Coyote TV - Home of the High Desert Advocate

    In a well orchestrated ceremony before the West Wendover City Council, local strip club owner Scott Bangerter presented a $10,000 check to four six grade girls.
    The check presentation could mark the final chapter of saga that began with an attempt by the city to impose new restriction on lap dancing and stripping and included a drug bust, the arrest of the Wendover, Utah police chief’s wife and the eventual dissolution of the Wendover, Utah police department.
    Despite the two year drama of threats and counter threats both Mayor Josephine Thaut and Southern Xposure owner Scott Bangerter were smiling as he presented the super sized check bearing the name of strip club to four giggling elementary school students that is slated to go toward the purchase of playground equipment.
    The $10,000 is exactly the amount Bangerter agreed to pay the city for youth oriented activities last October.
    In those negotiations, Bangerter agreed to payoff the city $10,000 in cash earmarked for the city’s swimming pool and for non-specified improvements for children recreation.
    For its part the city agreed to pull out the provisions in its SOB ordinance that allowed for the shut down ordered to be issued in the first place.
    According to the agreement Bangerter and the Southern X-Posure can no longer be shut down or fined for the actions of anyone employed by the club or a dancer unless the violations were directly approved by either the owner or the on site manager.
    By removing those provisions, the Southern X-posure becomes more or less like any other business operating in West Wendover which for Bangerter must be a very welcomed victory.
    And while that victory did not come cheap, its $10,000 could well be worth it in avoiding similar closure attempts in the future. In deed the very fact that Bangerter no longer faces closure due to the actions of his employees may make his club less attractive to police investigations in the future. And if that is the case it could be money well spent.
    Last August the Southern Xposure was raided by police after a stripper Sylvia Tripp sold two prescription pills to an undercover narcotics agent.
    Because Tripp was the wife of then Wendover, Utah Chief of Police Vaughn Tripp the story made national news.
    Vaughn Tripp was soon forced to resign and the Wendover, Utah Police Department was eventually disbanded with the Tooele County Sheriff’s Department taking over local policing duties in Wendover, Utah.
    Citing provisions in West Wendover SOB ordinance that made the club owner liable for the actions of all of his employees and dancers, West Wendover Police ordered the closure of the club that September which Bangerter promptly appealed and filed suit against Supp and the city.
    In October the city council rescinded the closure notice and instead voted to suspend Bangerter’s business license for 30 days. That decision was not apparently not acceptable to Bangerter who continued to proceed with his suit.
    Three weeks later Thaut and Bangerter came to the settlement.
    The strife between West Wendover and Bangerter did not however begin with the drug bust. In 2006 attempted to adopt a much stricter Sexually Oriented Business License ordinance that would have all but outlawed one of the most profitable service offered at the club -- lap dancing.
    According to club owner Scott Bangerter the new ordinance would put him in the impossible position of either having to become a fully fledge SOB or being forced to ban one of the most profitable performances at his club.
    Bangerter’s attorneys argued that there had to be room for compromise and the city council faced with a lawsuit agreed at least to begin negotiations with and to delay implementing the new SOB ordinance.
    In the middle of those negotiations however an undercover officer reported that Things have gotten way out of hand or rather hands may have gotten into things where they do not belong at Wendover’s only strip club the Southern X-Posure.
    In a rather explicit albeit legally worded letter, City Attorney Thomas Coyle gave strip club owner Scott Bangerter a run down of inappropriate acts being committed at his establishment. Coyle added that because of them the city could reconsider its decision to delay implementing a new much harsher sexually oriented business restriction.
    According to the letter far from the R-rated stripping or even lap dancing, “entertainment” in recent months at the Southern X-sposure ranged well into XXX. While the letter did not say so, if any of the acts it mention did in fact occur, police could have easily shut down the club on a variety of charges and even arrested the people involved.
    While the issue of lap dancing is being hotly debated in Nevada, there are few if any cities that allow the kind of activity detailed in the letter and none in anything but a Sexually Oriented Business.
    Even under West Wendover old more liberal ordinance many of the acts detailed in the letter could have been considered illegal, Coyle explained.
    Strip club attorney David Lockie did not dispute the veracity of the letter or whether the sexual acts took place. In fact Lockie promised the council that the club was taking measures that they would never happen again.
    After the publication of the letter both sides agreed to keep the old more liberal ordinance more or less intact but did add a stripper work card fee that charged the girls “dancing” at the club $100 for that privilege.