ESTÚPIDO SAVANNAH - Tuesday, January 13, 2009 2:01:07 AM
Wait just a damn minute!
You morons are trying to link Club Exclusive to Russo’s Seafood?
Are you Effing kidding me?
From Tuesday’s SMN editorial:
“Just a few blocks away from the two killings, the city took a tough line against seafood shop owner Charlie Russo, who had hoped to allow customers to sit down inside and eat. Yet after the 2007 slaying outside Club Exclusive, Savannah Mayor Otis Johnson and City Council renewed the bar's liquor license, giving the owner the benefit of the doubt that he would improve security. He did by hiring bouncers. Yet one man he hired to do the job is dead.”
First off Council should take a hard line on every city ordinance. We shouldn’t have laws that are not enforced.
But here SMN is comparing a willful violation of the law at Russo’s to what may turn out to be an unforeseeable and unavoidable act at Club Exclusive.
Simply having a crime committed at your business does not make you a criminal.
Let’s start back at the beginning, as testimony showed in 2007, the owner of Club Exclusive did fail to follow the law which requires:
“that the owner and manager of any alcoholic beverage establishment shall be responsible for monitoring parking lots and other outside areas around the establishment and prohibiting patrons and other persons associated with the establishment from standing, sitting, kneeling, or assembling outside the licensed premises in a manner which causes or contributes to disturbances and/or illegal acts.”
He was admonished, accepted that he had failed to comply fully with the regulations and set out a detailed security plan to rectify the situation before council allowed him to sell alcohol again. I can’t find it anywhere but I think he was shut down for several weeks at the time.
On the other hand, Charles Russo went before council in 2005 and begged them to allow him to open a restaurant in an area where such businesses were illegal.
In return for changing the law, Russo promised that he would operate a “take-out only” establishment (page 19 of the PDF, “You go in make your purchase of your sandwich and leave.”) and city council passed a rule that said the business could only be “take-out only” (page 8 of the PDF “The subject property shall only be used as a takeout restaurant.” ) and Russo submitted a plan to the Metropolitan Planning Commission that said the business would be “take-out only”.
When the business opened, city inspectors found seating for more than 40 people in this “take-out only” restaurant.
Unlike his counterpart “a few blocks away” at Club Exclusive, Russo refused to admit he had violated the “take-out only” regulation. He used “good-old boy” delaying tactics to keep the matter from coming to court and repeatedly tried to tiptoe around the law by getting the MPC to change his zoning
The comparison is ridiculous.
If the SMN wanted to compare the treatment of Club Exclusive to an instance when the council took a hard line, they should have compared it to Ms. Somesso's attempt to resurrect Club Oz at Club Ice(Page 48 of the PDF).
A shooting at that location not only kept her from getting a liquor license but also resulted in a brand new ordinance that outlaws large scale clubs near neighborhoods.
