I'll begin by saying that in my own personal opinion, pandemic safety far outweighs the understandable urge on the part of some to "recreate" a festival canceled owing to ... that's right, pandemic safety.
Consequently, the letter from NAPD, while uncharacteristically firm, is entirely fitting. I agree with these sentiments completely.
I'm confused by only one passage, and will hazard an interpretation: "Ensure no patron exits your business with alcoholic beverages."
I believe the chief means to say alcoholic beverages must not exit businesses in open, non-original containers, which is to say a cocktail or draft beer in a plastic cup, seeing as the governor's statewide emergency writ currently allows carry-outs even from those establishments lacking the proper permit to do so. The city doesn't have any restrictions against open containers out in the open, although of course the police might choose to interpret public intoxication broadly. The Alcohol & Tobacco Commission generally is the final authority on such matters.
To reiterate, I'm personally uninterested in the various crowd-gathering events being staged during the time when Harvest Homecoming normally would be in progress, and I support the city's vigilance.
One question, though: If these crowd-gathering events are judged not to be in the interest of public health amid the pandemic, couldn't the city and/or health department have pro-actively nixed them? In particular, as with the ATC and beverage licenses, the health department can intervene in a situation involving public health any time it wishes to do so.
Just curious.
I blame you. If you had organized one of these “crowd gathering events”, Jeff and Dr. Tom would have been all over them. Hang down your head R. Baylor.
ReplyDeleteThat's true. They won't talk and hate each other, until it comes time to join forces against moi.
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