Some members of the Gary Common Council would like to bar sexually-oriented businesses from the city, but the attorney helping craft an updated ordinance on such establishments said they could be regulated, not banned.
The issue heated up when the owner of strip clubs in Illinois indicated an interest in locating in the city. That request was denied Tuesday, March 14, by the Zoning Board of Appeals, and a common council committee then heard the next day on how it might amend an ordinance in place since 2000 on the operations of these businesses.
Action could come next week on a proposed ordinance from Scott Bergthold, a Chattanooga, Tenn.-based attorney who specializes in laws related to adult businesses. He helped craft the original ordinance.
“We can’t bar SOBs,” said Councilwoman Rebecca Wyatt, D-1st. “You figure out how long it took me to figure that [acronym] out.”
Wyatt chairs the council’s Ways & Means committee and said a second ordinance concerning the city’s zoning laws for such businesses could be introduced.
“That one will be more complicated and will take more time for us to pass,” Wyatt said.
Bergthold said the existing ordinance needs updating and that council members have to consider the constitutionality of measures they may want to take.
“Gary needs to make sure everything remains in compliance; we have better procedures now than we did 17 years ago,” he said.
He was particularly critical of a suggestion by Councilwoman LaVetta Sparks-Wade, D-6th, who said she wanted to impose higher-than-typical city business fees on sex-oriented businesses.
“Can’t we increase the business license fee for them to put it out of their reach,” she asked.
Bergthold said the courts would strike down such fees on the grounds that fees are meant to be revenue-neutral and merely help the city cover the cost of regulation, rather than be punitive or profitable.
H also rejected a suggestion by Wyatt that city officials refuse to permit a strip club to serve alcohol, saying that Indiana specifically puts alcohol-related issues in the hands of the state, rather than municipalities.
Bergthold said sex-oriented businesses carry certain legal protections related to freedom of expression that prevent municipal officials from trying to ban their existence.. But he also said that courts have acknowledged issues such as crime, lewdness, public indecency, illicit drug use and trafficking and other negative impacts on surrounding properties, giving municipal officials authority to strictly regulate such businesses.
Gary city attorney Greg Thomas said a new ordinance has been in the works for several months, with Bergthold providing assistance.
Among the revisions is a proposal to regulate the size of the room in which erotic dancing takes place and to impose restrictions on how close customers could come to the dancers. He said the intent is to eliminate the “VIP lounges” that some strip clubs offer where physical contact becomes possible.
“We’re looking to eliminate some of the potential for shenanigans that sometimes occur,” he said.
Gregory Tejeda is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
