‘America’s drunkest city?’ Fresno leaders say 4 a.m. last call could solidify stigma
Fresno continues to suffer the stigma of being dubbed “America’s drunkest city” by a national magazine seven years ago.
Three Fresno City Council members want to make sure a bill in Sacramento to extend serving hours at bars and nightclubs by two hours won’t perpetuate that stereotype.
Councilmembers Garry Bredefeld, Tyler Maxwell and Miguel Arias announced Tuesday that they will ask their council colleagues to adopt a resolution opposing Senate Bill 930, which proposes to allow a handful of California cities to test an extension of alcohol service to 4 a.m., two hours later than the current statewide last call of 2 a.m.
The trio will introduce their resolution to oppose Wiener’s bill at the council’s meeting on Thursday.
Fresno was initially included by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, among cities that could pilot the later last call if they so chose. Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer initially supported the bill, but last week withdrew his support for including the city in the legislation. The mayor’s early backing of the bill sparked a heated dustup between Dyer and Bredefeld, who was sharply critical of the mayor’s original position.
Dyer was not on hand for Tuesday’s press conference at Fresno City Hall. The three council members, however, minced few words in denouncing what the legislation would mean for Fresno.
“It just defies any common sense. Nothing good will result from people drinking alcohol from 2 in the morning to 4 in the morning,” Bredefeld said. “SB 930, in my opinion, is both reckless and dangerous. Should it pass, our citizens and their families will have a greater chance of being injured or killed by having more drunk drivers on our roads.”
Maxwell noted that the city recently added $1.2 million to its police department budget to hire a new sergeant and 10 new officers “to go against impaired driving on the streets of Fresno.”
He cited information from the Fresno Police Department detailing a 38% increase in fatal traffic collisions in the city over the past three years, “and nearly 60 people lost their lives just in the past year due to traffic collisions.”
He added that the number of impaired people killed in crashes in Fresno more than doubled over the same three-year period.
“I’m not here to say this is wrong for every single city out there in California,” Maxwell said. “I’m here to say this is the wrong move right now for the city of Fresno … where for many years we’ve had the branding of one of the drunkest cities not just in California, but in the United States of America.”
Arias said that while the city’s current last call policy is 2 a.m., “what most people don’t recognize is the vast majority of our bars and restaurants and nightclubs don’t go until 2 a.m.,” even in the eclectic Tower District that is a hub of nightlife in central Fresno.
“Even in the Tower District, most of those restaurants and nightclubs, their last call is 11 p.m.,” Arias said.
He added that among business owners he has spoken with for what they want from the city, none advocated for a 4 a.m. last call. “They know very well that 4 a.m. would mean for them adding a whole new shift of employees, which is hard to find at this point with … a shortage of workers,” Arias said.
“It would mean a lot more cost to them” for employees and for private security or contracted officers from the Fresno Police Department.
“Being a drunker city is of no value to a city,” Arias added. “It would simply cost more lives, more resources, and it would only increase the police budget for overtime and contract policing at the expense of human lives.”
Representatives of the advocacy group Alcohol Justice reported that research shows the estimated “net social cost” of extending the last call by two hours in Fresno would amount to about $8 million a year, or more than $40 million over five years.
Carson Benowitz-Fredericks, director of research for Alcohol Justice, said that figure is derived from a 2019 study by the Alcohol Research Group that sought to balance the additional revenue that bars or restaurants would derive from extended service hours against the increased costs of law enforcement, medical costs and other consequences of alcohol-related crashes, increased alcohol-related illnesses, and lost workplace productivity.
Data from across the U.S. and other countries around the world “shows that alcohol-related crashes are more likely when the driver is leaving a late-closing bar (and) that last call times are associated with more ambulance calls and emergency room visits,” Benowitz-Fredericks said. “When you’re talking about 4 a.m., early morning fatigue hits. We’ve seen this on (Highway) 99, people getting intoxicated and getting in horrible accidents specifically because they are falling asleep, not just because they are drunk.”
This story was originally published August 9, 2022 at 2:44 PM.
