Questions about purpose, efficacy of City Council's proposed ban on nudity with booze

During the recent election, the level of transparency in Berea city government was at issue with voters, as discussed at one of the Berea Chamber of Commerce candidate forums.

With Council’s recent sudden move to ban nudity in licensed establishments, transparency is at issue once again.

To aid in clarifying Council’s movements, the full audio of a Council special work session and meeting to ban nudity follows at the end of this report. Copies of the current and proposed alcohol control ordinances are embedded within the story.

BEREA—In a special work session held last Wednesday, November 6, City Council gave its first reading of a proposed ordinance to revise the alcoholic beverage control code to prohibit nudity in establishments with liquor licenses. The proposal also calls for banning alcohol sales on City-run properties.

What’s clear is who on Council favors the proposed amendment: the recently re-elected Cora Jane Wilson and Teresa Scenters, and the ousted Jim Davis, whose term ends this year. The also re-elected Steve Caudill favors the nudity ban but not the ban on alcohol sales on City-operated public spaces.

“We’re only creating a problem in order to solve a problem,” Caudill said about the latter.

What is not clear about this move by Council is the point of it all.

Also unclear is who authored the proposed changes, and why some Council members claiming they are for less government intervention, justify this ban when adult entertainment is already regulated in town.

“Sometimes you write an ordinance to prevent things from happening,” Davis said during the special work session.

All the things

The ordinance to amend the current alcoholic beverage control (ABC) code, if passed, would mean the following would be banned wherever alcohol is served within the city limits: nude or nearly nude dancing, mud wrestling, Jell-O wrestling, wet T-shirt contests, lingerie fashion shows, dancing with touching for compensation, and simulating a sex act, among other potential offenses — all the things you didn’t know you were missing because they do not seem to be happening: no one on Council could name instances of them occurring when challenged by fellow Council member Katie Startzman to do so.

Here’s the entire proposed ordinance:

Nudity And Adult Entertainment Prohibited On Alcohol Licensed Premises Sales On City Controlled Property Prohibited 11159KB ∙ PDF fileDownloadDownload

Here is Berea’s current ABC ordinance:

Ord #09 2024 Alcohol Control Ordinance Revisions Signed931KB ∙ PDF fileDownloadDownload

Current ABC code brought into question

The proposed changes were put forth by Wilson. “I was searching [the internet] for something and I kept getting ABC ordinances that were a lot lengthier than ours and more detailed, but I did find out that our City Council should have written our ABC ordinance,” said Wilson. “It was all new, so you know, I’m not saying anybody was at fault.”

She listed the ABC ordinances of Danville, Mt. Vernon, Nicholasville, Stanford, and mentioned discussing the matter with State Representative Josh Bray. She also referenced the managing attorney of personnel services at the Kentucky League of Cities, Chris Johnson, as having a hand in ordinance writing, but which ordinance he participated in writing and what his role might have been was unclear.

“Bray, he was telling me you were all supposed to do that, and he had written theirs [sic—no antecedent as to which municipality/ies she is referring to] because he at that time was their [sic] city administrator,” Wilson said. “What is on the table was in every one of their ordinances,” she said and turned off her microphone.

Wilson did not specifically state that the proposed changes were about sexual entertainment and nudity.

Here’s the full audio of Wilson’s pitch to Council (the woman introducing Wilson is Berea City Administrator Rose Beverly):

Unanswered questions

Wilson’s comments raised more questions than they answered: what was it she found in the other ABC ordinances that prompted her to want what could end up being the third revision to Berea’s ABC controls in less than two years? Did Council pass Berea’s original ABC ordinance in a way that was not procedural? Who actually crafted the language of the ordinance Wilson put forward?

“I have never been aware of the Council writing our own ordinance,” said Councilwoman Startzman … we are responsible for suggesting policy, and City’s counsel and the administration draft the ordinance,” Startzman said. “I am confused about the foundation of your research.”

“It was just something no one here, or even [the city attorney] was aware of. The Council does ordinances, that’s what we do. It was new to everyone here,” Wilson replied.

City attorney James “JT” Gilbert did not respond in time to multiple requests for confirmation that he was previously unaware of Council’s remit.

Here’s the exchange between Startzman and Wilson:

Startzman: “Are there any other businesses other than Rebel Rebel, who were considering what we’re talking about—nudity and entertainment? Is this a large issue in the community, or is this about a business y’all don’t like?”

“It has nothing to do with a business here, it’s their [sic; no antecedent] ordinance,” Wilson said.

“We have the control to decide what we want in our community, so we don’t have to do whatever Lancaster is doing, or what Stanford is doing” Startzman said.

A pastor weighs in

Rebel Rebel Studio & Lounge, is an art collective space on Chestnut Street, co-owned by Ali Blair and Erica Chambers. The space hosts a variety of live events, including, on two occasions in the past five years, the burlesque show BurLEX, the most recent performance having been held in July of this year.

Pastor Steve Hobbs of the Berea Church of God on Rash Rd. claimed to be disturbed by images of the BurLEX event distributed on social media, such as this Facebook advertisement . Hobbs subsequently emailed City Council members a list of instructions and action items he planned to take and encouraged Council to do as well. The Edge has obtained a copy of Hobbs’ email which, as it was sent to city officials, is a matter of public record.

There was no nudity at either burlesque performance, according to Blair. “Before we ever did a burlesque show, I knew that there were business ordinances regarding sexually explicit entertainment,” Blair told The Edge. “And even though that’s not what I consider this, nor are we that kind of business, I made sure to follow all of those guidelines.”

To that end, referring to Ordinance #25-02, Chapter 62 Startzman indicated the potential redundancy of the proposal introduced by Wilson.

“The City of Berea has an ordinance and regulations in place already, relating to sexually explicit businesses like a strip club, or an adult video store, if those even exist anymore,” Startzman told The Edge in an interview following the special work session. “And, a burlesque show is very different from mud wrestling,” she said.

Burlesque missing from the list

Burlesque as a form of entertainment typically features sexual humor—but not always. Nor does it always, if at all, have nudity. Burlesque is considered a form of irreverent political and self expression. At its heart, burlesque is a form of mockery, typically of social mores.

Notably, the proposed ordinance as currently written doesn’t include the word “burlesque,” precisely the activity that Hobbs claimed had ignited his moral upset.

Therefore, if this ordinance passes without further revision, it will do nothing to prohibit burlesques from being performed at Rebel Rebel or anywhere else in town, so long as the performance does not feature nudity or simulated sex acts, which Blair told The Edge had not occurred.

“Burlesque is theater,” Blair said. “I think an important part of this conversation is that BurLEX is about empowerment. It’s about choice, reclaiming space, and being in a place where you don’t worry about being violated, which is something that as a woman, we have to worry about it all the time. BurLEX starts every show with a lesson on consent.”

If the proposal is revised to include “burlesque”, even then, “burlesque” will be a matter of interpretation.

“You would look at the actual behavior and not the title,” Kentucky League of Cities’ Johnson said in an interview, “So you could refer to something as burlesque, but that may not reflect the nature of the behavior that is actually being performed.”

Author ‘unknown’

As for the question of who wrote this ordinance, that is still a mystery.

“I have no idea who prepared it,” Johnson told The Edge.

Bray’s office responded in an email: “The ordinance he wrote was for Mount Vernon.”

Did Wilson construct it using ABC ordinances from the other municipalities she listed, including Mt. Vernon? Wilson did not respond to multiple requests for clarification.

If the ordinance now up before Council was cut and pasted together using other municipalities’ ABC ordinances, why include language banning activities such as mud or Jell-O wrestling, that aren’t in vogue, at least not in Berea?

“It sounds like they’re talking about Daytona Beach 1982,” Blair said in the interview.

Although Wilson claimed in the special work session that city attorney Gilbert had to “re-write” what she gave him for the ordinance, Gilbert confirmed to The Edge his role was not to craft the language of the document, but to prepare in ordinance form what was given to him by Wilson.

Did Hobbs contribute his research efforts on “morality and nudity ordinances in cities of Kentucky” to the draft of the one introduced by Wilson, and if so, how much did he contribute to its wording? Multiple attempts to reach Hobbs for clarification were unsuccessful.

State and local ABC laws

Without an author to claim ownership of the proposed ordinance, a fair question is whether the language is just boiler plate, taken from a template of some kind and issued by the Commonwealth for municipalities to use when they want to ban nudity together with booze.

But the answer would be no.

“The language wouldn’t come from the state,” Johnson said in the interview. “Alcohol in Kentucky is a comprehensive legislative scheme, so the only areas where a city can act is where the state gives them permission to act, and one of those areas is in limited regulation of adult types of businesses.”

To that end, it’s up to the local leaders to tell the city attorney what language they want in their rules and regulations, according to Johnson.

“There’re a variety of ways legislation can be drafted, but in most circumstances, it’s drafted to reflect the wishes of the legislative body, and then it is run past the city attorney so they can weigh in on whether or not it is being proposed in a legal way,” Johnson said in the interview.

So, not only is Berea’s current ABC ordinance—co-written by Council and city attorney Gilbert, as is standard, despite Wilson’s claims to the contrary—sound and fully operational, that burlesque is missing from the proposed ordinance would seem to be either a choice or an oversight on behalf of whoever authored it.

In either case, that it is missing from the set of new rules is confusing since it was the burlesque show this summer at Rebel Rebel that allegedly piqued Hobbs, and it is what some Council members say is among the behavior they want to contain.

Grudge v. governance

Whatever the reason burlesque was omitted from the list, that it is missing brings into question whether the attempt to amend ABC code is actually about nudity, and not about harassing Rebel Rebel.

“It’s hard for me to understand why we’re regulating things that have never even come close to happening in other places,” Startzman said during the session.

“This issue is going to evolve, it’s very new, and we want to get it right,” Scenters replied.

Contrary to Wilson’s claim that the proposed ordinance has “nothing to do with a business here”, comments by Scenters seem to flash that at its heart, the proposed ban is aimed directly at Rebel Rebel, the venue that hosted what Hobbs indicated in his email, was morally unsuitable entertainment.

“And as to singling out one business, that may be the case right now … but as we expand, we need to have things in place that control some of these things that people are concerned about,” Scenters said in the session.

Scenters claimed to have been contacted by multiple constituents upset over “some things that were going on around town” but wasn’t specific.

Questions about timing and urgency

The supposed urgency around this issue, as evidenced by Wilson calling for a special work session and meeting to give a first read of the measure, rather than wait until the next regularly scheduled City Council meeting on November 19, is puzzling given that these behaviors are not reported as having happened in town, and not at this time.

While defending her proposal, Wilson said during the special session that she began doing her research into ABC ordinances back in “May or June”, and expressed her dissatisfaction that she’d not been able to get her proposal through to her colleagues sooner, noting that if it hadn’t been for the time Gilbert had needed to complete his work on the ordinance, she would have run it through before the election on November 5.

If Wilson started her investigation in the spring as she claims, then was the late summer timing of Hobbs’ email a random, but convenient addition to her efforts, or is there more happening behind the scenes?

At least three things about Hobbs’ email deserve scrutiny.

First, Hobbs’ having made a point to announce his intention to research Kentucky ordinances before even telling Council what he was writing to them about, suggests he will share it with Council. Was this a veiled threat?

Second, the specific steps his email “encourages” Council to take to preserve morality in Berea are exactly the steps Council is attempting to take.

Thirdly, Hobbs’ admonishment that “Everyone does not get their way,” is curious. Scenters expressed the same sentiment while describing her dedication to “small government” during the second candidate forum before the election, as though it were an established talking point.

Public drinking

As for the proposed ban on drinking in City-operated public spaces, Startzman asked Wilson if what’s at issue is that it corrupts children, or that it is a liability.

“For me, it’s for the sake of the children. For other towns, it is the sake of liability,” Wilson said.

Startzman also asked that before the second reading of the proposal, there be clarification by the city attorney on how this proposal is different from the City’s existing sexually explicit entertainment laws, and whether the question of not drinking on City -run property can be voted on separately. Council agreed.

The second reading of this possible change to the ABC law in town is likely to be when Council meets again on November 19th, unless a special meeting is called between now and then. The Edge will keep you updated.

Here’s the full audio of the special work session:

Here’s the full audio of the special meeting pertaining to the proposed ordinance:

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Update to this story: This paragraph: First, Hobbs’ having made a point to announce his intention to research Kentucky ordinances before even telling Council what he was writing to them about, suggests he will share it with Council. Was this a veiled threat?

…was edited at 3:23pm on Fri., Nov. 15, 2024 to read thus:
First, Hobbs’ having made a point to announce his intention to research Kentucky ordinances suggests he will share it with Council before even telling Council what he was writing to them about. Was this a veiled threat?