Public Comment

Transcript (~30 min @ 0:51)

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▶ 0:55 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: a motion to open the floor for public comment. So moved. Second. We have a motion to open the floor for public comment made by City Councilor Tramontozzi, seconded by Vice chair Sunilla all in favor any opposed this is the portion of the meeting where any member of the public with us tonight can come forward to speak on the one item that is on the Appropriations Committee agenda and if you do want to come forward please state your name for the record thank you so much good

▶ 1:24 Speaker 1: evening my name is Elizabeth Parsons I am NOT a resident of Melrose but I work for the city of Melrose I'm a regional substance abuse prevention coordinator and I work technically for the Mystic Valley Public Health Coalition it's a coalition of seven cities and towns and I work to support those communities and their use substance use prevention work I would just wanted to speak this evening about the special act to provide just some brief information about what we know for public health science and research.

▶ 2:07 Speaker 1: But first, to help understand where we're coming from when we're speaking about preventing adolescent substance use, we think of the adolescent brain as a pot on a stove. And we can influence whether we turn the heat up on that pot the community is the stove and we can influence whether we turn the heat up on that pot by increasing the factors in the community that put youth at risk for substance use disorders or by decreasing you know turning the heat down and decreasing those risks for youth so you know one of the things that we try to do in our communities is to turn the heat down on that pot right so the factors in our community what they look like that affects adolescent substance use so i just wanted to let you know i support seven cities and towns in our surrounding communities um small bottles of alcohol or nips it's in the news everyone has seen it that young people there have been two two or three uh recent violations um abcc violations for compliance checks where they found underage youth trying to access alcohol and what they were buying were nips in each case so you know that you nips do appeal to youth and young people so that's first thing I wanted to say and then secondly how we support communities is raising their understanding increasing their understanding and raising their awareness about local effective regulations that can protect youth from a harmful substance like alcohol the The Mystic Valley Public Health Coalition has served to educate and provide information to cities and towns, and we would be more than willing to support Melrose in any regulations that they choose to look into or to draft or explore.

▶ 4:04 Speaker 2: Thank you very much. Thank you.

▶ 4:22 Speaker 1: Good evening, everyone. My name is Robin Peavy. I'm Michelle Carson. Carson we're representing Buckelews General Store on 529 Main Street Melrose we have been in business here in Melrose for this is going our fifth year where we have been selling craft beer and wine and we're here tonight because we want to talk about our support for the availability to be able to sell distilled beverages and in Melrose we currently do sell it's a craft beer and wine and we will be very interested in selling craft beverages as well that would also be in line with the type of products that we sell currently we brought this is not a raffle even though we did think about that walking in the

▶ 5:08 Speaker 3: door that would be fun but this is no gifts but it's actually just to show you

▶ 5:10 Speaker 1: as an example these are the types of things we're thinking about when it was brought to our attention that this might be something going through the City Council and the looking at the the availability or the possibilities of selling distilled beverages this is what came to my mind we do a lot of gift baskets our stores basically back based on selling things that people have fun enjoyment of giving giving gifts to people especially obviously around the holidays distilled beverages are something that people like to exchange as presents as gifts and so this is something that we're thinking about we were also told there was some issues around the small bottles being able to sell small bottles these are 500 milliliters and 300 375 milliliter bottles so these are smaller than the 750 that was discussed previously I have no interest like zero interest of stacking a wall in my store with half gallon jugs of vodka that's not who our store where store represents that's not who we are I'm also not interested in selling nips I really do appreciate what the previous speaker brought to our attention I think it's really important to think about who we are in the city what kind of influence that we have over youth in our city and it I have no interest in nips I have no interest in selling anything that could be concealed or you know drank it at another location I have absolutely zero interest in selling to anybody who is under the age of 21, and I have no interest in selling to somebody who is going to then give it to somebody under the age of 21. In our store, we've been very strict about that, and we will continue to be very strict about that. That's not in our interest. In the city's, I personally live here in Melrose. I have a high school freshman. This stuff is very near and dear and on my mind at all times. The other thing I'll just quickly say, as I know we're running out of time, is that this is not a license that we owned. The ability to sell wine and beer is something that is oversight with the alcohol commission here in town. So if a business is not doing what it should be doing or not being a good community member, that's something that at any point in time can be taken away from us. We understand that clearly. Every business in the city should understand that clearly. Every citizen should understand that clearly, that if we're not doing what we should be, then we won't have that license. so there are many guardrails on this topic thank you thank you very much good evening ladies and

▶ 8:01 Speaker 4: gentlemen of the council my name is Rebecca Baraldi for those of you who don't already know me I am the owner of Beacon Hill Wine and Gourmet located at 538 Main Street in Melrose we are going in our 11th year here in Melrose my husband Gene and I built the store we also are going into our 20th year of business on Charles Street, which is a full-service adult beverage retail store, 400 square feet of only adult beverages, including distilled spirits. So we have quite a bit of experience in this industry. So at the last meeting that I attended, I wasn't exactly prepared to speak because I wasn't really sure about what the concerns were and it seems like the main concern is the small format adult beverage I personally

▶ 9:02 Speaker 4: product size does not predicate who the consumer is there seems to be a little a little perception about who drinks the small adult format adult beverage the small format lots of people do I do i don't keep large bottles of any alcohol in my home i'm not a big drinker and so i bring things in small format for when i entertain or if i want to personally consume i know that there's conversation about communities like chelsea that have banned the small format i think the demographic here in melrose we can all agree is probably a little bit different i think they face different challenges than we do here in our community and i say our even though i don't live here i work here and own a business here um i think there's a higher demographic of liquor stores there as well as a different demographic in general and i understand that they have challenges but i don't necessarily think that melrose melrose will face those same exact challenges um pollution i saw is definitely a concern and the the careless disposal of small format bottles i totally understand and appreciate that i think there's a real importance to have a clean community but again i don't think product size nearly i don't think that predicates pollution either i think there are consumers who will just as carelessly toss a coffee cup or a gum wrapper or a candy bar potato chip bag as easily as they will anything else and i just don't know if you eliminate a beverage form in a smaller size that that's necessarily going to solve your pollution problem i do know there's legislation that's i think even as recently as yesterday that was being seen at the state house about possibly putting a um a bottle return similar to with cans and i think that would be very advantageous i think that's win-win i think if somebody thinks that they're going to be able to maybe generate a little bit of revenue they'll be less inclined to throw something away if they don't there's definitely a community i don't know if people are aware of this i see it but there's definitely a community in melrose who they get a little bit of their revenue from canning and so there's always incentive for them to actually possibly aid in that cleaning up because there's there's revenue for them um size restriction with regards to competition so we're in this as a business right when we competed for the license here 10 years ago 11 years ago now everybody was well aware of the type of business that we were running in boston and that was the desire to expand upon and bring into Melrose to bring in a fine wine and craft beer shop with the anticipation of moving towards adult beverages, distilled spirits in the future. The novelty of wine and beer, truthfully, has really faded here in Melrose. That actually happened several years ago, to be honest. If you restrict small format adult beverages, consumers will opt to shop in other locations they can buy in smaller quantities at lower price points it will drive them to continue to shop at neighboring communities offering full service i have people telling me now that they love us but they don't shop with us all the time because sometimes they need things that we're not selling and so it still ties it still ties our hands a little bit with regards to offering the same thing as stores one and a half miles in each direction one and a half miles to malden one and a half miles to saugus one and a half miles to wakefield they're offering the same thing so if they're not shopping locally they're shopping elsewhere um it would be a great idea also to keep the tax revenue in melrose we pay an excise tax on every bottle that we buy so it's certainly not doesn't hurt anything to keep it local um it also brings me to something different i am a different format store than buckaloos okay um what they're looking to do obviously i offer gift baskets and things like that i would absolutely do that but we are without a doubt an adult beverage retailer okay gifts are secondary gourmet food it's the balance is the way the license is written but my format is different than theirs okay i don't even know if they're aware because they're not part of this industry but on the peripheral the buying format as a retailer is incredibly challenging buying adult beverage spirits distilled spirits is very different from buying beer and wine beer and wine you can buy by the case you can even buy by the bottle you'll be a little bit more expensive but you won't you won't be astronomical buying spirits is a very different game the landscape in the adult beverage industry through distribution is entirely different you have to buy things in five to ten case minimums if we're restricted to 750s that's an awful lot of bottles that need to move and turn our bills are due with some distributors net 45 some net 55. that's an awful lot of product that you have to move in a very short period of time plus if you're not allowed different format sizes it's really hard to be able to to spread that around at least when you have the different format sizes you're able to buy it in a manner that allows it to sell in a quicker right a quicker amount of time if we were if we were to be restricted to that 750 limit we could buy once i don't know when we'd get to buy again you know the reality is is that not everybody wants a large bottle they don't want to spend that amount of money and also when we're looking at small adult uh small format adult beverages which is how i like to call them instead of nips which is why i'm stumbling on this not everything is really inexpensive there's some really pricey small bottles when you think about your bourbons and your scotches and your whiskeys, not everything is inexpensive. You can spend a good amount of money on a bottle that's 500 ml. So I just, actually what I put here was something really nice that I wanted to really stress

▶ 15:58 Speaker 4: is that the approval of the modification and the inclusion of the small format adult beverages, In reality, for our business model, if we were restricted, it would be really hard to stay in business, and I'm just being brutally honest with you. That's just unfortunately the way the industry is right now. While I'm not your only license holder in the community, I am the only location that truly embodies the adult beverage store model, and I just really appreciate you allowing me the time to speak, and I urge you with the utmost respect to please carefully consider how a decision like this will impact business today and moving forward. Okay? Thank you.

▶ 17:03 Speaker 1: My name is Janine Venuti. I live on Altamont Ave. I've had an adopter site for actually over 20 years now in Maros in the parking lot behind Papa Gino's, and for years and years I've had a problem with litter back there, and number one thing is nip bottles but surprisingly once Papa Gino's went out of business that that just cleared up and I no longer have that trash and I have to assume that basically the teenagers that were working at Papa Gino's after work were going out in the parking lot and drinking and just leaving their stuff there it's a small change but for me I've noticed a big difference just with that that small change Gina McNeil here tonight

▶ 18:06 Speaker 3: of Maple Street here tonight representing zero waste Melrose I wrote my notes because I get a little nervous in these contacts I don't want to want to make sure I don't forget anything so you know I know some of the previous speakers tonight have alluded to the the litter problem associated with nibs so I want to talk a little bit too about you know litter is certainly something that we think about as part of zero waste Melrose but you know it's a little bit bigger than that as well when we think about the implications for NIPS and how those are disposed of. So I want to just provide a little bit of context first and then speak specifically to NIPS. So I also want to say that the focus of what we're here at Zero Waste Melrose to talk about is really not about the contents. It's really about the container and the implications of how that container is disposed of. So just to be clear about that. And also when I use the term nips I'm also speaking very specifically about 50 milliliter containers you know otherwise known as nips or minis so just to clarify that so you know as I mentioned I think it's easy for people to say oh you know it's just a nip bottle what's the big deal you know it's this it's the small format container as many of you are probably aware at Zero Waste Melrose one of our goals for a number of years now has been to really focus on the reduction of single-use plastics as many of you are probably familiar with unnecessary and wasteful production of plastic contributes to climate change and it's also causing serious and irreversible damage to to our environment in the form of plastic pollution and litter I think you know everyone's aware that if you walk around Melrose it's hard to not see the the litter problem that we have here and while it's unsightly it's also you know a permanent source of pollution so we think about where those plastics go, you know, it's on the streets of Melrose,

▶ 20:09 Speaker 3: it's in El Pond, it's in the deepest parts of the ocean, it's in the water we drink, in microparticles and nanoparticles, and it's in the food that we eat. So it's really, really pervasive and everywhere. And so again, getting back to that idea of what are the implications for us as a city in Melrose, going back to 2017, there was really the beginning of, you know, what I hope is a longer-term trend in Melrose to say that we need to be able to use our laws to protect our environment and to protect our health from further plastic pollution caused by this you know usually disposable single waste or single-use plastic types of containers and packaging so that's really kind of the broader context that we're trying to think about here with every decision that happens in Melrose and I think there's also just again kind of thinking about context I know in every order that comes to the City Council I think every order there's a line that says financial impact many of you you're probably familiar that many businesses are now starting to think about not just starting but really acting on the idea of a triple bottom line right so it's not just about the dollars and cents ultimately it's about the financial the social and the environmental impact and really considering all three of those things when a business decision is made and trying to optimize you know across all of those things and i would like to see the city council and the city of melrose start to think about that too you know maybe ideally there's that financial impact but also the the social and the environmental implications as well and i think that this decision around whether or not nips can be sold in melrose is really an opportunity to start to do that not not that it hasn't been done before but to kind of start to do that maybe more more explicitly so with all of that background i want to just specifically address some of the concerns and ideas that we had around the liquor law expansion. So the reality is, as some of the other speakers have commented, that the 50 milliliter lips are another instance of single use disposable plastics that is usually not recycled and it's frequently littered. And in that sense, it's really not that different from the plastic bags, right? That we, again, passed a law to say we're not going to have those here in our community nips are in theory recyclable but like many single-use plastic disposable kind of on-the-go containers they're often just not recycled they're littered etc so that's just not happening even though they are recycled to give you a little bit of sense of this scale of what we're talking about here in Massachusetts on a daily basis there are 70,000 nips sold so over the course of the year that's more than 25 million nips and i know that's nowhere near the number of plastic water bottles you know single serve water bottles that are sold but still it's a lot 25 million of any little package thing is is a lot to think about and that really does add up especially when you think about if those are being littered at a high frequency some of the cities where nips are a significant litter problem include not just chelsea which we've heard a lot about chelsea because they actually went so far as to ban NIPS but Woburn, Salem, Gloucester, Bridgewater, Charlestown, Worcester, Southbridge, Falmouth, Mashpee and others are ones where if you kind of do some googling and see where this is in the news and where it's been discussed by City Council those are some of the ones that are listed and those are just in Massachusetts and you know the state of Maine had such a problem with NIPS that the governor I think really advocated banning them outright when you couldn't do that they settled for a deposit in the state of Maine so it's not a Massachusetts specific problem and then lastly keep Massachusetts beautiful which is this state chapter of keep America beautiful reports that nip litter is in the top five most common categories of litter that they find in community cleanups around the state so it really is unfortunately it's a pervasive issue with with respect to the specific kind of container size and what's really special about the decision that you have before you is that it's one of the very rare instances where we as a community actually have the opportunity to prevent something you know how many times do you think about you know it's always about trying to recover trying to mitigate a problem that's already there and so this is an opportunity to not create the problem you know we can't control nips coming across the town line and that sort of thing but we can do you know we can do something to limit the extent to which they're actually sold right here in Melrose and again that's a really unique opportunity that I think is very very important to consider one of the earlier speakers also brought up the idea of the deposit so we know that deposits are really effective the types of containers that have a deposit on them like 80% of those are recycled if something like plastic water bottles where there isn't only like 20% of those are recycled right so we know that that's a really effective thing unfortunately getting that kind of action at the state is you know not optimistic so just to give you a little bit of history in about 2010 there started to be an effort among lawmakers to modernize our current bottle bill to cover things like plastic water bottles right because there's been such a huge increase in that kind of consumption got bogged down eventually in 2014 it was on this state referendum and if folks remember that it was one of the referendum closed questions in November on in 2014 things were looking good everyone thought that was going to passed until folks like the American Beverage Association and some other business concerns got involved and spent eight million dollars right here in Massachusetts to defeat that so updating the bottle bill while there's actively hearings there was a hearing on just in January January 23rd to talk about it and to talk about including nips in it I think that that's a bit unrealistic and I'm sorry to have to say that but just based on the history and in fact at that that hearing um a gentleman by the name of robert melione who's the executive director of the massachusetts package stores association told lawmakers that liquor store owners would likely offer quote a lot of opposition to the proposed bill to add a deposit to nips so there may be some very good reasons for the package association to oppose that but that tells me that that's a pretty long haul to add nips to the bottle bill I think in theory it's a great idea but I just don't think it's a realistic solution to this problem that's going to happen any time in the near term so that's kind of the last point that I wanted to make I just wanted to say thank you so much for hearing the zero waste Melrose point of view on this issue and I would leave you I know I made a long statement so I'll leave you with two summary points again And you have a really unique opportunity to prevent this kind of pollution, the expansion of it here in Melrose. And so I really hope we can take advantage of that. And lastly, just to reiterate that local municipalities truly are on the front lines when we think about some of these things that need to happen. It's when local municipalities make changes and act that it bubbles up to grass, that grassroots activity bubbles up to action at the state level. So that's my statement. Thank you all so much for your attention. Thank you.

▶ 27:57 Speaker 2: Any other members of the public wishing to speak?

▶ 28:03 Speaker 4: I'm Kim Kerrigan, and I'm speaking just as a resident here in Melrose. Litter is a huge problem in Melrose. My husband and I travel a lot all around the world, and we love to come home. but we are always acutely aware when we do get home about the amount of litter we have in Melrose. We moved here about three years ago, three and a half years ago, and I was shocked at the amount of litter that was on my street, Cottage Street. A lot of it was plastic and Styrofoam. And so if I didn't pick it up or someone else, it was probably gonna be around for a long, long time. And so I started picking up trash. on my street, in my neighborhood, down Main Street, on the parks, in Elk Pond. And it's not really something that I wanna do, but it's something that I feel as a citizen I should do. And I am happy to say, I mean, the good news is in the last year, I've seen less plastic bags. And I do think that's a direct result of the ordinance that was passed. Unfortunately, I do still see lots of nips. And it's one of the most common things that I do pick up when I'm picking up trash. And I know it's not unique to my street. I know it's not unique to Melrose. I know it's not unique to Massachusetts. Nip pollution is a huge problem. And so I am very much in favor of limiting the sale of NIPS because right now we don't even sell NIPS here and we have a problem. I can't even imagine what the problem will be like if there's more availability to it. So thank you for letting me speak. I strongly support any expansion of our spirit laws, laws but i am feel very strongly that we should not sell nips if we can avoid it in melrose

▶ 30:40 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: thank you thank you seeing no other members interested in coming forward i'd entertain a motion to close public comment motion to close public comments we have a motion to close public comment made by vice chair sanella and seconded by councillor Garipay all in favor any opposed that concludes our comment period thank you for coming forward to speak to us that was very helpful we have one order on our agenda tonight it is order number 2020-38 a special act to authorize the city of melrose acting through its liquor licensing commission to convert up to two retail food establishment licenses for the sale of wine and malt beverages to licenses for the sale of all alcoholic beverages for off-premises consumption um this is the first time this body of this composition has had a chance to discuss this so in previous meetings the city council last year amended our order so although it says on the agenda to convert up to two retail licenses you all probably know that your predecessors we agreed as a city council a majority of us to change that to three because we do have three licenses in town currently for the sale of wine and beer this would convert all up to all up to all three of those for all adult beverages and as has been referenced tonight a majority of the city councilors in 2019 added a section that would that currently reads any alcoholic beverages with an alcohol concentration of greater than 25 percent may not be sold in containers with a capacity of less than 749 milliliters so that's this current um the current draft proposal before us i see that our city solicitor is here tonight and other um members of the city administration so if we'd like to do