Sandpoint considers temporary ban on drive-throughs

A proposal before the Sandpoint City Council would ban new drive-through windows while the city works on a new zoning plan.

City Councilman John Reuter, who supports the proposal, said his concern about drive-throughs relates to commercial zones that border residential zones. He said he’s mindful of the negative effects drive-throughs have on adjacent neighborhoods.

“My hope would be that we would end up with a much more nuanced, much more complex set of rules for drive-throughs that make sense and that protect residential neighborhoods and allow people to manage business without undue regulation,” he said. “Downtown in Sandpoint there are small mom-and-pop businesses with drive-throughs … and no one wants to shut those places down.”

The ban would last at the most a year, and hopefully for less time than that, Reuter said.

Reuter said he’s received hundreds of e-mails since Saturday, when an article on the ban ran in the Bonner County Daily Bee, many of them from people who are enthusiastic about banning drive-throughs. He said he’s responded to those e-mails to tell the writers he’s not their guy.

He emphasized that the ban would be temporary and would not affect the drive-through windows already in place.

“I’ve become a hero of a movement I didn’t mean to be,” he said.

The Daily Bee article quoted a former city planner and a commercial real estate agent who both said recent regulation proposals have made the city appear to be anti-business.

Reuter said some things city council has done have been anti-business, though the proposed temporary ban on drive-throughs is not one of them.

“I’d say generally people in Sandpoint are generally happy with most drive-throughs, but occasionally there are instances where they don’t work right,” he said.