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Item No: 07C Meeting Date: March 8, 2010 Type of Business: CB Administrator Review : ____ City of Mounds View Staff Report To: Honorable Mayor and City Council From: Jim Ericson, Clerk-Administrator Item Title/Subject: First Reading and Reintroduction of Ordinance 835, an Ordinance Amending Title 500 of the Municipal Code Regarding Charitable Gambling Background: Staff had identified many deficiencies in our City Code relative to Charitable Gambling and initiated a process to amend Title 500 of the Code to remove the relevant charitable gambling requirements from the two liquor license chapters and create a new, standalone chapter addressing such issues. Staff has been working with the City Attorney on the matter and at the September 2009 work session, the Council reviewed a draft of the ordinance. While some questions remained unanswered, the ordinance was referred to the September 14, 2009 Council meeting for a first reading. Because of questions associated with the proposed “10% fund”, the ordinance was put on hold and representatives from the two organizations licensed to conduct charitable gambling in the City were invited to attend a council meeting to provide their input. This occurred at the Council’s December 2009 work session. Representatives from Lake Region Hockey Association, the licensed organization conducting charitable Gambling at Moe’s, and Spring Lake Park Lions, the licensed organization conducting charitable gambling at Robert’s, asked the City to reconsider establishing a 10% Fund as there was very little gambling revenue available and any further reduction after taxes and other expenses would further inhibit their ability to “give back” to the trade area. Discussion: The draft ordinance was brought back to the City Council at their March 2010 Work session in an effort to get direction regarding the 10% Fund as well as local permits. The Council consented to removing the 10% language from the ordinance but wanted to review the matter again in a year to determine whether such an amendment would make sense. (Staff has made note of this.) As for Local Permits, the City has the option of whether or not it would like to approve such activity exempted or excluded by the State. After much deliberation, a consensus was reached that exempt and excluded lawful gambling would not need to be approved by the City. The other change proposed by the revised ordinance would require that a licensed organization would be ineligible for a premises permit if their organization was not local to the trade area.