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Planning commission rejects staff27s recommended amendment to Hotshots27 drinking-age security condition, sends recommendation to council
Summary
The Midland Planning & Zoning Commission voted 4-3 to recommend denial of a proposed amendment that would expand required security at Hotshots from weekends to Tuesday27s through Saturday nights. The commission27s recommendation will be reported to the City Council at its September meeting.
The Midland Planning & Zoning Commission voted 4-3 on August 15 to recommend denial of a proposed amendment to a specific-use designation for Hotshots, a lounge on West Wall Street, after lengthy public comment and staff presentations about incident reports and enforcement options.
The commission27s recommendation opposes a City Council direction that staff had described to commissioners: to amend condition D of the Hotshots ordinance to require security personnel Tuesday through Saturday from 9 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. Staff said the amendment process must still proceed through Planning & Zoning and two council readings; the council item is scheduled for Sept. 9.
Why it matters: commissioners, staff and Hotshots27 representatives clashed over how incident calls have been counted and whether the business27s on-site practices or nearby activity drive the statistics. City staff said incident-report counts place Hotshots among downtown establishments with higher numbers of calls; those counts are one reason staff asked the council to seek a broader security requirement. Hotshots27 owner and his lawyer said the underlying data are misleading and that many calls attributed to the address were unrelated to activity inside the business.
City planning staff summarized the proposed change and the data that led council to request it. "Council did direct staff to amend condition D ... to Tuesday through Saturday, from 9 p.m. to 2:30 a.m.," a planning staff member told commissioners. Staff also described an internal practice under consideration to identify the bars on a "top 10" list of establishments with the most incident calls; being on that list could trigger additional security conditions.
Hotshots owner David Chin told the commission he and his father have operated the business since 1999 and disputed the way calls were attributed to his address. "I don't even know why the police calls were so many," Chin said, adding he had begun collecting the detailed police reports to show which calls were actually tied to the business. His attorney, Patrick Cordero, told the commission the public-safety numbers did not support the added requirement. "There isn't an uptick," Cordero said. "There's an uptick in phone calls. ... People are dumb. They drink and they do dumb things. We can't control that."
Staff and a police/planning liaison told commissioners they strip routine patrol checks from the counts before analysis and that comparable downtown bars show similar incident totals, which supports a case-by-case approach to adding security conditions at SUD renewals.
Commission debate split on two main points: whether incident-report methodology fairly ties incidents to an individual business, and whether the city should apply similar conditions to other downtown establishments. Commissioner Cisneaga moved to deny the amendment; Commissioner Richardson seconded. The motion to recommend denial passed 4-3.
What happens next: the commission27s recommendation will be included in the council packet for the Sept. 9 meeting, where council members will consider whether to amend the ordinance. City staff told commissioners they are continuing to study system-level solutions such as alley lighting, video cameras and patrol strategies for downtown hot spots, and plan to return to council with broader proposals in the coming months.
