By TOM TROY, BLADE STAFF WRITER
Article published Friday, May 11, 2007
Displaying pipes, rolling papers, and other items that he said are used to smoke drugs and were bought in local carryouts, Toledo lawyer Keith Wilkowski yesterday urged Toledo City Council to use its power to crack down on convenience stores.
His proposal: to prohibit anyone under 18 not accompanied by a parent inside a store that sells such items.
Drug use was one of several gripes about convenience stores that surfaced during a two-hour hearing yesterday.
Council is considering a new three-month moratorium on convenience store permits, on top of the eight-month moratorium that just ended, while it decides what to do about the problem - and exactly what the problem is.
Detractors of carryouts say Toledo's older, poorer neighborhoods are saturated by stores that sell beer, wine, cigarettes, and drug paraphernalia, while contributing to litter, loitering, and serious crimes.
The hearing followed a study by council's staff and the Toledo Plan Commission that showed a recent upsurge in new permits for gas stations and convenience stores - from 18 permits issued in 2003, 2004, and 2005 combined, to 20 approved in 2006.
The study attributed the upsurge to council's removal of a requirement for a minimum 2,000-foot separation between an existing store and a new store as part of a zoning code rewrite in 2004.
It did not note any connection with crime reports.
In a letter to council, the director and assistant director of the University of Toledo's Urban Affairs Center said the study was incomplete, and the connection between crime and carryouts needed more analysis.
Meeting as a committee of the whole, council agreed to forward the proposed moratorium to the full council for a vote, possibly on Tuesday.
Also forwarded for a vote was an ordinance that would reinstate the 2,000-foot distance separation for new stores.
The committee heard from more critics of convenience stores, mostly the representatives of neighborhood organizations, who urged the moratorium.
The law, passed in 1993, requires special-use permits for stores under 5,000 square feet that sell grocery items.
Mr. Wilkowski showed items purchased in carryouts in Toledo that are ostensibly for innocent or legal purposes, but which he said are really for drug use.
One was a glass tube about the size of a ball point pen containing a small rose.
He said the $10 item, supposedly a gift one might give for Valentine's Day, is used to smoke crack.
"You put all these things together and there is a basis for regulating convenience stores," he said.
Councilman Mark Sobczak said council's study showed that Philadelphia has had success with a license requirement that allows the city to require stores to address loitering, crime prevention, and landscaping.
Contact Tom Troy at: tomtroy@theblade.com or 419-724-6058.