Council reverses vote on alcohol fees

Kyle — In a 4-3 reversal vote, businesses who sell alcohol in Kyle will no longer be exempt from the city’s alcohol license permit fees following the March 7 city council meeting.

Previously at its Feb. 7 meeting, Kyle City Council voted 5-2 to deny fees associated with the alcoholic beverage permits and applications.

With Mayor Travis Mitchell and council members Michael Tobias, Daniela Parsley and Bear Heiser voting in March to deny repealing the ordinance, the city may now implement fees established by the Texas Alcohol and Beverages Commission (TABC) rates — effectively overriding its previous vote to exempt businesses from the ordinance.

Prior to the vote, City Attorney Paige Saenz explained to city council how a vote in favor of the agenda item would implement council’s actions from Feb. 7 to decline collecting the fees.

“This ordinance repeals the provisions of your code that would charge those fees and enforce and implement those fees,” she said.

A point of contention and discussion was how much money could be collected from the permit and application fees.

In the meeting on Feb. 7, Finance Director Perwez Moheet analyzed the number of businesses with various types of alcohol permits and estimated the revenue using the maximum amount TABC allows cities to charge for alcohol permits.

“TABC only allows cities to charge a maximum of 50% of what TABC charges,” Moheet said. “Our best estimate at this point, based on the data from TABC … if the city of Kyle were to reinstate this permit fee, it would raise anywhere between $25,000-30,000 per year.”

However, he explained, this is only a projection based on estimated numbers. No firm analysis has been conducted regarding how much money would be generated from permits and applications.

Two council members — Heiser and Parsley — changed their stance in order to implement the fees after previously voting to approve the exemption.

The city of Kyle has not implemented the alcohol permit and application fees for a number of years, Heiser said, and urged the council to collect more information before removing the statute.

“This is something that I voted for [to not collect the fees] based on some outstanding questions that I had that I didn’t feel like I was getting answers for,” he said. “And in preparation for this meeting, I still feel like I don’t have those answers.Therefore, I don’t believe it is something that we should be pulling out of our code right now, especially if we don’t know how much increase permitting revenue would come in with all the additional businesses that are about to open up in the next couple of years.”

He continued, “It’s kind of punting, but at the same time, this is something that could generate revenue for the city and I just want to be really responsible given it is a burden for businesses, especially small businesses who are looking to get off the ground.”

The item will again come before Kyle City Council in order to determine how much the permit and application fees will be and when they will be implemented.