City crews clean up trash-strewn beaches after the Fourth of July celebration in Sheboygan.


SHEBOYGAN - Revised rules governing alcohol use at Sheboygan parks could see Workers’ Water Street Park and Rotary Riverview Park run dry.

The revised rules, in part, are an effort to clamp down on what officials called "continuous alcohol-related incidents" at the two parks.

"That came from the police department and was a great suggestion," Joe Kerlin, superintendent of parks and forestry, said. "There are family activities down there like picnicking and there are no rentable shelters."

Sheboygan’s municipal code currently prohibits drinking alcohol at many city parks, with a few exceptions. Several parks ban drinking outright, while others allow it under certain conditions.

The downtown-area Riverview Park, for instance, normally bans suds except during the city’s Fourth of July celebration or when the city allows certain groups or organizations to hold annual celebrations or special events there. Drinking is also allowed at rented park shelters in several parks — and will continue to be allowed under the revised ordinance.

Drinking had been allowed at Workers’ Water Street Park and Rotary Riverview Park under the old rules, but the proposed changes would effectively ban drinking at the two parks.

The Water Street Park runs along the Sheboygan River in a neighborhood just west of downtown. Riverview — also sometimes called Riverfront or Riverside — Park is near the mouth of the Sheboygan River between a stretch of boardwalk businesses and the U.S. Coast Guard station.

Alderman John Belanger, who presented the resolution proposing the rules changes, said the change had partly to do with problems involving people drinking too much near where children congregate.

“There’s been problems there with little kids and people drinking along the river there,” he said.

The revised ordinance essentially would repeal the current rules and replace them with simplified new guidelines. Besides tightening drinking restrictions in those two parks, the proposed revisions also aim to make drinking rules in all the city’s parks a bit simpler.

Current rules name 18 city parks where alcohol is prohibited all or most of the time, but don’t specify which parks do allow drinking. The proposed new rules would clear things up by prohibiting alcohol at all city parks except for eight where drinking would be OK.

Under the revised rules, parks where drinking would be allowed at Cleveland, End, Evergreen, King, Kiwanis, Lakeview and Veterans parks. An eighth, Vollrath Park, would permit drinking except at certain times of the day when Sheboygan North and South high schools hold their graduation ceremonies there.

The resolution to adopt the ordinance was held over at the Public Works Committee meeting Tuesday, so wording related to the Fourth of July could be refined, but the issue could eventually go to the Common Council once approved by the committee.

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