The City of Great Bend should consider revising its Sunday beer and liquor sales ordinance to align with new State of Kansas guidelines that allow such sales from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., instead of the previous noon to 8 p.m. rule.

While not unanimous, that was the consensus of the City Council Monday night. It instructed City Attorney Allen Glendenning to draft a revamped ordinance for council perusal when it next meets Tuesday, Sept. 5.

“Recently the state has changed their guidelines for beer sales on Sundays,” said City Administrator Brandon Anderson. Now, communities, municipalities or counties may follow suit.

The council in August 2016 approved allowing sales from noon to 8 p.m. That went into effect in October of that year.

“At that time we adopted an ordinance consistent with (the previous state) language,” he said. Now it is time to revisit the matter.

“If you want to bring yourselves in line with the maximum that the state will allow, we need to change our ordinance to allow the sale of alcoholic liquor and cereal malt beverages from 9 to 8 on Sundays,” City Attorney Allen Glendenning said. 

But, that’s not the only issue with the current city ordinance.

“Right now, you can you can sell alcoholic liquors, which are defined as anything above 3.2% alcohol,” he said. “But technically it’s illegal to sell cereal malt beverages which are 3.2 in and below at anytime on Sunday. So we need to fix that too, because that would seem odd that you can buy whiskey but not 3.2 beer.”

Glendenning said it would be a “very simple ordinance to draft.” 

It was suggested writing the ordinance to always mirror state regulations. “Instead of having to change it every five years, let’s make changes along those lines,” said Ward 3 Councilman Cory Urban.

“I don’t agree with that,” said Ward 4 Councilwoman Natalie Towns. “I think we should stay with a 12 o’clock on Sunday.”

But, “I would rather I would rather be available as much as possible. That’s my opinion,” Urban said.

Coming to light

“The issue with that we are starting to realize is that there are certain businesses in town selling at 9 a.m. on Sundays and others are not,” Mayor Cody Schmidt said. And that is part of why this matter came to light just last week.

“We have some that are already doing it because the state said they can’t,” Schmidt said. “They don’t realize there’s a difference between the state and the city.”

In addition, Anderson said Barton County has taken action to be in line with the state. “But, technically, legally, we need to make that change for it to be illegal within the city limits.”

“So currently are having some people being illegal then?” Towns said. She asked Anderson about enforcement of the current ordinance.

“As soon as we were made aware of this, we did do a little investigation,” Anderson said of the Great Bend Police Department. “But now we’re bringing it to council to get a little guidance to find out if you want us to hammer down on enforcement or if we would like to consider what was mentioned and draft an ordinance.”

Making a decision

“I would like to draft an ordinance that mirrors the state law as far as their window,” Urban said.

 But, “I would like us to enforce the law from 12 on,” Towns said.

“We’ve got to be somewhat consistent with all the other communities in the area,” Ward 1 Councilman Alan Moeder said in support of new local guidelines. “That’s what I was looking at. I mean, they start selling at 9 on six days, what difference is one more day?”

“I think you’ve got to decide one way or the other. We need to start enforcing what we have or we need to change it,” Glendenning said. “And I don’t know that I would really recommend that you get hopping on enforcing what we have at the moment while we’re in a little bit of an unclear area.

“I would recommend that I bring in ordinance to the next meeting,” he said. “Then, if there is sentiment against it, that’s fine. You can make a decision one way or the other, just so everybody knows.” 

 As far as a new ordinance, Anderson said council members could just contact Glendenning or him with input and recommendations. Glendenning will start putting something together based on the discussion Monday night.