Politics & Government

City Council Passes State's First Social Host Ordinance

The local ordinance calls for fining local homeowners — with few exceptions — where teens 18 and younger are found drinking alcohol.

(Ed Note: For purposes of full disclosure, Mercer Island Patch editor  is currently a member of the Communities That Care Coalition.)

Mercer Island City Council approved an ordinance Monday night intended to prevent underage drinking by fining local homeowners — with few exceptions — where teens 18 and younger were found drinking alcohol. The civil ordinance is the first of its kind in the state.

The council voted 6-1 to hold persons responsible by having to pay a fine for failing to prevent underage drinking at gatherings on property they own or otherwise control. The civil fines of $250 per infraction would be levied if police find evidence of drinking by minors 18 years old and under — even if the drinking occurred without their knowledge. Councilmember Mike Grady opposed the ordinance.

Find out what's happening in Mercer Islandwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

City Attorney Katie Knight, who drafted the measure under the direction of members of the City Council, said it was narrowly defined and was intended to target homeowners who hosted high-school age students at parties with underage drinking. 

"There was once such incident, which I was personally invoved in, where a parent was sleeping upstairs and a big party with underage drinking was going on downstairs," she said. "The homeowner told police, 'I didn't know what was going on.'"

Find out what's happening in Mercer Islandwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Grady worried that the difference in the Mercer Island ordinance definition of an "underage drinker" as 18 or younger could contradict federal law that punishes offenders under 21 for consuming alcohol, leaving the city exposed to potential litigation.

"I feel like we're creating an arbitrary definition of saying that 18 and under is strict liability," he said.

Mercer Island YFS Manager Derek Franklin noted that though the rate is at a 10-year-low, 44 percent of Mercer Island 12th-graders still report drinking in the last 30 days and that underage drinking is linked to "increased rates of violence, property damage, sexual assault, alcohol poisoning, impaired driving and death."

Mike Graham-Squire of Seattle-based Neighborhood House, which works to prevent underage drinking in vulnerable communities, applauded the city for adopting a social host ordinance similar to one he helped communities in Marin County, CA, pass as a director at the Youth Leadership Institute. Cities including Novato, Mill Valley and Ross approved the ordinance — prompted by the tragic .

"I had the privilege to work in Marin County and we worked to pass social host ordinances in every municipality there," he said. "We set the community standard in people's homes."

Several local homeowners, however, voiced their opposition to the council's support of the ordinance's provision for "strict liability" of property owners where the underage drinking was detected. 

Resident Jerome Roache said the ordinance was inappropriate because of the strict liability provision that tied the hands of a judge to consider whether or not homeowners had taken steps to prevent underage drinking on their property.

"It says you're liable whether you knew or not, " he said. "I'm concerned about the stigma. Police do not have any discretion in this matter."

Roache also happens to serve as Bellevue City Assistant Attorney, but his appearance was as a citizen and unrelated to his professional work at the city of Bellevue.

Homeowner and attorney Laurin Schweet said that the new law was overly broad as a liability-focused law and wasn't going to help the problem. She raised the possibility of several homeowners held liabile if underage drinkers held a party at a neighborhood beach where several homes owned a share — presumably making them all liable. She even raised the possibility of being fined as victims of a robbery, based on evidence of underage alcohol consumption at the scene.

"It doesn't matter if you've done everything in your power," she said. "You'll still be liable under this law in the way it is written. ... Mercer Island parents get a bad rap, because it's an affluent community." 

Knight and Mercer Island Police Chief Ed Holmes dismissed that criticism out-of-hand.

"If someone commits a felony and has committed a crime to get inside the residence, of course our officers are not going to cite that," Holmes said. "Our officers have undergone substantial training. ... I don't want people panicking here that, if someone breaks into their home that they're going to get cited." 

(Ed. Note: An earlier version of this story failed to clarify that Jerome Roache was addressing the City Council as a local resident, rather than in his professional capacity as an assistant attorney with the city of Bellevue. Mercer Island Patch regrets the error.)


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

More from Mercer Island