Such businesses do not operate openly in the county, officials said, nor have they been uncovered in Rockdale and Cameron, where strict adult business ordinances have been on the books for several years.
Regulating sexually oriented businesses was not at the top of the Milam County Commissioner’s Court list of pressing issues until the county judge’s secretary received a telephone inquiry recently from a man who identified himself as Richard Clark asking about permits required to establish a “gentlemen’s club” in southwest Milam County near the Alcoa/Luminant industrial properties.
At a 10 a.m. commissioners’ court meeting Monday, a committee will be appointed to draft the county’s first-ever list of rules to be adopted at a future session that will regulate sexually oriented businesses, said County Judge Frank Summers.
“We can’t just ban them,” Summers said. “We have to write sexually oriented business guidelines to keep them in their place, away from churches, away from schools and have certain regulations.”
These businesses would bring in revenue from the tax base, but “on the negative side, it tends to bring in a clientele that will keep the court full and busy,” Summers said.
Wichita County Judge Woodrow W. “Woody” Gossom Jr. and commissioners visited that North Texas county’s only sexually oriented business - a strip joint imparting totally nude female dancers - on an inspection prior to drafting regulations in 1999. There were few prototypes available for counties during that era, Gossom said. Wichita County’s set of regulations, drafted with the assistance of attorney Doug Baker, prevailed during litigation that wound up in the 5th U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans, Gossom said.
The Wichita County business has no liquor license; thus, patrons are invited to bring their own drinks and pay a cover charge to see the shows.
“It doesn’t get a great deal of activity,” Gossom said. “It is so low key. There is a very small element of people that go there. It does not make the radar screen as a problem place, but I would rather it wasn’t there.”
Milam County’s judge and four commissioners, meanwhile, have been individually studying rules adopted by area counties to draft Milam County’s first set of regulations.
Dan F. Cervenka, the Milam County assistant district and county attorney who is reviewing regulations adopted by Madison, Robertson and Gaines counties, said the Texas Local Government Code, Chapter 243, grants counties legal authority to impose regulations managing sexually oriented businesses, while the First Amendment provides for such businesses to operate as a freedom of expression.
“The principle announced therein that unrestricted operation of certain sexually oriented businesses may be detrimental to the public health, safety and welfare of a community,” Cervenka said.
“A key feature of any such regulation is the authority to restrict the location of sexually oriented businesses to particular areas, or to prohibit them within a certain distance of a school, regular place of worship, residential neighborhood or other specified land that is inconsistent with the operation of a sexually oriented business,” Cervenka said.
The government’s ability to force adult businesses to keep their distance from other public venues is being challenged. San Patricio County is seeking an attorney general’s opinion regarding its rules regulating the location of sexually oriented businesses at a minimum of 2,000 feet from residences, churches, schools, child care facilities, parks and any other adult businesses. The county is seeking an opinion on the maximum distance from these designated places that a county can require adult businesses be located without exceeding the legislative authority granted to counties.
Cervenka, based on rules imposed by other counties, is recommending that Milam commissioners consider appointing County Sheriff David Greene or Summers as the county’s administrative authority; adopt the general structure of some other county’s rules such as establishing specific hours of operation, imposing parking restrictions, and instituting specific criteria for suspension, revocation and criminal prosecution, and have strong provisions dealing with inspections of permitted businesses.
Meanwhile, Milam County residents should contact county commissioners with questions, ideas and concerns, Cervenka recommended.
Bell County commissioners adopted their first list of regulations for sexually oriented businesses in the 1990s after an adult business sprang up in a rural area that resulted in arrests and prosecutions for public lewdness, and use of controlled substances.
Bell County Attorney Rick Miller said the club was the scene of “obscene dancing. We are not talking about constitutionally protected dancing, we are talking about down-right dirty dancing.”
Bell County officials believed sexually oriented businesses would creep into rural areas as the county became more urbanized, Miller said. More recent amendments decreed by the Bell County Commissioners’ Court require a 3-foot distance be maintained at all times between topless dancers and customers, that strippers acquire work permits through the sheriff’s office, that topless bars use moderate signage, and that all areas of a strip club be visible from the manager’s office.
“We thought it was appropriate to have that kind of ordinance to protect the community,” Miller said.
In Bell County, the sheriff is administrator, and processes applications and licenses, Miller said.
Regulations adopted by several counties point to reports across the U.S. documenting that sexually oriented business by their very nature have a harmful secondary effect on surrounding areas adjacent to them, causing increased crime and downgrading of property values. The Texas Association of Counties had no information on the number of counties that imposed rules governing adult businesses.
Rules from area counties are consistent in that they:
n Prohibit minors from working or entering the premises.
n Allow inspections by the sheriff.
n Require specific distances between entertainers and the audience.
n Prohibit touching between dancers and patrons.
n Do not allow multiple businesses in one area.
Bell County imposes a $500 annual permit fee, but it varies - Gaines County charges $25,000, and restricts entertainers, servers or employees being nude or semi-nude.
