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All-you-can-drink specials, two-for-one happy hours and other promotions have been criticized for encouraging the kind of binge drinking that contributed to several river drownings by drunken young people in recent years.
Local bar owners are willing to work with the task force, La Crosse County Tavern League President Jeff Woodruff said.
However, Woodruff said heavy drinking in taverns isn't to blame for most of the seven river deaths in recent years.
"In the end, you have to be responsible for your own actions," Woodruff said. "These are tremendous tragedies, but it goes back to individual responsibility."
Police Chief Ed Kondracki agrees that personal responsibility is important, but believes "young people are being targeted by the alcohol culture. They are victims."
Mayor John Medinger said he wants the task force to "look at all issues and make dramatic recommendations back to the city."
"I don't mind looking at downtown bars," Medinger said, "but if you drive by the university on a nice spring day, you'll see 50 people out on the lawn drinking."
Medinger and Woodruff both identified house parties as significant contributors to alcohol abuse and said something needs to be done about them.
But the mayor also is concerned that La Crosse may not be ready for the kind of changes necessary to prevent these kinds of deaths and reduce binge drinking.
When it comes to addressing social problems, Medinger said, a community has to be ready for change before any real progress can be made.
"Is this community ready to change its attitudes about alcohol? On a scale of one to 100, I think it's in the single digits," he said.
"We've been a hard-drinking river town for 150 years. We brag about it," Medinger said.
Kondracki and Medinger agree that drink specials are a problem, but Medinger questions how effective restrictions would be.
"I'm concerned about all-you-can-drink specials," Kondracki said. "They're quite prevalent, as are two-for-one specials that begin late at night. We need to limit alcohol-promotional advertising."
Medinger said UW-La Crosse students are being targeted with advertising in the student newspaper, the Racquet. "It's appalling and horribly sexist, and encourages massive drinking," Medinger said of the advertising.
Medinger thinks it's probably unconstitutional to ban happy hours, or at least impossible to enforce. "If you don't allow two-for-one drinks, they'll just cut the price in half," he said.
Woodruff said late-night drink specials aren't a big problem downtown. La Crosse bars that offer them aren't downtown, and tend to cater to late-shift workers who've just gotten off work, he said.
One area of common ground may be restrictions on alcohol consumption by bartenders.
"We have observed that bartenders serving intoxicated persons are, at times, themselves intoxicated," Kondracki said. He called the problem "fairly prevalent. There are several documented incidents. An ordinance would be more preventative than anything."
Woodruff said tavern owners may not object to restrictions, as long as it doesn't become a tool for police to harass bars.
"The league doesn't think having highly intoxicated bartenders helps," Woodruff said. He's worried about police coming into bars randomly and testing bartenders with a breathalyzer.
Medinger agrees the city needs to look at bartenders drinking on the job and do more to make sure they're not serving drunken patrons.
"We have sting operations for stores selling cigarettes to minors. Maybe we need some for selling to horribly intoxicated people," Medinger said.
Woodruff said he's concerned about how police might determine whether a patron is intoxicated because of the way young people drink today. "You've got people drinking a tremendous amount of alcohol at multiple locations," he said.
"When I was young, we used to be at bars by 7 p.m., playing pool or dancing," Woodruff said. "Nowadays, the bars are virtually empty until 10 p.m., and then there's a tremendous amount of bar-hopping."
Most student drinking, Medinger said, happens at house parties, where students get drunk on cheaper alcohol, then head downtown for drink specials.
"You can buy a 15-pack of beer for $7, consume all 15, then buy two drinks downtown for $5," Medinger said.
Woodruff said it's not uncommon for students to "slam two or three shots at one bar and then go to another. You can hit 10 bars in 30 minutes."
Somebody drinking shots may not appear intoxicated initially, but "the signs don't come on until 1:30 a.m.," Woodruff said.
Medinger said the community needs to balance personal freedom with the need to protect people from harm.
"The responsible businessman doesn't need that dollar from that falling-down drunk," Medinger said.
Kondracki said he wants to work with the Tavern League members on the problem.
"Working together, we can develop a model here that can be replicated by university towns across the state and nation," Kondracki said. "The potential for changing this environment is at hand."
Reid Magney can be reached at (608) 791-8211 or rmagney@lacrossetribune.com.
