Shreveport City Council Votes Against Outside Alcohol At Festival
Rapper 50 Cent’s upcoming Humor & Harmony Festival hit a major roadblock as the Shreveport city council voted against allowing public alcohol consumption.
The 5-2 vote for Resolution 109 received mixed reviews from council members, some raising concerns about safety while others felt the denial would have economic consequences. Councilman Gary Brooks expressed issues with clean-up and security and what the overall benefit would be. “I don’t see any tax benefit from people drinking outside,” Brooks said.
“I just don’t see this being a good idea at all.”
The plan proposed by Councilwoman Tabatha Taylor would have allowed the open container zone to extend to the Red River District, consisting of Stageworks of Louisiana and Independence Stadium, during the upcoming festival. The festival is scheduled for Aug. 8-11, with an estimated 60,000 visitors attending.
According to KSLA, Taylor said outside alcohol consumption is typical for the city so that it wouldn’t be a problem.
“We’ve passed an open container regulation,” she said. “We’ve done amendments and ordinances to suspect the rules for alcohol 215 plus times since 2010 with the city of Shreveport administration, so I thought with the number of people that were coming into the City of Shreveport that this would be a workable plan because we’ve done it before.”
Councilman James Green thought about the economic impact the resolution would have. He highlighted that “false information” given to them halts the team from taking risks. “I just think that sometimes fear, false information appearing real, you know, let’s see if it works. If it doesn’t work, then we have a capable police department that can take care of whatever,” Green said.
“And I know they can take care of four blocks.”
Other council members like Ursula Bowman want to make sure the crowd is still able to control as alcohol can assist in things getting out of hand. “We did approve other alcohol extended to this Humor and Harmony, so right now we want to make sure that we’re not getting too much alcohol involved and make sure we can control the crowd and the crowd doesn’t control us,” Bowman said.
The proposed open-container zone would have gone into effect from 5 p.m. on Aug. 8 to 3 a.m. on Aug. 9. City Attorney Marcus Edwards said at least ten vendors were scheduled to sell alcohol in the zone if the measure passed. Since the resolution did not pass, festival participants will have to finish their drinks at Stageworks prior to walking outside to stay in compliance with the city.