ordinance) is still not stiff enough to satisfy me. The amended ordinance states that the, owner of any store in which it is found that beer is being sold to minors on two out of three investigation in-vestigation attempts will be brought to the council where it will be de termined if the store owner's beer license should be suspended. For the past several years, undercover under-cover investigations have been carried car-ried out in all the stores in Bountiful which sell beer. The investigations were conducted four times a year. If a store was cited three out of four times during the one-year period for selling beer to an undercover under-cover decoy, the owner of the store would have to show cause to the council why the store's beer license should not be suspended The amended ordinance has reduced the suspension possibility to only two out of three offenses during a year. "This should increase in-crease the number of store owners who appear before the council to face possible suspension of their beer license," the proposal stated. "But this is not the purpose of the ordinance," commented Coun-cilwoman Coun-cilwoman Barbara Holt "Our purpose pur-pose is to eliminate, or at least reduce, the amount of beer sold to minors. The suspension of the beer license is only a means of punishment punish-ment for those store owners who do not comply with the city ordinance. "But if they (store owners) are not repeat offenders, and apparendy they aren't, then the existing ordinance or-dinance is apparendy doing the job and an amended ordinance is not needed." The revised ordinance also puts more emphasis on the store owner by citing the owner, rather than the clerk, when an illegal sale is made. Clerks in violation of a beer sale will now receive a warning from the city police, but the store manager will be held accountable for violation viola-tion of the ordinance, it was explained. ex-plained. City Attorney Layne B. Forbes said the revised ordinance may also make it possible for judges to be more strict with their sentencing because the fault lies with the owner rather than the clerk, who is often a minor as well. Shafter, in voicing his feeling about the beer ordinance, said: " We must do all that we can to stop the sale of beer to minors and opening the door to DUI cases among teenagers which happened in Salt Lake City a few weeks ago. I don't think that which is being done ' is stiff enough." |