Grappling with the strain on police resources following some high-profile shootings, Orlando officials have gone back to the drawing board to figure out how to create a safer downtown.

At a workshop Monday, it was clear there was some support for shutting alcohol sales off at midnight, though it doesn’t appear a majority of the city council yet agrees.

“I’m a 12:00 guy right now,” said Commissioner Jim Gray of his support for ending alcohol sales at that hour. “But I am willing to say ‘show me something that works, and I’ll consider it.’”

Among the most pressing issues is how to police nightlife in one of the state’s densest bar corridors, and how to pay for it.

Police costs total about $6 million annually to cover the eight-block area area annually – funding between 81 and 131 officers each night. As part of the after-midnight permit put in place two years ago, bar owners cover about $1.6 million toward that total.

The rest of the city is patrolled by about 98 officers.

Since that permit was enacted, police costs have been subsidized by the downtown Community Redevelopment Agency – but state law forbids that as a permanent expense, Mayor Buddy Dyer said. So funding needs to be shifted to general revenue, a pool of money that covers public safety, infrastructure, parks and other programs.

“I don’t think it’s fair for the rest of the city to subsidize bad business practices,” Commissioner Patty Sheehan said, a notion reiterated by at least two other commissioners.

Because the downtown discussion was in a workshop setting, no votes were taken or decisions made. But ahead of the upcoming budget season, Dyer and city officials said they’d take the next few months to figure out how to proceed.

David Barilla, the executive director of the CRA, said he planned to seek ideas from bar owners as part of that process.

Among the ideas tossed around Monday were ending alcohol sales at midnight, reconfiguring how bars with a permit to pour until 2 a.m. pay for police, or ending the funding requirement altogether and letting bars and nightclubs hire their own off-duty officers and security teams.

“I’m committed to having the best downtown we can have … and we’re not there right now in my opinion,” Dyer said. “What is unsustainable is the amount of money that we’re putting toward downtown on a nightly basis.”

Interim commissioner Shan Rose, whose district includes the bar district running along Orange Avenue from Colonial Drive south to State Road 408, argued ending sales earlier would further punish nightlife and not solve the problem.

“I don’t believe the policies that are in place are protecting the community, but they’re hurting the businesses,” she said. “I do not believe ending alcohol sales at midnight solves anything.”

What prompted the discussion Monday was a shooting last month on Orange Avenue, in which a man in an argument fired a shot into the air and was shot and killed by police.

Other high-profile shootings since 2021 including the killing of a U.S. Army veteran along Orange Avenue in 2021, nine bystanders wounded in a 2022 shooting, two Orlando Police officers shot while investigating an incident in 2023, and the mass shooting that killed two and wounded nine on Halloween last year.

Gray said he was concerned with the amount of public safety resources dedicated to downtown, and as well as placing police and firefighters in harm’s way. A presentation by OPD Chief Eric Smith said 25% of injuries to police officers since 2021 have occurred downtown.

Smith said he didn’t know what more his agency could do to protect the eight-block area.

“The question is, is this the downtown we want?” he said. “We have a duty to keep residents and our visitors safe. As a police department, we’ve tried everything to curb violence, we don’t see any other viable options.”