Do you support Benoit Doucet’s liquor licence application?

Editor’s Note:

If you have been following current affairs in our lovely little city you know about the controversy swirling around Benoit Doucet’s application for a liquor primary licence to operate a wine bar. (You can read about that here, here and here.) City Council, in its wisdom, has now declared that petitions — even hand-signed ones — have no validity nor do letters to the editor or online comments in the local news media. If the people of Revelstoke want Council to endorse — or not endorse — Doucet’s application they must communicate directly with the City before April 30.I f you have an opinion you’d like to express, please send your e-mail to Laurie Donato, the City’s manager of Development Services, in the Planning Department at:ldonato@cityofrevelstoke.com. If you’d like to CC it to The Current please cut-and-paste this e-mail address, editor@revelstokecurrent.com, into the CC field on the e-mail form.

As promised, The Current will publish all of the e-mails sent to the City regarding this issue (as long as they are CC’d to us). This post will be updated as the messages arrive:

April 6

Dear City Staff and City Councillors:

I whole-heartedly support Benoit Doucet’s application for a liquor primary licence and I hope that City Council will see fit to endorse it — once all the dust has settled.

There are hundreds of people in our community who clearly would patronize his establishment. Revelstoke has grown way beyond the beer-and-booze-only stage.

On another note: shame on Council for suggesting that hand-signed petitions have no vallidity. I can see where online petitions and form letters can — and should — be treated as suspect. But hand-signed petitions bearing the signers’ addresses and phone numbers? Those are verifiable.

Suggesting that such petitions are invalid because they are not controlled by a bureaucratic and political process is dangerous. In a democracy the people should be setting the rules: not the bureaucrats and politicians.

David F. Rooney
Publisher-Editor
The Revelstoke Current

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April 7

I am writing in support of the wine bar proposed by Benoit Doucet.

Isn’t it discriminatory to not allow the wine bar? We have the American Macdonalds trash to litter the town, four Chinese restaurants, one Greek joint, one Japanese,  even an English pub.

Yes, to the Frenchman’s wine bar.

Alan Dennis

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Dear Ms Donato,

I think a Wine Bar would be a great asset for our city. It would be a nice change from the pubs, bars & lounges that are in our city now. I have no concerns when it comes to Mr Doucet’s application for a liquor primary license.

I hope this email complies with your requirements as outlined in the Revelstoke Current.

“This new “process” as bureaucrats like to call it demands that people send a written letter or an e-mail directly to the City before April 30, at which point municipal officials will report to Council, which will then mull over the responses and decide what to do.

If you’d like to see Council do the right thing and endorse his application for a liquor license please send your e-mail to Laurie Donato, the City’s manager of Development Services, in the Planning Department at: ldonato@cityofrevelstoke.com. “ The Revelstoke Current April 6, 2010

Sincerely,

Evelyn Daniels

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