Trying to find solutions for public intoxication

Rapid City, S.D. (KELO) –Earlier this month, the police department and fire department in Rapid City proposed an ordinance to *not allow alcohol sales until 10 A.M. in an effort to reduce off-premise consumption.

After consideration, the city council denied the motion this week, voting it down 7 to 3.

Over the past month, over 30 ambulance calls were made between the hours of seven and ten in the morning for alcohol related situations.

“We need to find a different approach to address some of our high utilizers. We’re gonna have to explore different avenues, I don’t know exactly what those are yet to get those addiction counselors out with our high utilizes before they become intoxicated,” Rapid City Police Department Mobile Medic Captain Ryan Marcks said.

City council members worried adopting the change would restrict sales for retailers.

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“Some of these retailers, we’d be reducing their hours of operation by 21 hours a week. And we’re really penalizing the typical person who shops in Rapid City or visitors or tourists that shop in Rapid City,” City Council President Kevin Maher said.

Even though the city council members voted 7 to 3 to deny this requested ordinance there’s still hope that this issue of how available alcohol is and public intoxication can be solved with maybe a new future proposal.

“47% of our budget on public safety and fire. So it’s a very big expense and we know we have a problem and we have great people working on it. We just need to look at some other ordinances that we can use to assist our first responders,” Maher said.

“We want to make sure that everyone who comes to this area, from our unhoused to the police department and everyone in between, we want to make sure they have a fine experience within our fine city,” Marcks said.

The police and fire departments say they will continue to look for ways to ease the alcohol related problems they are seeing.