The Healdsburg

DRINKING IN PUBLIC RULES MAY STAY RELAXED, SAYS CITY

Few Problems Encountered During Covid Period Of Relaxed Openair Drinking

By Christian Kallen

The city’s Parks and Recreation Commission contemplated new rules for public consumption of alcohol at their Feb. 8 meeting, a month after their endorsement of a new set of nonsmoking rules for city parks, which broadly expanded non-smoking areas to include sidewalks and parking lots.

Unlike the smoking restrictions, which were in response to a resident’s complaints about the unhealthy atmosphere at Tuesday in the Plaza and other similar occasions, the new alcohol consumption rules are the result of the imminent expiration of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s COVID State of Emergency declaration.

That declaration times out at the end of February, so the more lenient consumption rules that were allowed during the pandemic to help downtown businesses stay open will likewise expire, and previous limits on public consumption will once again be in effect. Unless, that is, the rules are rewritten to reflect the pandemic experience.

That’s why Mark Themig, Healdsburg’s community services director, spoke at the Feb. 8 meeting to propose a few adjustments to the Municipal Code, adjustments that reflected the experience of the past two and a half years. He said that not only have a number of downtown food and beverage businesses become used to relaxed regulations, but law enforcement and city staff have found