The Laramie City Council encountered multiple violations of liquor licenses within the community during a review session on Tuesday.
The Laramie City Council reviewed all liquor license renewals, including a total of 48 license renewals, consisting of retailers, bars, restaurants and wineries.
Klaus Hanson, ward three representative, said there were six violations, which occurred in the last year, two of which befell on consecutive days. He said assessment of liquor retailers is not as effective as it should be.
“I find it pretty useless if we only have one or two days a year to check for violations,” Hanson said. “I find this a little non-productive, quite frankly.”
Hanson said it is likely that businesses who serve alcohol would simply contact each other so they are prepared for these violation checks on the days of these assessments. He also said he disagrees with the system they use to assess establishments, which involves sending in someone that seems underage to try and purchase alcohol.
“I think it’s kind of trickery, to send someone in who looks young who really isn’t young to see if they get checked when they order drinks,” Hanson said.
He also said there are likely more violations than are being found. He is concerned that underage drinking is a sizable issue in Laramie.
Joe Shumway, ward two representative, said he agrees these assessments are not optimal for checking businesses, but changing these guidelines are out of his control. He said there was an ad-hoc committee put together to reduce the rate of underage drinking in the community in the past and underage drinking has been reduced drastically since that time.
“There’s an underage drinking problem, but it’s not huge,” Shumway said. “Most businesses are pretty responsible, they don’t want to fire people when they make mistakes. They don’t want their licenses to be revoked. There’s plenty of incentive for businesses to not serve underage kids.”
He said in the past there were many more violations and some licenses would have several. Shumway said businesses are better educated now than they used to be about these violations.
