Posted on 04/13/2009 4:39:48 PM PDT by Libloather
Idaho town could ban drive-thru windows
02:39 PM MDT on Monday, April 13, 2009
SANDPOINT -- Residents in this northern Idaho city might have to start waving bye bye to drive-through businesses.
A proposal to prohibit drive-through services recently passed the city's planning and zoning commission and goes before the city council in May.
If approved the ordinance would regulate drive-through restaurants, banks, coffee shops, pharmacies, dry cleaners and other businesses that cater to customers in cars.
Existing drive-through businesses would be allowed to continue but not rebuild.
"Conceivably, as these existing drive-throughs degrade if they're not maintained, this could lead to a Sandpoint of the future with no drive-throughs," City Planner Jeremy Grimm told the Bonner County Daily Bee.
The proposed change is one of many being considered as part of a strategy to handle new growth and reflect the city's recently completed comprehensive plan aimed at making a more attractive city.
Opponents say the drive-through ban will hurt the economy, and Dick Hutter resigned from the planning commission last week amid concerns the changes will harm the city.
"I don't agree with the direction that Sandpoint is going," he said. "I don't like the lack of parking downtown. I don't like the interference with stores and I don't like the anti-corporate nature of what's been happening."
Other possible changes include a conditional use permit for new or expanding businesses with a building footprint larger than 20,000 square feet. The businesses would be required to submit to nine new planning standards, including surface parking requirements and pedestrian circulation.
New rules also look at banning the use of fluorescent or metallic colors as part of the plan to have "exterior building materials and colors that are aesthetically pleasing."
"We're not preventing them from developing their property or building or investing in this community," said Grimm. "We're just setting some constraints on it and I think this is very far from depriving someone of the reasonable use of their property."
Councilman John Reuter introduced the ban on drive-throughs. But he said proposed changes might not make it into the permanent zoning changes, which the council hopes to have finished within a year.
"I think it makes sense for a temporary, stopgap zone to be fairly restrictive," Reuter said. "I think we need to have a serious conversation about where drive-throughs are appropriate and where they are not. At the end of that discussion maybe we'll decide that drive-throughs are never appropriate, but I don't think we're at that stage yet."
Local real-estate agent Kitty Eyestone doesn't like the proposed changes.
"Business owners are shaking their heads and asking, 'What's next?" she said.
Less business. That's the plan.
Californication?
Sounds like something straight out of an Ayn Rand novel.
Where did all the Marxists come from?
“What’s next?” Once these leftist aholes start on totally regulating your life, they will never stop unless the community votes them out, now.
These people are Politically Correct dumbbells and they intent to control all aspects of your life, as in “1984” and “Animal Farm.”
The next report on this issue will be entitled “Communism comes to Idaho, and you are screwed.”
Does anybody see a potential problem here?
Not even the gals M.A.D.D. has commented on it.
The only big deal with it that I know of happened when a "repeat customer" sorta' made his own drive-thru through the glass & brick in the middle of the store.
We also had a mortuary that had a drive-thru and I knew the guy who managed it but I never had the nerve to ask exactly what they used it for.
Yep, leftists from CA and WA have invaded Idaho and trying to make it more liberal. Liberals ALWAYS flee the hellholes they create and then try to implement it on the places they invade.
What is supposed to be so bad about “drive-throughs”??
Ping!
Sheesh, I always thought that Sandpoint was extremely conservative. Have the Californians invaded northern Idaho as well?
The real issue, unmentioned by the article, is that at last they're building a bypass around downtown. It's been decades, and the money's actually been there. US 95, a major highway north-to-south into Canada, runs over the incredibly beautiful Long Bridge into one 90-degree turn, heavily pot-holed and impossible to keep repaired due to the volume of traffic, through a very small downtown area, and then after two more 90-degree turns (one lane - we're talking lines of semis here) it proceeds to a more highway-like setting north and east of town.
There is absolutely no excuse for this impossible design. During the summertime the town routinely cuts traffic off and reroutes it around sundry on-street tourist activities. If you are a local unfortunate enough to have to transact business in or north of town, best of luck. Stop-and-go at the best. It's ridiculous.
Hence the bypass, fought by some downtown merchants because they think it will reduce business. Personally I think they're mistaken and I'm delighted to see the bypass built. It's already a resort community but along the way some folks are trying to make it more exclusive than northern Idaho will bear - this ain't Aspen and it sure ain't Sun Valley. And that car full of pierced 20-somethings with snowboards on the roof isn't going to stop for a sit-down dinner on the way to the Schweitzer slopes. They won't even have a reason to go downtown. That isn't the intended effect.
Buncha dang liberal imports. Some of 'em even have flush terlits...
Nope.
http://www.cityofsandpoint.com/mayorcouncil.asp
John T. Reuter is a fourth-generation Idahoan with roots in farming and shepherding.
public schools
Please tell me where exactly all of the walk-in business is supposed to go if the drive thru is closed? The resturant all of a sudden isn’t going to get bigger. Here’s hoping that the idiots on the committee have to wait outside in the rain once or twice at the end of the line for lunch.
Call me a crank, but I don't think the lofty goal of making your town more "aesthetically pleasing" justifies stripping people of their property rights.
Would increasing the IQ of the citizens make the city more appealing?
Carryout.
It would seem that carryout is even worse than drive through.
Ban carryout first.
If you listen closely, you can hear liberal heads exploding from what their elimination of drive throughs just did to their environment.
Oh yea. Just look at Charlotte, N.C. Bunch of NY aholes are in the process of making a mess there as we speak. Was once a nice southern town, now just another liberal hell hole.
I’ve lived in places where you could buy a six-pack of beer via a drive-through.
:-)
I don’t like them. If given a choice I will park and go inside. It seems you have to repeat your order several times and there is usually some impatient driver behind you, so you can’t check your order when you get it. You have to stretch to exchange money and you end up dropping the coins.
However it never occurred to me that anyone would try to illegalize them.
I suppose the objection is parking — is this town big enough that there are overflow cars out in the street?
Maybe they’re angry that people are burning gas waiting in line.
Yes! Years ago. There are two types, basically. Those who arrive and want to live like we live. They are welcomed. Then, there are those who arrive and want us to live like where they came from. Those people are not so welcome.
Sandpoint is much like the Seattle area in Washington, re liberals. It isn't completely gone, but it is going.
It is an old logging community in a beautiful location taken over by liberal invaders from out of state. Complete with an 'artists colony,' dontchaknow. And lotsa pot growing back in the bush.
That coastal migration out of california curved inland when it hit the Canadian border. Montana is getting hit with it now.
Still can do that here.
Our actual state store here has a drive through.
Communists taking over in Idaho?
They do know whats best for the “little people”
What's next, or what should be, is a big push by the business owners to have conservatives elected to their town councils or whatever they call them. They won't though, they will continue to vote demwit and wonder why their freedoms and businesses continue to erode away.
Excuse me, but where did California come into this article? Their are no restrictions on drive throughs in CA, at least none I know of. Idaho demwits thought of this one all by themselves.
It was a question. It was answered. For once; Californians WEREN’T responsible...
I’m amazed at this.
I lived in Sandpoint 25 years ago at the foot of the Long Bridge, on the Cocolalla Lake side, and when I lived there the town was way conservative.
In fact, when the first McDonald’s came to town, there was a parade to celebrate the fact that some big corporation thought we were big enough to deserve a McDonald’s!
I have fond memories of Sandpoint. I worked as a security guard at Ski Schweitzer, my boss’s name was Jack Armstrong. I called him The All-American Boy and he and I were the only people that understood the reference.
There was a fantastic deli/sandwich shop downtown run by a family of 7th Day Adventists who served the most delicious food.
I’d eat lunch there every day, and the waitress was this sweet girl named Rosie...what a nice woman she was, she brightened everybody’s day.
Sigh...it sure seems like things have changed there, for the worse.
Ed
Whaaaal, y'all gotta admit, that's kinda nice on the second floor...
"I don't like being CONTROLLED."
You and I agree on all points here, but, like you, I don't see any legitimate grounds for banning them. It appears to me a case of government sticking their laws where they have no business being.
More like "The modern rise of vigilance committees, or, the Unintended Consequences of Communism coming to Idaho".
Idahoans are a horse of a different color. We're not gonna just take this creeping Kaliforniacation lying down. We're just biding our time.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
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