A. The city council of the city of Petaluma, pursuant to the city’s police powers under Article XI, Sections 3 and 5 of the California Constitution, and the City Charter established pursuant to such sections, has the authority to enact and enforce laws that promote the public health, safety and general welfare of its residents. Providing alcoholic beverages to persons in a manner that leads to over-consumption of alcohol and related nuisances is a threat to public health and safety, quiet enjoyment of both commercial and residential property, and the general welfare of the city and its residents.

B. The city council finds that, although state law prohibits alcoholic beverage sales establishments from selling alcohol to intoxicated persons and persons under twenty-one years of age, state law does not address the alcohol-related nuisances and criminal activities that result from over-consumption of alcohol, such as littering, loitering, public drunkenness, public urination, vandalism, graffiti, unruly behavior, and escalated noise levels. These activities disturb neighboring merchants and residents and threaten the health, safety and welfare of surrounding property owners and the community at large. California Business and Professions Code Section 25612.5 sets forth operating standards for off-sale alcoholic beverage sales establishments and permits cities to adopt more stringent operating standards. These operating standards do not apply to establishments that sell alcoholic beverages for consumption only on site. Moreover, the city’s zoning ordinance only regulates on-sale bars and taverns. The city council further finds that the Petaluma police department can more effectively ensure that alcoholic beverage sales establishments are not the source of public nuisances in the community with a comprehensive ordinance that regulates nuisance activities that are frequently associated with the over-consumption of alcoholic beverages.

C. According to the California State Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, Petaluma has a higher concentration of alcoholic beverage sales establishments per resident population than the statewide average. Numerous studies have shown that areas with higher density rates of alcoholic beverage sales establishments experience higher rates of intoxication, alcohol-related traffic collisions, assaults, homicides and other crimes. A countywide study indicated that seventy percent of those willing to report where they had been drinking prior to being arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol indicated Petaluma bars and restaurants as their place of last drink. Law enforcement personnel have in the past been required to respond to numerous calls for service in the downtown Petaluma area for alcohol-related problems, including public intoxication, fights, driving under the influence, and property damage. At times, the number of intoxicated persons has required multi-jurisdictional law enforcement response. Downtown merchants consistently complain about the damage to their property and rowdy crowds that occur Thursday through Saturday nights.

D. Pursuant to a paper written by the Santa Rosa Policy Panel on Youth Access to Alcohol, eighty-nine percent of high school juniors reported that alcohol was easy to obtain from local merchants. A study conducted in Berkeley from 2004 to 2006 found that thirty-seven percent of all on-sale outlets sold alcohol to minors. Moreover, the University of Minnesota’s Alcohol Epidemiology Program indicated that, in a study of three hundred seventy-two alcoholic beverage sales establishments, seventy-nine percent sold alcohol to obviously intoxicated persons. In order to address these issues, many local jurisdictions in California have adopted mandatory responsible server training programs. A 1999 study published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol found that responsible beverage server training can reduce underage drinking by changing server behavior. And, a study published in Contemporary Drug Problems in 2000 similarly found that the proportion of highly intoxicated patrons decreased in establishments where server training programs had been implemented. Robert Salz of the Prevention Research Center in Berkeley noted that responsible server training programs were only effective if managers of the alcoholic beverage establishments also participated in the program. The U.S. Department of Justice further indicated that a combination of merchant education and integrated law enforcement provides the most effective programs for reducing underage consumption of alcohol.

E. The city council finds that voluntary responsible beverage sales and service training programs cannot ensure that all alcohol servers receive reliable or effective training. Voluntary training programs also have not been shown to be as successful in reducing over-consumption and sales to minors as mandatory programs with accountability measures and consistent systems of enforcement. An ordinance that mandates training for licensees, servers and managers of alcoholic beverage sales establishments and imposes liability on on-sale and off-sale alcoholic beverage sales establishment owners and operators who operate their businesses in a manner that creates a public nuisance is necessary to deter and prevent such nuisances. Business owners should be held liable for the alcohol-related nuisances resulting from their actions, and such business owners and operators, and not the public, should be responsible for the costs associated with responding to multiple calls for service for alcohol-related nuisance activities.

F. The purposes of this chapter include protecting the public health, safety and welfare by requiring owners and operators of alcoholic beverage sales establishments to attend a California State-certified training program that addresses their legal responsibilities to conduct their operations in a way that does not create nuisances or foster criminal activity; providing enforcement mechanisms to address problems often associated with the public consumption of alcoholic beverages, such as litter, loitering, public drunkenness, public urination, vandalism, graffiti, unruly behavior, and escalated noise levels; holding alcoholic beverage sales establishments responsible for the alcohol-related nuisances that occur on or near such establishments when efforts at obtaining voluntary compliance have failed; authorizing the creation of a regulatory fee program to cover the city’s reasonable costs associated with the alcoholic beverage sales establishment program; ensuring the proper maintenance of alcoholic beverage sales establishments to avoid negative impacts on surrounding properties; monitoring alcoholic beverage sales establishments to ensure they do not substantially change their mode or character of operation without obtaining the proper authorization; and reducing the costs to the public of providing multiple police responses to alcohol-related nuisance service calls, both in terms of monetary costs and availability of law enforcement personnel for other calls. These purposes are implemented by the imposition of administrative, civil, and criminal penalties when an alcoholic beverage sales establishment is the source of public nuisances; implementation of a mandatory training program for those who serve alcoholic beverages; and the imposition of fees to recover the costs incurred by the city in providing multiple law enforcement service responses for alcohol-related nuisance activities attributable to an alcoholic beverage sales establishment.

G. For these reasons, the Petaluma city council declares that providing alcoholic beverages to persons who subsequently engage in alcohol-related nuisance activities such as littering, loitering, public drunkenness, public urination, vandalism, graffiti, unruly behavior, and escalated noise levels within the city is a threat to the public peace, health, safety and general welfare, and a public nuisance as it affects at the same time the entire Petaluma community as well as the neighborhoods in which they occur.