Truck stop in Curtiss again denied right to sell liquor
By Ross Pattermann
Village officials in Curtiss have once again voted to deny a Class A liquor license to the Abbyland Truck Stop, blocking attempts by the gas station to sell alcohol beyond that of beer and wine.
The board denied the license request at its monthly meeting last week Tuesday, roughly two years after making the same decision. Both times, board members John Unruh and Betty Rettig voted to deny the license.
“We have gotten turned down for it before in the past, and I would like to revisit that,” Abbyland Truck Stop manager Nicky Nash said. “People in town here don’t seem to have an objection to us having a liquor license.”
Nash noted that Nortenos, which lies across the street from the truck stop, can already sell hard alcohol. She said not having a Class A liquor license hurts the truck stop’s ability to be competitive and to generate revenue.
“They can get it everywhere else but by us,” Nash said. “I don’t understand why we keep getting turned down for the liquor license.”
Rettig said that the fact that Curtiss residents can get that type of alcohol in other places was the reason they’ve turned down the license.
“If they can get it in all these other places, then we don’t need another place in town,” she said.
Unruh told the truck stop representatives that he typically abstains from votes on liquor licenses. Unruh said a big factor was the work he has done with prison ministry. Drawing from his experiences there, Unruh noted that alcohol abuse was a key contributor to crime.
“A lot of the people who are incarcerated, it’s due to alcohol,” he said.
Unruh handed out documents that detailed various studies and findings from private and public entities about the dangers of alcohol.
Nash said she understood the board’s reservations about potential alcohol abuse, but with Nortenos serving alcohol in the village already, it felt like the truck stop was being singled out.
“The other option we could have is, when it comes up to renewal, we could deny them too,” Unruh suggested.
Unruh had said he had spoken with someone from the ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms), who told him that the board could deny any license, so long as it was not an arbitrary ruling.
“If you’re going to deny them, you better have a good reason,” said village president Randy Busse. “They have the right to go the county level and go over the village’s head.”
“That’s where I am headed next,” Nash replied.
Busse said he called the county clerk’s office, and if the truck stop presents a petition with signatures equal to 15 percent of the votes in the last gubernatorial election, the decision would then go to referendum, which the village would then have to pay for. The petition would not be in time for April 6, so it would be pushed back to February of 2022.
“Put it on the ballot because I’m saying no,” Rettig said.
