The Homer City Council introduced a resolution at their last regular meeting on Feb. 24 asking a state board to issue additional liquor licenses within the city of Homer. The resolution was postponed until the next council meeting on March 10, where it will go through a public hearing process before being considered for approval by the council.

Resolution 25-016 initiates the process of petitioning the Alaska State Alcohol Beverage Control Board to allow for 10 additional licensed establishments, as currently all of the liquor licenses in Homer are in use.

A Feb. 12 memorandum from Community Development Director Julie Engebretsen to the council notes that the resolution specifically addresses beer and wine licenses for restaurants and eating establishments. The petition will not affect package stores, bars that serve hard alcohol, breweries or seasonal licenses.

“In Homer, we’ve been out of those licenses for a while,” council member Jason Davis said during the Feb. 24 meeting. “The only way an entrepreneur who wants to open a new business — a restaurant with a beer and wine license — is to buy one on the secondary market, where the prices have gotten kind of inflated because of the artificial shortage.”

The scheduled public hearing on the resolution stems from ABC’s recommendation that the city conduct “extra outreach.”

“According to the system, we don’t have to have a public hearing, we just have to pass a resolution. We could have done it tonight,” Davis said. “But when city staff was talking to the alcohol regulator about it, they said that any opposition that might be in the community ends up having to happen in Anchorage at the (regulator) board meeting.”

The number of licenses a city is allowed to have is determined by population. New alcohol regulations that went into effect in January 2024 created the petition process, which several cities in Alaska, the memo notes, have already gone through, including Soldotna and Haines.

The city is seeking the additional 10 licenses based on the volume of visitors to Homer.

“According to cellphone data, more than 400,000 people visited Homer in 2024 from a distance of 50 miles or more outside Homer,” Engebretsen wrote in the memo. “The tourism and visitor industry are strong drivers in Homer’s noteworthy restaurant scene and drive demand for the sale of beer and wine in local eateries.”

Find Resolution 25-016 and supplemental materials in full at www.cityofhomer-ak.gov/citycouncil/city-council-regular-meeting-327.