Pro-19: http://www.iowacitysafety.com/
Pro-21: http://www.21makessense.org/
21 Only: I'm voting NO to 19 on November 2nd- but with some reservations attached. We've had the 21 only ordinance in place for a few months now- with students and without students over the summer break and the change in the downtown atmosphere is palpable. Have any bars closed? Nope. Has there been a mass exodus of activity and business from downtown? Nope. All the prophecies of doom and gloom seem not to have come true, which is what makes the Pro-19 crowd's arguments so damn laughable. Basically, having scanned the website and trying not to laugh as I did so, what it seems to come down to is this: first, bars will keep kids safer than house parties will- oh and if you keep 21 only then mass chaos and destruction will descend on the neighborhoods, with the northside neighborhood facing... EXTINCTION!
I honestly don't know whether to laugh or cry at that argument. Bars keep students safer than house parties do? So far it's not evident to me and the numbers are supporting the other side of the argument far better than anything the Pro-19 crowd has yet offered. Calls for Intoxicated Pedestrians are down 56%, calls for Sexual Assaults are down 75%, calls for loud parties (and the chaos that will undoubtedly destroy our neighborhoods) are down 3% on the year. Everything is down, nothing is up- and this wasn't an ordinance that was put in place yesterday. We've had time both with and without students to look at the effect it's had on the community and it hasn't been the economic disaster that people thought it would be. Students have ravaged the neighborhoods or burned down half the town.
I get why bar owners are against it- but I don't appreciate sanctimonious sermons about 'how much they care about the kids.' Oh please. I'm willing to accept that statistics gets stretched in the course of any political campaign, but outright dishonesty just pisses me off. Let's be real here: bar owners give a damn about their bottom line and not much else- and that's fine, they have businesses to run after all. But kind, caring mother and father figures? Give me a break.
So I'm voting No to 19 but with some reservations: we need to do something about the vitality and diversity of business downtown. When I was growing up here, what made downtown Iowa City so much fun was it's mix of general retail, small locally owned business and restaurants and bars. The general retail fled to Coralville and whether accidentally or by design, somewhere someone thought bringing a big city swank feel to downtown Iowa City would be a swell idea and we've had a decade of stunted development as a result. When you upscale your downtown, you price out locally owned small business. If I want to start a small business in Iowa City, downtown is the last place I'm going to go. If I want to buy little Johnny a pair of new jeans for school, downtown is the last place I'm going to go. Those two basic conditions have to be addressed if downtown is to flourish. Tax breaks, TIF districts, whatever it takes to bring businesses back to downtown and more importantly, bring the community back downtown I'm in favor of, but we need more inspired leadership than what we've had on the City Council for quite sometime to pull this off.
(As an addendum: as a result of changing the business environment in a way described above, hopefully we could get a little variety back downtown. A movie theater, a roller rink, the Art Museum, something... and let's make developing South of Burlington and the Northside Market neighborhood more or a priority too... with more options, people- not just students should have more things to do. And anything that keeps downtown lively and interesting has to be a good thing.)
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