West Des Moines, IA Public Conduct: Public Alcohol Use (2026)

West Des Moines City Code section 3-2-10, "Public Consumption Of Alcohol," makes it unlawful for anyone to consume or drink alcoholic beverages on any public street, highway, sidewalk, alley, or public walkway inside the city limits. The prohibition is broad: it covers every public right-of-way in West Des Moines, not just parks or downtown Valley Junction, and applies regardless of the drinker's age. The Code carves out two exceptions: consumption the City Council has expressly authorized, and activity specifically allowed elsewhere in this Code. The second exception matters in practice, because the same title, Title 3, Business and Licensing, separately permits licensed bars and restaurants to serve alcohol in an approved outdoor service area, provided the area is enclosed by a barrier the City has approved, includes required emergency exits, and, if it sits within 300 feet of residentially zoned property, stops serving and closes by 10:00 P.M.

Absent one of those authorizations, a person caught drinking on a sidewalk outside a Valley Junction bar or along a street near Jordan Creek Town Center is in violation of section 3-2-10, and the ordinance builds in a real criminal consequence rather than a fine-only municipal infraction: it expressly punishes the offense as a simple misdemeanor as provided in Iowa Code 903.1.1(a), maximum sentence for misdemeanants, which the City adopts by reference into its own Code. Enforcement falls to the West Des Moines Police Department, which patrols the city's public ways separately from Des Moines, Clive, Urbandale, and Waukee police, each of which enforces its own, separate open-container rule.

The section was last amended by Ordinance 1841 in 2009 and sits within Chapter 2 of Title 3, alongside the city's other alcohol licensing and control provisions adopted under Iowa Code chapter 123.