A recent report said that the City Commission in Flagler Beach has approved an expanded (35 acre) parcel of land for adult businesses, a further action in the Commission’s efforts to fix its adult ordinances to meet constitutional muster after getting hit with a federal lawsuit. Earlier, the Commission reduced the city’s adult entertainment application fee from $10,000 to $500.
The Daytona Beach News reported that during the recent special meeting, the outgoing five-member commission also acted to completely revise the city's adult entertainment ordinance, requiring dancers in exotic dance clubs to stay 6 feet from patrons, barring sexually-oriented businesses from selling alcohol, and forcing the city's only existing adult business, the one which filed the lawsuit against the city, club Liquid, to move into the correct, newly expanded, zone within two years.
The meeting in the crowded hall more closely resembled a court trial than a meeting of the City Commission, reported Janette Neuwal’s. A lengthy debate took place on whether adult entertainment clubs are harmful to the surrounding neighborhoods.
On one side, continued the report, was Richard McCleary, Ph.D., Professor of Social Ecology from the Criminology Department of the University of California-Irvine. McCleary outlined certain studies showing increased levels of crime in areas near sexually-oriented businesses.
Neuwal reported that the adult side of the issue was represented by First Amendment Attorney Luke Lirot. Lirot pointed to methodological flaws in the studies highlighted by McCleary, whose academic specialties include statistics. Those studies cannot be relied on, said Lirot, because they were done in cities where not much industry existed to begin with, so opening a successful enterprise draws more people to the area, naturally raising crime because more people, statistically speaking, means more crime.
Portions of this courtesy of the Free Speech X-Press, the weekly newsletter of the Free Speech Coalition. More info at www.freespeechcoalition.com.
