Village leaders continue to mull issue of alcoholic beverage use in village park

by Dan McClelland

Village officials continued to discuss the issue of permitting alcoholic beverages to be consumed in the Tupper Lake Municipal Park at its August board meeting.

Trustee Ron LaScala, a strong advocate of changing the village local law to permit the practice and who spoke at length on it at the July board meeting, again led the discussion.

Village Attorney Nathan Race of Malone was in attendance that evening to weigh in on the issue and to offer what guidance he could.

The discussion began with a motion by Deputy Mayor Leon LeBlanc to adjourn to executive session. He was told by Trustee LaScala the issue before the board was not a topic permitted by the state open meetings' law for such a private session.

Mayor Paul Maroun agreed, noting it did not qualify for a closed-door discussion by the board.

Trustee LaScala began by telling Mr. Race that he had thoroughly read his recent e-mail to the board and after doing some legal research “couldn’t find the state law which prohibits” drinking alcoholic beverages in the village park.

He said there was plenty in state law which guides practices in New York City, “but no statewide law” affecting drinking in public places like the village park.

Attorney Race said that some of the legal material he sent to the board after the July discussion had been generated by the New York State Conference of Mayors, which guides villages across the state on proper practices.

Mr. Race guessed the trustee had probably done his research through the regulations of the New York State Liquor Authority, which sets down many rules regarding the use and consumption of alcohol in this state.

“There can be a law drafted that you no longer have to be in an enclosed place to consume alcohol...you could do that,” he told the board.

“I think the better e-mails you received came from your insurance company which asked who would be taking on the liability for doing that.”

“If you have a license (to serve alcohol), if you have liquor liability insurance, then you should have rules” to guide the practice, he told them.

At that point Trustee LaScala said he felt his proposal advanced in July to permit alcohol in the park went a bit awry.

“My whole point is that taxpayers- residents of this community- should be able to go down to our publicly-funded park and have a barbecue and be able to bring a six-pack of beer with them. -And drink a beer while at the park!”

“Someone should be able to go into that ball field (with alcoholic beverages) and not have to go through a vendor who has been approved by the village and who has a separate insurance policy.”

“We have our own insurance. We can get a rider so that people can bring alcohol into the park and drink it. I’ve talked with Ricky Skiff (of the Keepers of the Diamond) and their 501-3c apparently has that rider. The cost is not that much more!”

The trustee continued: “I’ve never been a big fan of our insurance company,” which is the New York State Municipal Insurance Reciprocal. “Everything is a liability...it is always unwilling to pay out!”

He asserted that freedom often presents a liability. “As freedom can be dangerous!”

He said park users shouldn’t be obligated to buy alcoholic beverages from an approved vendor in the park “if they can bring it from home and enjoy it!”

“There’s liability in everything we do, but at the end of the day” the practice of being able to drink beer in the park is “about freedom.”

“We’re telling people: ‘you can’t drink inside this park. You paid for it and you can do everything else, but you can’t drink in it.’”

“Unless the village board gives prior approval to a vendor and that vendor names the village as an additional insured. In essence, you are pigeon-holing residents into paying whatever price that vendor sets for its alcoholic drinks.”

Trustee Jason McClain likened the practice to the unfair requirement by the state requiring the village to pay state prevailing wage rates on any construction project where private contractors are used.

Trustee LaScala said a person should be able to buy their beer or wine at a local store and bring it with them to the park where they should be able to legally drink it.

“The whole open container law really pertains to the vehicle and traffic code. As Dan (McClelland) pointed out in his editorial today this law was passed when Ron Cole was police chief. There were problems at the time and although I don’t know all of those problems, this is what the board at the time decided to do: prohibit alcohol in the park.”

“At this time in our lives we can all take a look” and see that a lot has changed in the park and for the better.

Of the Empire League which brought the highly successful Riverpigs franchise to Tupper Lake, he said it is now up to its organizers “to control their audience,” he said referring to the many fans that now pack into the park for every game.

“If someone gets out of control, they will ask them to leave!” he said how organizations that now use the park must operate.

“If I want to attend an event at the bandshell, there’s no reason why I can’t take a blanket, roll it out on the lawn, so my wife and I can sit down and enjoy some cheese and crackers and a bottle of wine!”

“There’s absolutely no reason we shouldn’t be able to do that!”

He said he understood Trustee Leon LeBlanc’s concerns about people walking down village sidewalks with alcoholic beverages in their hands. “But you are not going to find a whole lot of people doing that.”

Mr. LeBlanc had raised that concern at the July meeting when Mr. LaScala proposed eliminating the open container ban across the village.

“No local law is going to stop people” from drinking an alcoholic beverage on a local street or public place here, Trustee LaScala asserted.

He asked Police Chief Eric Proulx if during his more than 28 years on the local force has he ever written a ticket for breaking the open container law.

The chief said tickets were written years ago when the local law was changed. “But it’s been a lot of years,” he admitted.

Trustee LaScala continued. “Right now people are down there drinking at every game. You can go online and during the championship game, you could see Saranac Lake Mayor Clyde Rabideau” drinking a beer.

“No one died that day. We can’t just wrap ourselves in bubble wrap and think that everything will be safe! Freedom is dangerous...that’s just the way it is!”

“It’s been dangerous since 1776. You go to the park, do your thing, you handle yourself responsibly, you behave yourself and you go home safely or you are irresponsible and something happens. Hopefully the vendor who serves the alcohol is responsible enough to take care of any situations which arise.”

Mayor Paul Maroun said he had read the Free Press editorial that day which advocated for the village to permit the consumption of alcoholic beverages in the municipal park. “The thing that wasn’t discussed in it was liability. The state Dram Shop Act that covers bars, is very loosely interpreted. They always win. They never lose!” he said of lawsuits that arise from drinking incidents.

Trustee LaScala challenged that saying that whether or not the village has an open container ban in place in the park or not, “the village will get sued- whether alcohol is served or not.”

“The bottom line, however, is who is going to win the case,” the mayor told him. “You have a defense” if liquor is not permitted there.

“What happens in the case of New York State when someone here crosses the lake to the state lean-to on the opposite shore, gets drunk and gets hurt?” the trustee posed as a hypothetical question.

“Do you think New York State would get sued and pay out for that? Probably not!”

“If I leave my house and go down to the park and have a beer, I should be covered. I have already paid for insurance. -And I’ve paid also through my taxes!”

“That I am forced to buy a beer or other alcoholic drink from an approved vendor is craziness.”

He argued that an alcohol rider on the village’s insurance policy is much cheaper than the possible cost of the village allowing people to drink in the park and not enforcing the open container law on the books and then an accident and subsequent law suit arises.

“Everyone one of us has witnessed drinking there all summer long!” he reminded his colleagues. “That’s a bigger liability to the village any day of the week!”

“You either have a law on the books and you enforce it, and then there’s no liability to the village or you have a law on the books that you didn’t enforce and you have much bigger liability.”

“So then you enforce it!” countered Trustee LeBlanc.

“If you think two officers are going to go down to the park on the Fourth of July to patrol a ball game” and start arresting people, chaos will erupt.

“Having a law on the books that you are unable to enforce, it a much bigger liability for the village,” he repeated.

Both the mayor and Deputy Mayor Leon LeBlanc felt an open container law could be enforced.

“Can you enforce that law on the Fourth of July, Chief?” Trustee LaScala asked.

Chief Proulx replied it would be very difficult to do that.

He said the open container ban wasn’t intended for large events in the park. “I remember the first Fourth of July that Chief Cole wanted us to enforce it and we went around and asked people to put the beer away. How do you think that went?”

“Tupper Lakers can’t do anything unless there is alcohol involved,” he lamented. “I’m sure there are many other communities like us.”

“Thousands of people have said they are not going to a baseball game unless they can have a beer. If you start talking about liability, there’s a huge liability for my police officers when the village spends all kinds of money putting signs up at the park that there’s to be no alcohol consumed and the first game everyone was looking around to see who had the biggest cooler of beer.”

He said if someone consumes alcohol at the park, is not ticketed and later drives home and kills someone “where do you think the first stop” on the search for liability will be?

“That will be the village, and then the cop involved who will lose their job.”

“Large events in the park, with an open container law in place, are unenforceable!” stated the chief.

“They are absolutely unenforceable. How can I send two officers to the park to kick out 1,000 fans who are drinking at a baseball game?”

“I don’t have an answer for you. I told you I would do whatever you decide,” he told his employers.

“If you are going to keep an alcohol ordinance on the books, you need to have the Empire League enforce it!” he told the board members frankly.

“I was down there for a game this year when Leon through his 20 mile an hour opening pitch. Do you know how many people offered me a beer?”

The chief explained that to answer a complaint that there is illegal drinking at a family picnic at the park, that is easy to do. “We tell offenders to please put the beer away.”

“But put 1,000 people in the park, supervised by two cops, no good will come of that!”

Attorney Race wondered if state police ever make arrests for drinking in public in the park.

Chief Proulx told him state police officers don’t enforce local laws, as a rule.

Mr. Race said that alcoholic beverages are served and consumed only in a certain defined area at the county fair in Malone.

Trustee Ron LaScala said he reached out to the state police to find out if there are state laws which govern bans on open containers of alcohol consumed in public places and learned there are apparently none.

“I asked a trooper what ticket he would write me if he caught me drinking a beer in the park today and he said there would be no ticket, as no state law exists.”

“The only people holding back this practice is us and people are doing it anyway! -And it’s obviously a much bigger liability to not enforce this law than it is to enforce it. You are talking about telling grown adults they can’t do something with beer that they can purchase in almost every store in Tupper Lake.”

“Here’s the funny part. I don’t even drink. You’ll never see Ron LaScala drunk. I don’t like to drink. I don’t like being around it, but I also understand people have a right to do some things. Our residents shouldn’t have to hide and be penalized for doing something they can do almost everywhere else, except in our village park, because a village board many years ago decided they shouldn’t do it there.”

Trustee LeBlanc said he didn’t want the village to be liable in any fashion for public drinking.

“We are more liable as a village with that law on the books!” said Trustee LaScala, disagreeing with him.

“We’re putting our officers in danger in many ways- not just liability. There are physical dangers” with trying to enforce an unenforceable law!

“You get someone in the park defying an officer” and you end up with the officer in some sort of physical confrontation with that person, he told his colleagues.

Eric Proulx admitted at one point in the conversation that he doesn’t always like local ordinances- the majority of which originated because someone came to the village board with a problem. “So we make a law to fix it!” But he confided they do have a good purpose.

“Those laws are great to have on the books when people come to me with a problem. But local laws are not something I send my officers out to enforce!”

“But they are there when someone calls and says they have a problem with such and such. That’s how we use our local ordinances.”

“Right now there is no way we can enforce this local law,” Trustee LaScala said of the beer ban in the park.

Mayor Maroun said there was a reason for such a local law prohibiting alcohol use in the park. “If we don’t have those signs up. Someday there will be an accident with someone drinking and we’ll get sued.” He argued the law and those signs provide some sort of defense for the village.

The trustee disagreed. “If we have the proper insurance we can get a rider (to cover the consumption of alcoholic beverages in the park) that won’t break this village.”

The mayor said he worked with the Empire League earlier this summer to get adequate insurance coverage for it to sell alcoholic beverages at their games “and the insurance broker we talked to out of New York City said we wouldn’t want to even hear the figure for the premiums it would have to charge.”

“We can get an insurance quote and see what it is,” the mayor told Mr. LaScala, who said he would like the village to do that. He proposed the village get multiple quotes from multiple companies.

“At the end of the day, we have to remove this dangerous law. We are not enforcing it and we don’t have the ability to enforce it.

Mayor Maroun said the real importance of the alcoholic ban law is “protection in any civil suit that may come in the future.”

The trustee again disagreed, saying any judgement in a court case will be much worse when a video shows up in the court room of everyone drinking in the grandstand as police officers witness it and don’t do anything to stop it.

Mr. LaScala said the village should permit people to consume alcoholic beverages in the entire park, not just in the ball field area.

Chief Proulx said he has been asked by many people if they can drink at the concerts at the band shell. “My response is always the same. We have an open container law and I can’t give you permission to do that, but you do what you want to do!”

“I’m not asking for the village to sell alcohol in the park. I’m just asking for people to be able to have a beer at a ball game or at a family barbecue in their park,” Trustee LaScala told his colleagues.

“People sue and we are going to lose drastically if we don’t have the proper law in place,” Mayor Maroun again stressed.

“-And so we need insurance in place to protect us,” Mr. LaScala told him.

He asked the village attorney to speculate on what scenario would be worse legally for the village: if the current law was not enforced and a law suit arose when someone was hurt or drinking was permitted in the park and someone was hurt as a result.

The attorney said he would not speculate.

As the conversation wound down, Trustee Clint Hollingsworth summed it up this way: “It seems like it is the weight of what it is going to cost the village more in the long run: getting sued when we have laws on the books or paying the extra insurance.”

He said that to date in recent history there hasn’t been “an incident” to provoke all this discussion.

“Exactly,” Trustee LaScala told him. “But I’ve been asked by multiple people and the chief has been asked by many people if they can drink alcohol in the park.

Nathan Race said whatever decision the board reaches has to do with what practices the village leaders want to encourage in their local parks.

Trustee Hollingsworth suggested finding out what it will cost for the village to secure an alcohol use rider on its insurance policy.

Mayor Maroun said the village will contact some insurance brokers in the days ahead to get estimates of increased insurance coverage to cover alcohol drinking in the park.