Editorial: Sexually Oriented Businesses in Richardson

by William "Bill" McCalpin of Richardson Echo

The Richardson Coalition recently posted online an editorial regarding Sexually Oriented Businesses (SOBs) in Richardson. The editorial pointed out that the City Council, during its regular planning on goals and initiatives, originally considered a goal to “Further evaluate restrictions on Sexually Oriented Business zoning”, but dropped this goal when finally adopted. The Richardson Coalition’s editorial sharply criticized this move. But I would like to suggest that there is a different way of looking at the City Council’s actions, one that I think will explain why members of the Richardson Coalition, and indeed, all citizens of Richardson, should support the Council’s choice.

The first consideration is that the City of Richardson has no power to ban all SOBs in Richardson. In a presentation made on the subject of regulating SOBs to the Texas City Attorneys Association meeting in 2006, attorneys William M. McKamie and Bradford E. Bullock of San Antonio pointed out that “generally a city may not use a zoning ordinance to effectively preclude adult businesses from locating within the city” and “[c]ase law has established that nonobscene adult entertainment is a protected First Amendment activity for which local governments must make sites reasonably available.”

While it is true that some very small towns might avoid permitting adult businesses from operating in the town limits, this would be true only if the town had no areas reasonably available (for example, not already next to churches or schools or residential neighborhoods). Clearly, Richardson is not a “very small town” – after the 2000 Census, Richardson was 26th in population out of more than 1,500 Texas cities – and Richardson’s City Council and staff found that there were areas in the City where the City could not reasonably preclude such establishments, as demonstrated in recent court cases in other jurisdictions.

So, in 2007, the Richardson City Council adopted a Sexually Oriented Business ordinance that restricted this type of adult business as much as was legally practicable under current state and federal laws and judicial rulings. As then-Mayor Gary Slagel wrote in a public letter on behalf of the entire City Council: “The proposed ordinance is intended to provide a high degree of protection to the public from the effects of such establishments by providing the greatest degree of restrictive regulations possible.”

Note the phrase: “the greatest degree of restrictive regulations possible”. As McKamie and Bullock pointed out, “Nevertheless, if it is possible at all to essentially ‘zone out’ SOBs, this would apply only to the smallest of communities [which Richardson is not], and the local government must be prepared to engage in a protracted court fight with a likely well-funded foe.” Then they added, “There is a high cost involved in litigating First Amendment claims, including damages and attorney’s fees under 42 U.S.C.”

Unlike some “single issue” candidates or those who have never served in public office who would urge the City to do anything and everything possible to fight these businesses, the members of the Richardson City Council have a fiduciary responsibility to provide for the best overall governance for the City. This includes balancing the desires to limit or remove such obnoxious uses with the fiscal responsibility to avoid wasteful spending. While some citizens may argue that any money spent fighting SOBs isn’t wasteful, the truth is that at some point, spending untold hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting First Amendment lawsuits that the City is very likely to lose just isn’t in the best interests of the City as a whole.

Think about it: every $100,000 that we spend on legal fees defending the City on cases we are very likely to lose is yet another code enforcement inspector or police cadet or trainee for the fire department that we can’t hire, with a real, tangible impact on the ability of our City to safeguard the lives and property of its citizens.

I believe that the Richardson Coalition should be thanking the Richardson City Council for the activities that it has done in the past to restrict such obnoxious uses as much as is legally possible in this current legislative and judicial climate, and should further be thanking the Richardson City Council for husbanding in a wise and prudent manner the scarce financial resources of the City on behalf of the taxpayers in these trying economic times.

As a resident of Richardson off and on since 1965, I have come to meet and know many members of the Richardson Coalition, and I know them to be fine citizens who want the best for our city, and in this case, I believe that – until our state and federal legislatures and judicial systems change the ground rules – many members of the Richardson Coalition will agree that dropping the emphasis on further activity on SOBs when such activity is unlikely to bear fruit is a prudent move when the City Council has so many other pressing issues to concern itself with on our behalf.

As the well-known prayer says, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.” In this case, I believe that the Richardson City Council has demonstrated both “wisdom” and fiscal responsibility, and that all citizens should be thankful for their efforts.

William "Bill" McCalpin is a longtime Richardson resident.

The author of this editorial is solely responsible for its content and the stated opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the The Richardson Echo. This editorial was unsolicited.