Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2015-04-13

Attendance

Jaclyn L. Bird present · Vice Chairman; Robert A. Boisselle present · Ward 4 Alderman; Donald L. Conn Jr. present · President/Ex-officio Member; Scott M. Forbes present · Ward 7 Alderman; Gail Infurna present · Ward 5 Alderman; Jennifer L. Lemmerman present · Ward 2 Alderman; Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis present · Alderman at Large; Monica C. Medeiros present · Alderman at Large; Peter D. Mortimer present · Chairman; John N. Tramontozzi present · Ward 1 Alderman; Francis X. Wright Jr. present · Ward 3 Alderman

Agenda

1. Call to Order (7:27)
2. Public Participation (8:12)
3. Orders (9:05)
4. ORDER-2015-118 : Petition to the Great and General Court to enact a Special Act to authorize the City of Melrose, acting through its Liquor License Commission, to issue licenses to table-service restaurants and function rooms with minimum seating capacities. (9:16)
5. ORDER-2015-123 : Reappointment of Edward Schmitt, 77 Morgan St., to the Human Rights Commission for a three-year term; said term to end on the last day of February 2018 (1:54:00)
6. Adjournment (1:54:44)

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● APRIL 13, 2015 Aldermanic Chamber Committee Meeting 7:40 PM The public should take notice that the Melrose Board of Aldermen may, on certain occasions, have a quorum in attendance due to standing committees of the Board of Aldermen consisting of both voting and non-voting members. Members attending this duly posted meeting are participating and deliberating only in conjunction with the business of the standing committee. Attendee Name Title Status Arrived Peter D. Mortimer Chairman Present Jaclyn L. Bird Vice Chairman Present Gail M. Infurna Ward 5 Alderman Present John N. Tramontozzi Ward 1 Alderman Present Monica C. Medeiros Alderman at Large Present Robert A. Boisselle Ward 4 Alderman Present Francis X. Wright Jr. Ward 3 Alderman Present Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis Alderman at Large Present Jennifer L. Lemmerman Ward 2 Alderman Present Scott M. Forbes Ward 7 Alderman Present Donald L. Conn Jr. President/Ex-officio Member Present In Attendance: Deputy City Solicitor David Lucas

ORDER-2015-118 Home Rule Petition/Special Act Petition to the Great and General Court to enact a Special Act to authorize the City of Melrose, acting through its Liquor License Commission, to issue licenses to table-service restaurants and function rooms with minimum seating capacities. Hold Appropriations Committee

ORDER-2015-123 Appointment Reappointment of Edward Schmitt, 77 Morgan St., to the Human Rights Commission for a three-year term; said term to end on the last day of February 2018 Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 4/23/2015 2:06 PM

Transcript

▶ 7:45 Peter D. Mortimer: It's April 13th at 7.40. that's when this meeting was posted for i am the chairman of the appropriations committee peter mortimer the vice chairman is jacqueline byrd this is a committee of the whole the other members all voting members here are gail inferna john Tramontozzi monica medeiros robert boisselle francis wright marybeth mcateer margolis jennifer lemmerman scott forbes and president donald khan uh we have two orders before us tonight and before i proceed to read those orders i would welcome a motion for public participation please so moved second i have a motion for public participation by alderman byrd duly seconded by alderman boyce sell all in favor of public participation please

▶ 8:33 Peter D. Mortimer: say aye aye aye any opposed hearing none public participation is now open any members of the public who wish to come forward and opine or comment or question our orders tonight please do so now there's no one in the gallery so i would welcome a motion to close public participation second from alderman mary beth mcintyre my goal is again seconded by alderman boyce all in favor please say aye aye any opposed hearing none public participation is now closed and we will move on 1 to the first order before us. It is order number 2015-118. It is a petition to the great and general court to enact a special act to authorize the city of Melrose, acting through its liquor license commission to issue licenses to table service restaurants and

▶ 9:27 Peter D. Mortimer: function rooms with minimum seating capacities. Motion to suspend the rules, second. We have a motion to suspend the rules from Alderman McAteer-Margolis, duly seconded by Alderman Inferna. We are under suspension. We have our Deputy City Solicitor, David Lucas, in the chambers with us this evening. Mr. Lucas, please come forward. Would you like to make an opening statement or proceed directly to a colloquy? I would like to make a brief opening statement. Please do. If you don't mind. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, my name's David Lucas. I'm the Deputy City Solicitor. on behalf of the law department and the mayor's office as well as on behalf of the liquor licensing advisory committee which i chaired upon direction of the mayor that committee most of you

▶ 10:15 know and as you know mr chairman met last spring summer and fall held a number of private meetings with various parties in the city of melrose and a number of public meetings where members of the public could give their input on the order before you tonight as well as potential amendments to the liquor license commission's rules and regulations that committee consisted of myself alderman Tramontozzi joseph nevin who is now the chairman of the liquor licensing commission our tobacco coordinator maureen busby a chamber of commerce member joy faye another chamber of commerce member diane devivo and melrose resident bruce carmichael those persons mr chairman dedicated a lot of time several weeks in a row during the business day

▶ 11:11 away from their own businesses to meet with members of the community who are liquor license holders potential liquor license holders some elected officials real estate professionals in melrose to ask them for their opinions in a confidential setting on how they felt our liquor license regulations and rules in Melrose affected their business, i.e., if it was business-friendly. Based upon those meetings, you have the order before you tonight, and there were several amendments, I won't go over them each, that were made and approved by the Liquor Licensing Commission very recently. To the Honorable Board of Aldermen, the Liquor Licensing Advisory Committee was formed last summer at the direction of Mayor Dolan to review the city's rules and regulations

▶ 12:01 regarding licenses for service and consumption of alcoholic beverages on the premises, whether they can be more conducive to business and economic development, and how the 2009 regulations have worked for the city thus far. Recommendations for amendments were submitted to the Liquor Licensing Commission, and a public hearing was held on March 19, 2015. On March 30, the Commission voted to accept the vast majority of the Committee's recommendations as outlined below. The Board should note that these new regulations affect only licenses for restaurants. No changes have been recommended for the regulations allowing beer and wine stores in Melrose. We believe, that is the Committee, believes that these amended regulations and the order before this board tonight will

▶ 12:48 accomplish these four general goals for the city allow smaller bistro type restaurants to thrive in Melrose especially in our underdeveloped wards allow current licensing license-holding restaurants to operate more efficiently more pleasing for their customers and in a manner that is generally expected in the industry promote a more uniform enforcement of the rules for restaurants and confirm and reiterate Melrose's requirement that all license holders be top quality restaurants with waitstaffed table service the order before the board as you know is for a home rule petition requesting that the board vote favorably upon the following two amendments to our enabling legislation first to lower the seating requirement for table service restaurants with full

▶ 13:36 liquor licenses from 100 seats to 50 seats and second to lower the seating requirement for table service restaurants with beer and wine licenses from 50 to 25 a survey of available commercial space in the city suggests that few if any spaces can support 100 seats and only with great expense in renovating such spaces to conform to our current building codes provide handicap access a similar difficulty exists with supporting 50 seats however our committee believes that the restaurants serving a full liquor selection should not have for fewer than 50 seats as a source of comparison for the board these communities have also established minimum seating requirements for liquor licenses and for those who also have beer and wine only licenses the city of

▶ 14:27 Medford requires 50 seats for full liquor 19 for beer and wine Arlington requires 50 for full liquor 19 for beer and wine town of Stoneham requires 50 for full liquor and does not issue beer and wine only licenses the town of Winchester allows for five licenses for restaurants with a hundred seats or more five licenses for at least for full liquor with at least 70 seats and 24 seats for beer and wine so I guess leaves leaves the limit to its Board of Selectman but does not give any further information on that. Malden, Concord and Wakefield each have zero minimum seating capacity although Wakefield will regulate, Wakefield allows bars and will regulate how many bar stools per table seats. As I've stated the Liquor License Commission adopted several

▶ 15:25 changes to its rules and regulations prior to this order coming before the board. These changes obviously did not require automatic approval but you would be interested to note and there is an executive summary that you have that sets them in full detail but they are in essence food requirement for liquor consumption that is how many drinks a restaurant may serve prior to requiring food before the changes that were just adopted the regulation stated that anybody ordering a drink in Melrose had to order a quote full meal which was not defined the new regulation that's been adopted says any customer can order one drink excuse me a restaurant can serve one drink without a food order after that the customer

▶ 16:10 must buy something off the menu as opposed to a bowl of chips or popcorn or something to that effect that was a genuine concern with some restaurant owners in melrose who felt that this was not a uniformly enforced rule the liquor licensing commission adopted major regulations on outdoor seating on the service of premixed beverages the hours of operation and the definition of table service which i think is important for this order because there were some concerns made that some of our smaller takeout restaurants would be able to get beer and wine only licenses under this order i disagree but in order to make that more secure we have clearly defined or excuse me the liquor licensing commission has clearly defined table service in

▶ 17:03 its new regulations to ensure that a restaurant that primarily uses counter service cannot get a beer and wine license this is for restaurants that has tables dinnerware and wait staff who take your order and bring your order to your table i will conclude by saying in summary the proposed legislation will allow smaller restaurants to open and thrive here in Melrose, especially in underdeveloped areas such as the Highlands and Wyoming Station, adding more character, activity and safety to those neighborhoods. This Board should note that the Police Department, aware of the proposed legislation and the regulation amendments, has stated to me personally, that as the Chief and one of the overnight

▶ 17:48 sergeants that it has no concerns of impacts upon safety, enforcement, or expending of police resources. The business owners of Melrose have reportedly done an admirable job of policing their own premises, ensuring that no patrons are over-served, and maintaining the impeccable atmosphere of our commercial areas. Melrose, Mr. Chairman, has become a dining destination for residents from surrounding and the proposed legislation will expand upon this positive impact our business owners have continued continually contributed back to our community and Melrose will only benefit by expanding our economic base respectfully submitted David Lucas and if I may mr. chairman I just want to read into the record a

▶ 18:35 brief letter from the chairman of the Commission Joseph Nevin who could not be here this evening please read that letter now sir to the Honorable Board of Alderman I apologize for my inability to appear before you in person this evening in my capacity as chairman of the Melrose Liquor Licensing Commission and as a member of the mayor's Liquor Licensing Advisory Committee and as a resident of the city I wish to voice my personal support for the order before you I agree with the mayor that allowing smaller restaurants to thrive here by serving alcoholic beverages will provide a tremendous economic benefit to Melrose over time our Advisory Committee reviewed bylaws and regulations of various towns in the immediate vicinity and it is clear that allowing a smaller number of seats

▶ 19:17 will put our city in a more even footing with those towns without compromising our safety or security our additionally our committee identified various commercial properties suitable for alcoholic beverage licenses under the current law and it is clear that there are very few properties that could support a successful attractive table service restaurant as the chair of the licensing commission i am very confident in the commission's ability and maturity to ensure that only top quality restaurants serve alcoholic beverages in our community and that any violations of our newly amended regulations no matter how slight are immediately enforced our commission's ability and dedication to enforce these provisions should not be questioned in summary i fully support this

▶ 19:58 order which has been vetted and discussed for 10 for 15 months and i ask that the board approve the same sincerely joseph nevin chairman so in summary mr chairman i think the city can put its faith and its trust in our liquor licensing commission in our police department our inspectional service department that so far has done yeoman's job in enforcing our liquor license regulations so far there is little to no concern that this change will create any significant safety or security problems thank you mr lucas first in queue we have alderman wright please thank you mr chairman i just want to state that you know from my perspective this has nothing but positive potential for the city i think a good analogy for melrose would be arlington

▶ 20:55 Francis X. Wright Jr.: much like melrose arlington did not allow liquor and its sidewalks basically rolled up at six or seven o'clock at night and then approximately 1999 2000 they allowed alcoholic beverages in their restaurants and that allowed a number of restaurants to open and flourish in arlington and it's become something of a dining destination um along par with um with melrose but i think melrose hasn't quite reached ellington's level yet but i think by allowing smaller restaurants to serve and do it in a professional manner and to require only table service will allow small proprietors to open quality restaurants which will draw more people to our city in the evening particularly you know friday and saturday night um i there have there are parking issues

▶ 21:51 Francis X. Wright Jr.: we've discussed that in the city but i don't think those issues exist at night so i think we can fill up our parking lots bring some business downtown and that'll allow more people to get to know melrose and i know people from outside melrose who only came to know melrose because we have no highways no byways through melrose through which people would have a reason to travel if they weren't coming here uh that they came to know melrose because they came to turner so they came to stearns and hill or you know they went to you know out of the blue or mexico i'm sorry uh blues diner or mexico window or had a reason to come to melrose you know downtown so i think this is another opportunity to to allow people both in and outside of melrose to enjoy

▶ 22:38 what we have to offer thank you thank you very much sir anybody else wishing to be heard on this order president khan please mr lucas my conversations with the city solicitor have led me he's indicated to me that we have 28 unissued liquor licenses at the present time do you know what the breakdown between uh full restaurant licenses and uh beer and wine licenses would be beer and wine currently is at spice tie of melrose no i'm not looking for what we have issued oh how many my understanding is there's 28 licenses to be issued which could be issued in the city at the present time do you know what the break between full restaurant and beer and wine is i don't know that there is one so there's just 28 licenses that are available and of the

▶ 23:40 of the restaurants in the city that don't have full liquor or beer and wine licenses how many would qualify for licenses if these changes were adopted assuming that i have all of them in front of me I guess what you're saying is how many have sufficient seating to be able to get a beer and wine? How many have at least 25 seats? Jitters Cafe, and that's it. Now I will say that there are a couple of restaurants who have stated that they would be very interested in getting a license and they would try to reconfigure their dining room to be able to do that um i don't know if that's the case they would have to do a lot of improvements by adding seats you you are no longer grandfathered into any kind of codes for handicap

▶ 24:44 access or anything like that and they'd probably have to they would definitely have to apply for building permits to do that one of them i can tell you was was um la cachara in ward one they only have 16 seats though so how they can add a full nine seats I I don't know okay it would seem to me that there are other food service establishments in the city that must have 25 seats that currently don't hold liquor licenses are you saying counter service restaurants that those I do not know of because that's not allowed that way it's not allowed but there's plenty of of counter service restaurants that have 25 or more seats in the city did you survey those establishments no didn't didn't even bother to because they don't

▶ 25:38 have the the business model that would have that would comply with the city's regulations but they could add waitstaff and deliver to the tables and then they would be compliant that conceivably sure if they if they completely changed everything if they had a point-of-sale service if they had a full waitstaff like Bobby C's or Turner's or Mexico Lindo and I think a better example is probably tubas recently did this and they got a beer and wine license but in order to do that he had to redo how his tables are set and how his services is performed and is there any concern about the impact of these changes on our existing businesses I don't understand well we have a number of successful restaurants in here if we had 28 new restaurants serving liquor did the

▶ 26:41 committee consider what impact that might have on our existing restaurant we spoke confidentially to almost every license holder in the city who came before our committee there was one license holder out of all of them who expressed that concern and then after having met with us changed his or her opinion about it and decided it was a great idea and all the others felt they said you know what I started here and I'd love to be able to open a new restaurant and if i could open a smaller restaurant i would be thrilled to do it and in the event we were to forward this home rule petition to the great and general court and it passed i would think that the commission would be in a position where they would be almost

▶ 27:39 required to grant license to to anybody who conformed with uh you know ada and other regulations had the appropriate number of seating and complied with your table service regulations if they comply with all the regulations but you've only mentioned about two of them i mean there are many regulations that a restaurant must follow in order to in order to qualify for a liquor license full liquor or beer and wine yeah i wasn't trying to exhaustively no i yeah it would take regulations of the liquor commission um all right that's all i have for right now thank you president khan next in line we have jennifer Lemmerman please alderman Lemmerman please proceed thank you mr chairman um i have a clarifying question if you don't mind uh in the

▶ 28:30 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: the newer regulations that the that the commission made which i understand we aren't voting on tonight but in in my discussions with constituents and other people in town including business owners there was one piece that came up that was a bit of confusion and as I'm reading it I'm fairly sure that I understand but just for the public and so everyone is aware the takeout piece that a takeout restaurant could not get a liquor license that is not any restaurant that allows takeout right so for example a sterns and hill you can get takeout um it's it's whether it's their primary business is that true that's correct if the takeout is only incidental to their regular dining room service okay and that then they can they could still qualify okay and the commission

▶ 29:21 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: would look at exactly that how you know what percentage of this business is take out what percentage of it is is dining room service and if the commission feels that this is a primarily a takeout service disguised as dining room service then they would vote it down so it's my guess the Commission would take it certainly would have the discretion to do so and I would gather that they probably would sure absolutely thank you very much sure I I just wanted to echo Alderman Wright comments you know Melrose is stated in in the materials is absolutely a destination for dining and and it's become we've become known for our restaurants when i first moved to melrose i i came for the public transportation but it was the downtown that kept me

▶ 30:06 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: and the big part of that for me was was the restaurants and um i have you know friends from from somerville which is a a great dining destination as well coming out to melrose now to enjoy our restaurants and i think that this has been done carefully thoughtfully over more than a year as we heard the right precautions were in place to make sure that we are having the environment and the atmosphere that that we want to have here in this town with the food requirement with the the wait staff service and in order for us to continue that development that mauros has undergone and that we have on main street i think that it's important that we are able to expand to some smaller spaces and as we heard you know the available spaces

▶ 30:54 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: right now there are almost none that would allow that expansion and that continued development of our restaurant industry which which i do believe i i love our our boutiques and and our shops but i think it's the restaurants that bring people here and then put them into those shops while they're downtown so um i i will be supporting this thank you thank you alderman live woman alderman mcateen my goal is police uh thank you mr shuman i i'm also going to be supporting this um not just because of all the work that the commission has done and their thoughtful and extensive investigation i attended a couple of the public hearings that you had and it seemed as though whatever concerns people had you have really done a wonderful job addressing

▶ 31:37 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: but because i i agree i think in terms of development not only downtown but the new zoning that we just did for the transit areas the rail corridor overlay all of that that zoning is now going to allow the smaller transit areas are going to be allowing food establishments by right. So, I think we have set the scene for this kind of entrepreneurial development and I look forward to the commission overseeing the new issuing of licenses, hopefully. Thank you. Thank you, Alderman McAteer-Margolis. line we have alderman Medeiros please thank you uh thank you mr lucas and i i just i wanted to uh you know officially thank you and the committee i know there has been quite a lot of work and we appreciate the time that's been given up to focus on it um i was wondering if you could just talk a

▶ 32:37 little bit about the outdoor dining sure in the sure so as our committee first met and we were looking over all these liquor license regulations and just trying to get a feel if there's anything here that could or should or should not be updated we noticed that there was not much mention whatsoever about outdoor seating requirements although for many years now even before we had these regulations in place there were restaurants looking to put tables outside and sit at them we felt it important let me backtrack one restaurant in particular in melrose put up a very large outdoor seating area without getting prior approval from the liquor licensing commission and the the service area must be defined in any application for renewal

▶ 33:30 before the liquor licensing commission so we've we found it important to establish some kind of fair rules which would protect the surrounding neighborhoods from noise from unwanted I don't know rowdiness thank you rowdiness I don't want to use an inappropriate term for a restaurant to put screening buffers and also to make sure that there's a particular way in and a particular way out so that a member of the public can't sort of wander in through a back waiting a outdoor area and not be viewed by say the the hostess of the restaurant so they can see is this person already you know intoxicated before we start serving them so a few of us had worked in restaurants and certainly the restaurant

▶ 34:23 owners that we spoke with thought that that's something that they would do anyway they police themselves very well but they saw no issue with that at all we're making it a screened area not not limiting the exits in case of an emergency but limiting the entrances to the to the point where it's still safe but it can be easily monitored from anywhere inside the restaurant just as an example and we also wanted to put in there that if there is an outdoor seating area a specific example was Mount Hood where there are some stone patios where they have wedding receptions they wanted to make sure that they didn't have to use glassware which is what our regulations require and we fell well that's a that's a no-brainer so if they need to use you know some

▶ 35:07 night they still have to go for the commit through the Commission for permission to do that so the Commission can see that they're not using for example red plastic cups but something that looks nice but won't break immediately upon impact and create a serious you know hazard so yeah we put a lot of time into that I know President Khan mentioned that there's 28 licenses available to the city of Melrose currently that sounds right to me I don't know the exact number because I know that the ABCC is currently I believe going to do away with minimum numbers of licenses so it's very possible in the near future that there may not be any limits yes I mean I can't see us ever getting to 28 there's knowing the commercial space in Melrose

▶ 35:56 I can't conceive of it happening but and how many licenses are out there right now so the current licenses I believe yeah ocean sushi Japanese which just recently got theirs Bobby sees Mexico window absolutely fabulous has closed Stearns and Hill Turner's Spice Tie of Melrose has a beer and wine license tubas just got a beer and wine license Mount Hood and I believe that's it that's it and other than private clubs actually that's a great question can you explain to the public how private clubs are licensed if or controlled at all by the alcoholic beverage commission and well they are they absolutely are this order does not affect private clubs at all it does not change them private clubs come under the the liquor licensing Commission but a different

▶ 37:13 Monica C. Medeiros: section of the regulations and our committee did not recommend any changes to those we didn't look at them because you know that's not really a point of business development really those are private clubs and I have to be honest that I kind of feel that this 25 seats is a little bit low I would not expect you to be dishonest I too would like to know how many of our existing restaurants whether or not they currently have table service would qualify in terms of space requirements for let me let me give you an example of some restaurants in Melrose that do not have sufficient seating just to give you an idea of the size and let me give an example of one that does that's never gonna get one Papa Gino's because of the way their business is set up they have a

▶ 38:12 ton of seats in there but you order it at the counter they're not gonna get they're not gonna get a liquor license under these rules Camilla's restaurant has 20 seats that's insufficient sushi corner has 20 seats they have 19 if you go in there and actually count them they're not that's not sufficient La Cuchara I said has 16 jitters cafe has 31 they would they they do have enough space in there those are the only ones that we counted what we wanted to what we wanted to look at and what we asked for the building inspectors help with was to identify the restaurants that were table service restaurants that were not counter service restaurants Patroni's has a good number of seats in there I would I would estimate they probably have 25 but he

▶ 39:04 would have to completely redo after all the money he's already put into that place in the last couple years he would have to completely redo his kitchen and and how he sets up his table service is just not space in there because keep in mind even if you have enough seats the building inspector is going to make sure that I believe it's four feet between chairs the building inspector is going to need to make sure that there is sufficient space for two-way pedestrian traffic in between anything so many of these places although they they might say well we can definitely feed to fit 25 seats in here if we squeeze things around it won't qualify no I and some of my concerns when this came up some time

▶ 39:45 Monica C. Medeiros: ago were places like Papa Gino's like Liberty Bell yeah Liberty Bell may have which is you know right in the path of many of the kids coming from school and and so on and so forth so certainly they may not have this right now but I don't think it's unreasonable that some of these businesses might try to reconfigure I mean and it's okay to have bar seats count is that correct it just so long as they have table service yes yes but the Commission the Liquor Commission is still going to look regardless if they see nothing but a bar they're not there they have the discretion to disallow that and you know I can't help but think about our licenses for the retail sale of alcohol and and looking at you know

▶ 40:49 Monica C. Medeiros: for instance one establishment that's quite close to us here where we are today and and thinking you know it's supposed to be incidental to the sale of food and when you see right on the corner of Main Street across from City Hall an establishment whose walls are filled with wine I just I'm not so sure how well this will be enforced so have those licenses you know are they actually looking at the square footage of the licensees that are in place and ensuring that they're complying with our current regulations that you'd probably have to ask the chairman of the Liquor Commission because we didn't even look at the regulations for consumption of alcoholic beverages off-premises which is what the beer and wine stores are and the other thing I'd like to know before

▶ 41:41 Monica C. Medeiros: I decide what to how to vote moving forward on this I guess is you know my concerns some when this came up this is in 2008 some of them were about enforcement and our ability to enforce it and at the time I was told the people who would do the enforcing were the police I'm wondering I'd like to know how many times for the current establishments that have licenses how many times they've been checked later on we know that that there sometimes there are some spot checking used by for underage drinking for instance by high school students at one point we had had a grant that did allow for this we didn't have it for some time and then we did have it how many times they've been checks and since say 2008 when these changes the change is reducing the

▶ 42:41 number of beer and wine I even know I have no idea how many times places have been spot-checked by the ABCC okay what I can tell you well and if the Health Department doesn't have too much I'm sure they would love that like you said I'm sure they would love to have a grant that would allow them to send people in there to do it like I said Maureen Busby was on the committee with us and I just I don't recall specifically from a year ago her comments about the spot checking. What I can tell you is, I mean, that's sort of, shall we say, random undercover enforcement. I did ask the chief of police to please look at the number of arrests since we allowed ... We've allowed restaurants for a while, but obviously expanded a little bit with beer

▶ 43:40 and wine stores. him to look at how many arrests there been since 2009 he said he saw none not a single arrest record was made he did tell me that he asked his staff and somebody told him that they did one time respond to a particular restaurant in Melrose that's had a liquor license for many years just because somebody at the restaurant someone who worked at the restaurant was concerned that maybe somebody wasn't leaving voluntarily who probably should the police came and it was over like that and it was about seven or ten years ago in that and that wasn't maybe that was made of a report but I think he told me that someone actually one of his men had to actually tell him I remember this happening so that I mean I would have expected reasonably to have some arrests on

▶ 44:33 Monica C. Medeiros: record since you know if if there are more restaurants opening up I was pleasantly surprised to see that that was not the case uh yeah so yeah so i would like to to know through uh through you to the chairman if possible how many how many checks we've had and what the results of those checks have been um and then you know certainly i think the concern of some of the current restaurant owners is that this these rules have been not always uh enforced equally across the the number of restaurants and i don't think it's really to be honest with you in any way shape intentional i think it's just a matter of logistics more than anything else but certainly before we add on additional let me make a comment

▶ 45:31 because i having met with these people one-on-one i agree with you that these rules were not uniformly enforced but that's not because the commission didn't choose to it's because nobody notifies the commission nobody tells them no restaurant owner wants to for lack of better terminology rat out a fellow business owner they don't want to do it privately one-on-one many folks came to us and said listen this is Mike this is my concern I've been doing this for this many years I don't serve a single drink unless somebody sits down and has a full dinner yet Joe schmoes down the street is I hear giving out drinks you know without requiring any food well is there a reason you haven't said anything well that's not my

▶ 46:13 business you know if the Commission doesn't have you know does if somebody doesn't tell the Commission this is happening there's not much they can do and this is exactly why we had all these meetings and and made so many amendments to these regulations and in fact the Commission is going to hold a meeting with all license holders in the beginning of May to not just let them know the regulations have been changed but to actually hand them a copy of them and go over them one by one so that nobody can say oh gee I didn't know you know we couldn't do that and in fact they're very warm that this is being warmly received by all the business owners every one of them says I want to follow the rules just tell me what they are because there's so many of them I

▶ 46:56 Monica C. Medeiros: mean I think you know in general we've had very very responsible business owners in Melrose and I'm very glad for that as well but I don't know that we have really had that much enforcement of the rules going back since they've come into existence I don't think we've had very much enforcement of the rules the other concern is that you know as much as this will bring new types of businesses and restaurants into these neighborhoods where they are in fact very much probably local neighborhoods or you know I think the mayor called them underserved wards I've also heard concerns from the neighbors in some of those neighborhoods about possible spillover possible rowdiness and obviously reducing the number of seats to 25 that does allow a lot more spaces

▶ 48:00 Monica C. Medeiros: that haven't previously been used as restaurants or as as restaurants with beer or wine or liquor of any kind to qualify you know those are certainly some of my concerns I mean this this means you know we're bringing you know we're bringing in downtown there's not so many residents around these the current establishments that we have but when we start to get into these neighborhoods there there are a lot of residents and you know we've had as an alderman we've had some issues sometimes with not so much noise at night for restaurants we've had more issues with noise in the morning for restaurants but you know this this opens up a new category and you know it means there is some outdoor dining which I'm glad you talked about the screening requirements

▶ 48:54 the current licensees can't stay open or serve past 11 p.m. is that correct and different licenses have different rules but that's a matter of state law actually in Melrose I know some of them only their license is only till 10 actually some of them are till 11 but they choose to have it that way our rules say until 11 during the week and till midnight on weekend but that doesn't mean that every every license holder holds those some those are the maximum many of them choose not to many of them choose to close earlier than that because they know that Mel they're not going to make that kind of money in Melrose that's not the atmosphere we have here we have a restaurant atmosphere we would do not have a drinking atmosphere but these rules may

▶ 49:49 Monica C. Medeiros: change some of that because we're not requiring a full meal anymore so just you know just the rules that have been recently promulgated by the Commission may may change some of what's I know I that would surprise me but but it's theoretically it's true these are these are some of my concerns that that will bring it into some of the neighborhoods and and you know inevitably people go out and smoke outside and you know it can bring um some late night conversation and obviously we always have concerns about possible drunk driving and things like that so um thank you i'll let some other aldermen go on for now thank you alderman Medeiros next we have alderman boycelle please thank you mr lucas for coming and congratulations on their commission i attended a lot of the uh

▶ 50:41 Robert A. Boisselle: public meetings, and some of the other aldermen have been there also. It was very informative in seeing the public really respond for this type of regulation review and so forth. I only have two areas of concern. I mean, Alderman Medeiros talked about the outdoor seating in the screening. I know with the good weather that we've been having now for the past couple days, hopefully it continues on. A number of restaurants in Boston, for instance, back bay and in the financial district have sort of blossomed out of their indoor concept and they moved on to the street and the screening that they have is basically portable iron works that they just sort of drop into slots and they remove these things and they out

▶ 51:25 Robert A. Boisselle: of their area and it really limits the access to the restaurant except food the portable portal areas that are really designed for that but how do you put outdoor seating in Melrose restaurants most of them are in downtown Main Street and the sidewalks are at least six feet in some areas it's even smaller than that with the tree wells that are there and so forth are we encouraging for out front the seating or we more towards the structures in the rear of the building like some of the restaurant one of the restaurant has I don't think we're encouraging anything I think in your example and maybe if we take spice of Melrose for example who is a license holder I don't see how they could have outdoor seating because if

▶ 52:14 Robert A. Boisselle: they're going to be right on the on the Main Street sidewalk that's probably going to be impede progress of pedestrians right so the Commission's probably not going to you know allow it if the building inspector even even gave it to say so so yes you might have something off to the side in the back say where the the VFW is for example or how Mexico Lindo has a deck out it's back I don't see anything wrong with no I have no I have no problems with the side or in the rear of the building it's basically in front of the restaurant especially on the Main Street area where your your sidewalks are basically six feet and you put a four-foot barrier in there in Boston their sidewalks are almost 10 feet to 12 feet and you got to put really a buffer zone between the

▶ 53:05 Peter D. Mortimer: pedestrians and the restaurant and the seating and those outdoor seating areas are in fact 10 to 12 feet wide that's great I mean I don't see how this could happen right on Main Street bagels has one or two tables I've seen outside in their little indentation but even that I don't think would would be conducive okay new table service point of information on that the ones that I'm aware of Brugger's their tables are in that indentation that's off the sidewalk that's private property if the Spice Tie example we use that's the public sidewalk that's not their property Demetrius has coffee on this side but that's their property some a few other places they might allow one table out when the weather's really nice for coffee but if somebody starts trying to

▶ 53:52 Robert A. Boisselle: serve liquor on a public sidewalk it's never ever gonna fly no right okay just want to clarify that I mean that would not happen without a public hearing before the liquor Commission so they have to approve whatever the service area is now we talked about the hours of operation but more towards the end of the day what about early in the day and a lot of these restaurants are for lunch and dinner is in some I think one or two of them also serves breakfast well the question is what can you serve liquor or beer and wine or Bloody Mary at nine o'clock in the morning for breakfast absolutely not absolutely not and if it's done that's gonna go in front of the licensing Commission and there is a particular restaurant in Melrose that we spoke with who when we when we met with

▶ 54:49 particular license holders we didn't ask them for example do you serve Bloody Mary's at 9 a.m. we didn't want to know the answer to that are you aware that you may not serve Bloody Mary's prior to 11 a.m. many were many said no really oh sure no I knew that I knew that so I I think just the meetings we had really got the point across but but the meeting and you brought that up but the meeting in May you'll sort of emphasize that more when we meet in May yes that's one the things we're going to emphasize that that's clearly not allowed in the city of melrose again yeah like champagne brunches or anything like that prior to 11. again mr lucas thank you for coming thank you mr chairman thank you alderman boycelle next we have in line alderman forbes please thank

▶ 55:39 Scott M. Forbes: you mr chairman it's always difficult coming late to the party because my question was related to alcohol related incidents which you've already addressed uh but the loophole uh well say loophole and counter service style restaurants trying to provide table service uh would there be a potential spike in in current restaurants trying to transition did you mention how many number of restaurants that you've done that you've looked over trying to maybe make that transition would there be a potential spike yeah or is it just limited to maybe a couple of a couple of places in particular i'm trying to think of each individual place because what you need to understand is each restaurant owner is going to look at what physical space do i have

▶ 56:28 and am i going to change the way i have done business for the last year or for the last 25 years in the city of melrose those folks my guess is absolutely not they are not going to change now i've spoken with many of them one-on-one because for whatever reason they read in the paper that I was chairing this committee and so they asked me questions about their ability to get licenses well this is great I want to get a license and I said do you do you realize that you can't have a license like this you can't serve from the counter why not because that's what our regulations say oh well forget it then so that was that's the general feedback I personally have received and that our committee received from some non license holders but

▶ 57:14 restaurant owners in the city the ones who don't hold licenses sounded very excited about the concept of being able to sell beer or wine to smaller ones but once they realized that they it can't be a counter service restaurant they have to have is be waitstaff tables once they learned all the regulations that there were you you could tell that they kind of shied away from it because they realize this is a much bigger and a much more planned um prospect than just simply you know adding a tap to the counter next to the soda fountain or whatever sure if if if i may um deputy solicitor i'm generally opposed to uh chair people participating in the conversation but i do represent the downtown business ward and i'm familiar with a lot of these situations

▶ 58:03 Peter D. Mortimer: A perfect example of the subject matter under consideration at this very moment is Papa Gino's. Now, Papa Gino's has well over 50 seats, maybe 100, but definitely well over 50. And they could have, several years ago, shifted to the table service along the lines of Prince Pizza in Saugus and stopped their counter service and easily been serving pitchers of beer and beer at their tables. But they elected not to. They elected not to. They elected to keep it more family style, counter service continuing, and they felt that was the best for their type of restaurant family, and probably to maximize their profitability. So there may be some out there who could forego and scuttle the counter service, but they're probably few and far between, and they may decide not to do so anyway.

▶ 58:53 Scott M. Forbes: And I'll try to make that my last interruption. Please excuse me. And, Mr. Chairman, by the way, Papa Gino's has 108 seats. Thank you very much. I knew I could tell it was going to be over. it was over a hundred yeah and and so they could have hot liquor at papagino's but they've chosen not to not to even have beer and wine but so that's enough out of me thank you thank you mr chairman um the reason why i asked my question was because i know you said you had 28 licenses that were still available uh if some of these restaurants did try to transition that would take some of those licenses away pertaining to this order and i know you made mention that you know in the near future the cap on licenses could be eliminated altogether but until that does happen

▶ 59:32 Scott M. Forbes: with the quarter being redeveloped and our downtown trying to transition over to you know places like wyoming station and in the franklin uh franklin square would you or has there ever been any any discussion amongst the commission if this order was approved to maybe change the number of liquor licenses uh to maybe increase that within the city for the potential of more businesses coming in to increase the minimum number yes we did not discuss it okay we did not discuss point of information mr chairman the minimum number of licenses is set by state law there's no local control over the number of licenses it's set by a city of town's population essentially thank you for that that's all i added thank you very much and thank you alderman forbes

▶ 1:00:21 Gail Infurna: then alderman forbes has yielded the floor and next in queue we have alderman inferno please thank you very much mr chairman i also i guess i'm coming late to the table because you are you actually took my topic alderman forbes and some of my questions but just to reiterate this mr lucas on places like papagino's or liberty bell who have the actual seating the number of seating to do this and to think of transitioning if they were to want to transition there was a lot more that they would have to really do than just quote hire some waitresses and wait and waiters to to serve the tables correct absolutely yeah and if you've worked in a restaurant it's not going to be as easy as as that to just do that so i would think these restaurants would have to look at

▶ 1:01:10 Gail Infurna: their whole economics of of of their business and if they really wanted to go through any of that but it's really not a matter of just oh well i'm going to hire you know 20 waitresses or waiters to come in here and serve and i'm going to go apply for my liquor license so i can serve beer or wine or whatever not here in some towns that's probably feasible and for what these are there would be a lot more to it than just doing that correct great thank you very much thank you very much alderman Francis next please we have alderman lavender bird thank you mr chairman and uh thank thank you mr. Lucas question on the 28 licenses you mentioned that the ABCC might be looking to waive that can you talk a little bit about that I can't I

▶ 1:01:55 Jaclyn L. Bird: that's what I've heard and I've heard that from a previous executive director and I don't know anything about that imminent situation or we don't have a time frame for it okay and last year just because I know we have been talking about this for a while as a community and i and i know that last year the intention originally was to put this on the ballot before the voters and then um i believe secretary galvin had said there were too many ballot questions and at sort of the 11th hour for getting that information out there we found out that that wasn't going to happen correct um was there any discussion of doing that again this year because this is this is a pretty big change to some of our neighborhood

▶ 1:02:40 areas and so i'm just curious was there talk about trying to put that on for this fall or was there a particular reason why we were um on a time frame for this there was as you all know um the highlands is hopefully going to go it is going through and is hopefully going to become a very beautiful developed district i believe by july originally it was by june um we believe that that is going to be once again as was 50 years ago a destination neighborhood in melrose there are a couple of vacant commercial properties there we've seen vacant commercial properties elsewhere in the city without naming particular businesses that have filled themselves with things that shall we say aren't quite conducive to the public health of melrose and aren't quite conducive to a friendly

▶ 1:03:39 neighborhood and we wanted to take the opportunity to do it right now and to get nice restaurants in there that are going to do well lucky showers right there in the neighborhood they've done great we have a grocery store that's been in the news recently for some of its actions it may be that that property may be vacant at some time at some point I don't know that I haven't heard anything but given some actions there I know that the landowner wasn't very happy about it and places like that especially in the highlands area come and go and we'd like to see some businesses go there and stay there and thrive and do very well and that is happening this summer we did not feel that this was something that could wait until well after

▶ 1:04:28 Jaclyn L. Bird: november to to be able to get into effect past january we'd hope to do that last year but as as you said, Alderman Byrd. It turned out that the Secretary of the Commonwealth's Office sent a memo to the Chief Counsel for the House and Counsel for the Senate, assuming that the memo would trickle down to every single state representative and state senator, which would in turn trickle down to every single city and town clerk, which it did not. Thank you. And one of the things, I'll be honest with you, I like a lot of pieces of this. think that there there has been a lot of thought put into some of the provisions here I know that our job is only on the seating requirements on the going from 100 to 50 and 50 to 25 for the for those changes but obviously if you open up the

▶ 1:05:21 Jaclyn L. Bird: possibility of beer and wine to the 25 seats it will have an impact on the neighborhoods some positive potentially some concerns with 28 licenses you know I I oftentimes get puzzled when people ask me about sort of who decides what restaurants and and retail establishments go into the city of Melrose you know that there seems to be sometimes some confusion over how that's determined you know that the reason we have a lot of pizza places and nail salons is because a lot of people go to the pizza places and nail salons and so it's an effective business model and that's why they stay I think there seems to be sort of a misunderstanding sometimes that we get to sort of hand select that you know this great little bistro will go into one neighborhood and

▶ 1:06:06 Jaclyn L. Bird: a microbrewery will go someplace else you know there seems to be some confusion there so just to set the record straight we don't have anything to do with that besides trying to put forward some guidelines that you know bring positive change about one of my concerns is that I have I have family in Bristol Rhode Island just a great great city great downtown like Melrose they have 30 restaurants within walking distance to their house and they actually allow that the counter service beer and wine as well it's a lively destination but it does bring a lot of noise a lot of noise so in the summertime it is a different feel to it then let's say downtown Morris or even or certainly the other wards you know wards one three and five probably I'm

▶ 1:06:51 Jaclyn L. Bird: thinking of that would be impacted here the most I'm concerned about the 28 licenses that was brought up I'd like to hear more about that as far as what we think that might look like down the road if that is going to be something that is being talked about at the state and I'd also like if if possible sort of an assessment of how many commercial spaces that exist right now that have the seating capacity if they wish to change their business model to handle 25 seats for beer and wine so you know I don't I'm a little bit uncomfortable talking about specific businesses and specific locations but if we could get sort of an inventory of what exists right now that has 25 seats and you don't have to do

▶ 1:07:41 Peter D. Mortimer: this now but you know before our next meeting alderman bird before you proceed sure Alderman Medeiros has made a point of information she is signaling with a point of information it's your option if you will briefly absolutely before now a point of information means a question they're not providing information means you have a question this is a question okay then okay next round coming up please continue all the number thank you mr. chairman that's fine what I'm looking for is to get an idea of how many places we currently have that if if they change the business changes hands that sort of thing how many how many structures do we have right now that could potentially have beer and wine restaurants in them I'm just trying to get a sense of is it is it two in

▶ 1:08:30 each of these business districts is it is it ten I I would like us you know a sense of that because I think it's gonna make let me ask a question for a second sure let's say the bank building where TD Bank is right now sold you could that's probably gonna have enough space in there is that is that the kind of property that that you're asking about are you asking for current restaurants because you could fit 25 seats in a ton of commercial spaces in Melrose that are never gonna see a restaurant ever although we don't know that right I mean No. God only knows, but I'm fairly confident. I mean, I'm also confident that we will never see 28 license holders, realistically speaking. I wish we could, but I don't think we shall.

▶ 1:09:15 Jaclyn L. Bird: When you say that, what are you basing that on as far as, you know, I'm not trying to be difficult. I'm just trying to get a sense of what maybe, what I don't know here. No, when you, and I'm not trying to be difficult either. I'm trying to conceptualize what information you're looking for. You said if a business were to sell, for example, and a new place came in there wanted to reconfigure everything are you saying even a non restaurant or a restaurant sure either one okay well then that's that's a good number of places I mean because when you think of potentially we could have 28 license I mean just hypothetically this situation could we could see 28 licenses coming about you know absolutely if if you took every

▶ 1:09:57 Jaclyn L. Bird: bank and and Marty's furniture and the anytime fitness place I mean I those have enough square footage if throughout this process over the last 15 months if there's been sort of an assessment of you know I know you've talked to some business owners and and have you know relayed anecdotally you know what what they have said they will or won't do or what they might want to do I'm just curious if they decide they're no longer in business there and they're in the restaurant fittings everything is all there to make a go of it how many of those could actually become beer and wine serving restaurants and let me give you just examples if you know what I'd rather not call out particular attention to certain business names but a number would be great so you know if it's there

▶ 1:10:45 there was there was one rest restaurant with 25 seats uh with more than 25 seats okay there are four on the main street corridor that do have insufficient seats that is insufficient seats but here's here's what i'm having difficulty with sure if you have enough square footage and you wanted to put hundreds of thousands of dollars into a renovation you could reconfigure a building to be a 25-seat restaurant sure but chances are it's not worth it it's not worth that kind of investment so i'm trying to think i'm trying to think what restaurants there are in melrose i think yeah i think what i'd like to know is if the if the committee looked into the existing spaces but let's say that that have restaurants already in them yes that could potentially hold

▶ 1:11:48 Jaclyn L. Bird: 25 people yes we did that don't currently want to sell beer and wine oh well i mean we didn't we did not spoke but that could eventually sell beer and wine in those locations yeah i understand what you're saying okay if i if i could get a number of sort of those potential spots that's what i'm trying to gauge you know how likely this is to have a major impact in some of these neighborhoods um and the outdoor dining thing again i know that these are not things that are before us for the vote um but could potentially be impacted by our vote um i am concerned i and i think i felt more confident about my support of this order before um hearing a lot of the discussion tonight because i think several good points have been brought up

▶ 1:12:26 Jaclyn L. Bird: um the concern i have in some of the neighborhoods about the noise with any sort of outdoor seating you know we talked about one place in particular downtown that has outdoor seating um that that doesn't necessarily back up right on top of a major residential neighborhood i think some of these other wards would face that issue again you know depending on where it was developed but that is a concern of mine especially if you know if we're not giving people the option to to weigh in by ballot i just want to make sure that we've really thought through what kind of impact this could have on the neighborhoods certainly the restaurants that are coming into town understand what our current liquor laws are and they're willing to conform to those

▶ 1:13:11 Jaclyn L. Bird: but the neighbors who have bought their houses there you know I don't want them to feel like we're pulling the rug out from under them so can you talk a little bit about what the discussion was around the noise and if people came down from those from Cedar Park from the Highlands and from what am I forget Wyoming and if they talked at all about some of their concerns about the noise with outdoor seating or anything like that we had a couple members of this board appear before us who I won't speak for them but generally spoke positively about how they felt that their neighborhoods would be impacted there were many people we invited to the committee meetings that didn't come because they had no concerns

▶ 1:14:02 but we didn't have any particular members of the public come in one of our public hearings there was one comment about the concern for noise and our explanation was for anybody to have outdoor seating the whole plan has to be approved by the Commission and if people complain about noise it's gonna go in front of the Commission and they're gonna bring their license holder in front of them to explain you know what is this about and what are you going to do to to cut down potential noise I've found our committee finds that restaurant owners police themselves pretty darn well because they don't want to come in front of the Commission they want to keep their business going if Mexico Linda was having a bash on its back porch and somebody complains they

▶ 1:14:52 generally are going to do something about it and end the noise quickly so I know when they first I'm telling you my own personal experience as far as hearing about complaints when they first built their outdoor seating there were some documented complaints about noise about the music from the cochran house right behind it and those complaints are no more it was it ended i believe within a week i know that because i'm on the board of the cochran house um other than that i don't know of any complaints of any um noise complaints from neighborhoods whether from cedar park that's a great example of a neighborhood that that and sometimes has outdoor tables right there um i just haven't heard any okay all right

▶ 1:15:37 John N. Tramontozzi: thank you that's it for now mr chairman thank you thank you very much alden lavender bird and now to round out uh every alderman the last but not least that we hear from alderman Tramontozzi and then we will proceed to the uh second round from the alderman who have indicated they wish to be heard for a second time alderman Tramontozzi please thank you mr chairman i want to thank mr lucas for your time and efforts made on these regulations and chairing the committee i was proud and to be on the liquor license committee that was appointed by the mayor and i was the aldermanic representative we spent a lot of time reviewing the the our liquor licensing rules and regulations uh in in this area of the seating as well i mean if you remember at one time

▶ 1:16:28 John N. Tramontozzi: i think our liquor license regulations consisted maybe of a half dozen pages and one board member so we've come a long way since the early days of of you know handling liquor in the in the city and we've we have evolved and i think for the better one of the issues raised by the members of this board about the potential for expansion but i think um mr lucas is correct there was a member uh who came to our one of our meetings um who was involved in the restaurant and liquor industry and he did uh tell us that you know it's not so easy for an establishment to uh to um to to build out one of their places for purposes of serving alcohol not only are our local rules and regulations the building code regulations

▶ 1:17:25 John N. Tramontozzi: they have to have restrooms at the table scene maybe you can just uh mention that as well uh we heard from i forget the gentleman's name it's not important but the the fact that uh you know people were not going to nilly willy just apply for liquor license when they know that the likelihood of getting it when they have to present it there it's been a considerable sums of money to conform to the rules and regulations i just don't see it happening do you recall that gentleman that came in what was his name i don't remember his name doesn't matter but the point being that we we have safeguards in place with the sit-down requirements the silverware the waitstaff the a lot of regulations that that work well and i think we have to put some

▶ 1:18:17 John N. Tramontozzi: faith and guidance in them well you know faith on our Commission I look a license Commission that they're gonna do the right thing for the city and you know these before the issuing licenses they're gonna have public hearings members of the public come out speak whether pro or con on anybody getting one of these licenses so I think we've come a long way we've evolved I think this uh i i'm not concerned about noise uh issues uh in in in my in ward one or any part of the city for that matter you're not going to have table seating serving alcohol on a public sidewalk as chairman mortimer mentioned and there's very little private area outside of the the establishments themselves that they're going to be able to do it most of the businesses

▶ 1:19:09 John N. Tramontozzi: in downtown there's not a lot of residential areas but but you know obviously it's a concern but any resident who may feel that the noise level is a little bit too much will have the opportunity to be heard at the hearings of the liquor license commission again that's what they're there for uh and the purpose of these uh commissions so um i think it's um worthy of our consideration uh as i as i mentioned i think it was well uh time well spent in reviewing the regulations and discussing the teats table seating and i think it's appropriate in line with many many communities that surround this great city of morrows and i think we should adopt it and i for one will vote in favor of it and i appreciate the opportunity to be heard and thank

▶ 1:20:01 you mr lucas again for your time thank you mr chairman thank you thank you alderman Tramontozzi Next in line, we have President Kahn, please. Yeah, nothing that I'm about to say detracts from the work of Mr. Lucas's committee, the Liquor Commission, Alderman Tramontozzi good reports. I'm happy for all the facts that we have before you, but I tend to have my own opinions relative to things. I am, and I've spoken to the mayor about this, and Mr. is present and I've made no secret of this I'm very concerned about the fact that there are 28 liquor licenses that are available and I think that Alderman Mortimer raised an issue that didn't come up and I should have mentioned it but profit is the issue here if people can develop properties to make more

▶ 1:21:02 money then they're going to attempt to do that we as we sit here today have no idea at least I don't have any idea maybe some of you do but I I would tend to doubt it but you could correct me if I'm wrong as to whether there are restaurants with takeout service in Melrose who would want to adapt their establishments to serve liquor because they could make significantly more money my experience is that alcohol is a large revenue driver and i think that's something that we need to be concerned about i also have to go back and and you know give a little bit history for those of you who may not remember um i've never favored the expansion of alcohol here in melrose when we had our you know beer and wine store discussion i think i was one of two people

▶ 1:22:01 who voted against it and i felt and i stated at that time and i still feel that eventually what's going to happen here is that the restaurant liquor licenses are going to devolve into bar liquor licenses and i understand the fact that we want to encourage business we have a wonderful downtown as i'm out in the world practicing law most people know that i'm from melrose and people all the time are coming up to me and saying that you have a great downtown and we do have a great downtown and i'm very proud of it but i am concerned about 28 liquor licenses mr lucas indicated that i think we might have less than 10 restaurant liquor licenses that are out there right now um if we relax the limits and it

▶ 1:22:58 made the made these licenses available to many more properties and we ended up with 15 more i would suggest that that would have a significant impact on the city i have to say and i'm not throwing stones i'm kind of incredulous that we could have uh multiple liquor licenses issued throughout the city and there's going to be no impact on public safety that seems a little surprising to me and it's not really consistent with my life experience but maybe i'm missing something here so i have a lot of concerns mr lucas i also um and you know obviously the ward alderman know the awards better than i do but um franklin square they're are residential there are residential streets that are hard up on buildings

▶ 1:23:56 that could be adapted for restaurant use I think of West Highland Avenue which backs up to a business block I think of you know other areas down there in Wyoming we have Circuit Street area which would be right behind areas where there could be liquor licenses Cedar Park if they went in the block where garnaces is there are residential streets right around there there were residents and again and I'm not trying to be flipped or fresh but I really find it difficult to believe that if we had many more servers of alcohol in those areas that it wouldn't generate noise and disturbance late at night and I understand that it may not may not generate crime and which you know I can accept that but it's certainly going to generate noise and commotion if we have

▶ 1:25:02 15 or 20 new new liquor licenses issued by the city so I have a lot of concerns I don't like the number of licenses and I've talked I've talked to the administration about this and the problem with the number of licenses as mr. Lucas indicated is there's nothing that anybody can do about it we can't tailor any proposal to limit the number of licenses they set by statute and and again I accept the proposition that we have a diligent and wonderful liquor commission that's doing the best job they possibly can but it would seem to me if we have a number of people who meet the requirements of the statute and regulations and are able to be licensed then they're going to get licenses and i don't see

▶ 1:25:49 us saying that you four can have licenses but you three similarly situated properties can't so um hopefully the board will will hold on to this order tonight for a little bit longer those are my concerns um i wanted to not voice my concerns until i heard what the board had to say to see if there were things that uh you know i might have missed or that i was wrong about i think we've had a good discussion this evening but um you know i have some serious issues about about this and um i would move mr chairman that we hold this in the appropriations committee second a motion has been made to hold this order in the appropriations committee uh the order the motion is in order at this time it has been duly seconded by alderman Medeiros

▶ 1:26:47 Peter D. Mortimer: we will just continue the discussion uh discontinue we will just continue just merely continue simply here we continue we shall continue indeed we shall continue the discussion but now it will be under the mantle of an a motion on the floor now the motion on the floor to hold it on committee could pass or that could fail and then the motion would be then the floor would be open for a motion that it ought not to pass that it ought to pass or that it be placed on file so the will of the board is still wide open at this time and I see that you have your hand up Alderman Boycelle but unfortunately you are second in line at this point next in line we have Alderman Medeiros and you are next sir thank you well I started off only wanting to add a little

▶ 1:27:49 Monica C. Medeiros: little bit of information and now I've got some more questions but just I wanted to touch upon the the number of 28 licenses that is is as President Kahn mentioned is correct that is set by state state law state statute but for informational purposes there were last year and I believe that there are there was quite a movement towards the end of the legislative session last year to actually eliminate all of the cap on licenses for alcoholic beverages consumption at the state level and put it all up to local control that did not end up I don't recall if they actually made it actually voted on or if it never got to be voted on before the end of session but I have I do understand that that's likely to come back up again now obviously that can go either way but if

▶ 1:28:44 Monica C. Medeiros: if the cap is removed that would throw it back but right now as it stands 28 licenses according to mr. Lucas we he mentioned eight establishments that currently have licenses that leaves us 20 available as we currently stand and those licenses I believe are determined on a formula based on the population of the city so certainly if our population grows then we may also that number might actually increase a little bit too I I too I know it's been said numerous times I think that this it would be wise to keep this in committee and get a little bit more information certainly you know if we need to make an official request I think Alderman Byrd kind of did this but I'm just gonna go at it again I'd like to know the number of existing restaurants which we should

▶ 1:29:40 Monica C. Medeiros: have available because we grant the licenses so they have to go through the building department and everything to the city clerk's office should have information existing restaurants that have at least 25 seats as well in one number and a second number I'd be curious to know and I'm not sure if we do have this information existing restaurants that have 25 seats that have public bathrooms available for use and I and I can't recall off the top of my head the number of seats that that is required but perhaps the number of seats that's required before a restaurant has to comply with having you know bathrooms that are handicapped accessible available to the public in the past I want to say I thought that was 12 seats but I'm Alderman Medeiros wants to know

▶ 1:30:30 Monica C. Medeiros: how the number of existing restaurants and mowers that have at least 25 seats and that already have public bathrooms available to two numbers one the that have 25 seats a and B that have at least 25 seats and that have bathrooms available what's the one what's the purpose of knowing if they have public bathrooms available because I think it's far more costly for a restaurant to be able to transform their existing seating if they have to also add a bathroom that they don't already have okay so number of existing restaurants have at least 25 seats and the number of existing restaurants that have 25 seats and a public bathroom that has today's handicap access requirements to the best of our knowledge okay because the right that would be different than somebody

▶ 1:31:23 Monica C. Medeiros: who has a public bathroom that's gonna have to rip it all apart anyway and upgrade it okay and you know just bathroom is required a bathroom is required yes yeah and the number of seats at which a bathroom is required for a restaurant in general if that's for today's standards you know and I and I ask all of you to when you go into your restaurants I've been doing this for a while because I know this says this has been on our radar for a while every time I go in to a restaurant lately I find myself counting seats and you know 25 is not very many you're only talking about you know six booths obviously if you dedicate some of that to bar space you can have less than six booths maybe four tables and some bar space it's not a tremendously big amount

▶ 1:32:17 Monica C. Medeiros: of space that we're talking about um my my other question goes back to the arrests mr lucas and and maybe you can ask for some clarification on this because at first i took this at face value that there were no arrests but are we talking about no arrests on the premises of our current establishments because certainly we must have sure yeah i mean there's no way you could there's no way I mean you could really correlate an arrest that happens like a domestic situation I mean the only time that the only time it's recorded that I'm aware of mr. chairman probably knows better than I do the only doing criminal law the only time I know where it's even recorded where you had a last drink is if it's like a driving violation so so it would be helpful to

▶ 1:33:15 Monica C. Medeiros: have maybe over the course of the past 10 years a number of drunk driving arrests that we've had in the city and you know if there's been any underage drinking related arrests but I also didn't like okay yeah which we're not getting served here though which may go back to the fact that frankly we may not have had that much enforcement there so how many restaurants have 25 seats how many restaurants have 25 seats and public bathrooms which meet today's code how many drunk driving arrests in the city in the last 10 years five years and what else and if there's been uh in the last five years maybe the uh or you know five ten years the underage drinking arrests and and how many licenses have been denied since say the past five years by

▶ 1:34:27 the liquor license Commission as opposed to making them modify their plans and come back and then finally approving them after they change everything that was a violation you mean straight out denied I mean it because I know there have been at least a couple in the last few years where the liquor license Commission said uh-uh you need to change this this this this this this this and it took one breast I can think of in particular took a long time to finally get approved so you know it would be helpful to have both of those numbers to see who's been ultimately okay you know so we can have a better picture because don't i don't know that anybody's been denied straight out i'll find out thank you thank you

▶ 1:35:34 Robert A. Boisselle: that's thank you very much alderman Medeiros next in queue we have alderman boycelle please i was looking at the definition of table service that you have here and we also talked about a building in on main street that could be converted into a restaurant a multi-story building and so for it if you had a restaurant and a lower floor could you have a lounge on the second floor while you're waiting to get seated and would the commission allow alcohol being served in that lounge does the lounge have seats pardon does the lounge have seats yes yes absolutely but there's no uh aspects of the table service oh no sure if there's table service and seating someone would have to go over to the people who are sitting there and ask would you like to have a drink or to

▶ 1:36:31 Robert A. Boisselle: have anything else so that would be allowed at that point yes in the way you described it yes right okay good now you also mentioned counter service may not hold licenses now most of the restaurants on main street have large counters that are not associated with the restaurant are sort of separated plus and the staff is not waiters or waitresses they were called something else is that allowed at this point I think I'm trying to think an example so I understand what you mean all right it's a bar mm-hmm so there's bartenders on the other side preparing drinks for the restaurant and for the bar counter area and they take orders from the individuals who are there for meals yes fine so that would be allowed yes okay if they're taking orders for

▶ 1:37:27 Robert A. Boisselle: meals yes yes but they're not waiters or waitresses or wait staff they're bartenders and is that a category I mean I worked in several restaurants and I bartended and I waited at the same time so I mean I I said I'm just concerned about the term waiter that you have here waits that waiter wait staff uh there's not a general staff they bring the food to the table and they bring it they bring it to the counter or the counter the counter if the seat is at a counter as long as the restaurant isn't if as long as counter service is incidental if it's not primarily counter service in fact if it's a beer and wine license it says you cannot have counter service at all there is a diff there is a um does it say

▶ 1:38:08 that in this documentation yes there is a slight difference between a full liquor license and a beer and wine license with respect to counter service that being a restaurant that has full liquor can have counter service that's incidental to the dining and the example i gave is if there's a private function going on and they might no problem but we made it i shouldn't say we our recommendation to the commission who adopted the recommendation regarding beer and wine licenses for a for a potentially small restaurant was no counter service okay so backing back to the lounge as long as you have someone the waiter or waitress going to your seating area and requesting drinks the first drink and when they come back for a second drink they have to serve food

▶ 1:38:59 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: order off the menu order off the menu that could be hors d'oeuvres or something off the menu correct thank you very much mr lucas thank you mr chairman thank you alderman boy cell our next in line we have alderman mcintyre margolis please um thank you mr chairman um i it's too bad that um i city planner left already because this would be a nice opportunity to um just review some of the zoning issues um there are only certain areas within melrose that are zoned for restaurant use do you know that mr luke you must be aware of that from your deputy uh counselor position with the city right yeah right so and um i think most of them probably have some requirement for parking yes right and um if there's a building that is not currently in use as a particular

▶ 1:39:56 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: business and it decides that it wants to be a certain different kind of business does that not have to go before the planning board and site plan review and several others several others zoning board of appeals yes so it's not like somebody decides to buy you know a dry cleaner and then apply to you for a license apply to the liquor commission thank Thank you, yeah, no, not at all, not at all. I mean, I feel fairly comfortable that we have a lot of safeguards in place. They're going to come before you to be able to serve food. That would assist us in controlling those extra or additional 20 plus open licenses. the liquor commission under any obligation to grant a license to an applicant I mean I would have well I want to be very careful what I say

▶ 1:41:00 publicly like if somebody went into Gray's appliance for instance I wanted to put in a restaurant and there was an outcry from the community from the neighborhood I mean that is if it's not by right is there no it's not by right but if it meets all the regulations and the Commission approves their their floor plan if the public came forward and said they were concerned about noise the Commission has the discretion to ask them what are you going to do about noise and to and to um put limits attached to their license such as if you know there's so many decibels of noise past a certain hour you know you're going to be fined or you will you'll be suspended or this board and its authority could even say you can only be open until 10

▶ 1:41:55 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: p.m yes 9 p.m during the week is that is that accurate when we have a license before us um um the victuals license oh victuals license yes i thought you meant i thought you meant the liquor license yes yes but that's why i said if they're going to open a restaurant they're going to have to come before this board for that and um i'm happy to hear that you were a working kid like me and worked in restaurants so you go to a place you know a pizza place that maybe has 100 seats now and you go to the counter and you get your delicious pizza and it's generally on a paper plate with paper napkins and plastics plastic cutlery so for that particular establishment to be able to convert to a full-fledged wait service you're not

▶ 1:42:44 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: really just talking about having them buy a set of dishes and hire up a couple of waitresses correct right absolutely absolutely correct you need commercial dishwashers you know you certainly need handicap access bathrooms if those are not already there but tips training all those other certain waitstaff of a certain age to be able to even take orders and serve alcohol so I think my I understand that there are people on this board who have concerns and I appreciate that they are in all due respect looking out for the constituents in Melrose in maybe a more conservative way than I am because I think it's important that we continue to look forward and that we continue to look for opportunities to satisfy what I see as the needs of many of our constituents

▶ 1:43:44 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: who enjoy going out and being able to partake in a light refreshment in a responsible way and I think that you know we're a very insular community we're not a community that has a lot of influx of summer people like other communities where it might be closer to a beach or more of a seasonal or touristy destination I think we're pretty much talking about you know people in Melrose and in our general area who would be coming in here and i do feel that the liquor commission combined with the safeguards that we already have with zoning and planning board and zoning board of appeals would have would allow this to happen in a responsible way so i would urge my fellow committee people to support this thank you thank you alderman

▶ 1:44:42 Jaclyn L. Bird: and Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis. And next we have Alderman Lavender Bird, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will support the motion to hold it in committee. And the reason being, I think this board over the last couple of weeks has had a lot to process, I think, with major zoning changes, which I supported at the three commuter rail areas, with a $5 million bond project, which I support it after getting the information that we wanted and and now something that could really fundamentally change the neighborhoods going forward in the city I think that it's really important for us to get it right and you know I mentioned it before I came in tonight you know really leaning in favor of this and I understand the sentiment of moving us

▶ 1:45:38 Jaclyn L. Bird: forward as a community and I completely get that the 28 licenses concerns me I think that it could tip us in a direction that I'm not entirely comfortable with and I just want to make sure that I have enough information to make that decision carefully I mean this is something that you know last year we felt it was important enough to put before the voters you know we've talked about it for a year and a half I get that there might be some impatience to want to move it forward and at the same time I don't really understand if there's such a rush that we can't wait another week or so to get the information that might satisfy any concerns that we have, especially considering the amount of information that we've

▶ 1:46:15 Jaclyn L. Bird: been asked to take in and process over the last couple of weeks on issues that are really going to have an impact on the community. I want to make sure that we get it right. And that doesn't mean that I won't support it. I just want to make sure that we have all that information. So I hope that there'll be enough support tonight to hold it in committee for us to do so. So thank you, Mr. chairman thank you very much alderman lavender bird and um alderman Medeiros for the third time please third time um oh excuse me at us at the same time um alderman inferno and she has not spoken for the second time yet if you if you wouldn't mind just a quick question i actually wasn't going to ask it but i've just decided if we put this on hold um mr lucas does that do you

▶ 1:46:58 Peter D. Mortimer: know is there any impact um right that's what i'm thinking well let me let me go to the legislation right exactly i believe that we need to get this to our state legislator in may okay we still have we have time so i think that's fine yeah i wanted it when was when would your next committee meeting be a week from tonight no it's at the call of the chair it's at the To the college chair, we can have it as soon as- Okay, because next week's a holiday. Right, but we could have it on Tuesday. Whichever, school committee. Thank you for asking the question. Yes, I- Now, reading through the work and just confirming with our clerk of committees, I believe there is a deadline of the 21st to get this to the state legislature.

▶ 1:47:56 Peter D. Mortimer: Of April? I believe it is, is that correct, is that what I read? Yeah, I think you're going through all these notes, that does have to get to the state legislature. Voted on on the 21st. It has to be voted on on the 21st, so we could presumably have another appropriations meeting Thursday night, and I would not be averse to that. We do have time for notification, what is it, you can say it out loud, what is it? had it prior to the full board on the 21st right which which would be thursday we could have it this thursday oh immediately before i understand i understand thank you confirmation uh about that date because that is contrary to uh a conversation that i had had outside of this chamber and then i

▶ 1:48:47 can't i'm not aware of any rules that would prohibit this from being delayed beyond and the 21st of April in the state legislature, although I am not an expert. All right. Here's- Would you like to comment on that, Mr. Lucas? Yes, please, thank you. When is the board's second full meeting? 21st. The 21st. Oh, the 21st. Okay. We need to get this to the legislature in May, when I think that would mean being voted on April 21. because we do not expect our state legislation with all due respect to our state legislators we don't expect them to rush this through the state legislature before they um go into recess so we wanted to give them a month to do what they need to do essentially i'd like i'd like this

▶ 1:49:44 i appreciate we need to take time that that the aldermen want to take time to look at this and to get the information i can get the information to them that's not the issue um but i'd hate for it to be delayed somewhat indefinitely and have that be the result that this just doesn't get looked at um this legislative session mr chairman can we we will do whatever needs to be done in terms of scheduling the administration has not been shy about uh noticing out special meetings if it's needed to so with all due respect to everybody i don't think a lengthy discussion about scheduling i think we can take care of that i agree yes i would agree on that and um since everybody has been i and i want to commend everyone this has been a very fruitful productive

▶ 1:50:28 Peter D. Mortimer: thoughtful insightful conversation and mr lucas i want to thank you for your being very well prepared with the information in your presentation tonight um i would not be averse and since we have um with complete courtesy and decorum i've begun to speak of this a little bit informally i'm not going to be very strict but i would just ask the members would people be available on thursday night would we have enough for a quorum i i would be on that this is the 16th yes sir 16. okay if we if we want to reconvene another appropriations meeting i would not be available mr chairman by a show of hands may i see who might be available on the 16th i have to check my schedule okay um i'm not sure if we'll have enough done for make a motion to move the question

▶ 1:51:19 Peter D. Mortimer: please mr chairman alderman khan has made a motion which is an order it is a motion to move the question and what that means is the question that's being moved is the order on the floor which which is to hold this order in committee. That is the appropriate motion on the floor. Now, Alderman President Kahn has made a motion to move the question. This is a non-debatable motion. All discussion ceases at this point. All discussion ceases at this point. It's non-debatable. If we vote affirmatively on this, then we will proceed immediately to the motion to hold this order on committee if this motion fails this motion to move the question then further discussion would be allowed all in favor of the motion to move the question please say aye any opposed hearing none

▶ 1:52:20 Peter D. Mortimer: all debate is hereby staunched quelled and quashed so we now have under roberts rules the motion before us and the motion is to hold this order in committee all in favor please say aye aye any opposed no opposed may i see a show of hands on the opposed police we have three opposed to holding a committee so the motion to hold it in committee uh prevails so that is the end of this order for now we will be addressing this in the very near future we'll have another meeting and so we'll go from there am i am i allowed for clarification to ask alderman bird the information i have i got clarification from alderman Medeiros the information she's looking for i just want to know if i get from alderman bird if i'm out of order

▶ 1:53:20 Peter D. Mortimer: let me know i i i certainly will um we are under suspension of the rules to let you come forward tonight so as we're under suspension unless there's any alderman of strength objects i will let alderman bird at present to you your question i think actually what i was looking for ultimate medeiros was able to articulate fabric let's just put an asterisk next to that and we'll just leave it at that all right i got it thank you very much thank you thank you very much uh mr lucas thank Thank you very much and I'm sure we'll see you in the very near future with these answers. I appreciate your time and effort on this matter. Sure, thank you. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you. Next order that we have before us is the reappointment of

▶ 1:54:07 Peter D. Mortimer: Edward Schmidt, 77 Morgan Street, to the Human Rights Commission for a three year term. Said term to end on the last day of February 2018. Motion to recommend. We have a motion to recommend from Alderman Tosie, who seconded please? Alderman Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis on discussion? Seeing none, all in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, Mr. Schmidt will be recommended for reappointment at our next full board meeting on the 21st. He's a reappointment, so he didn't need to come tonight, and he won't need to come then. We thank him for his service. Motion to adjourn. We have a motion to adjourn from Alderman Forbes, duly seconded by Alderman Boycelle. All in favor of the motion to adjourn?

▶ 1:54:55 Peter D. Mortimer: Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, the Committee on Appropriations is hereby adjourned. Thank you, one and all.

Original documents

• Minutes (CivicClerk PDF)
• Agenda (IQM2 PDF)
• Agenda packet (CivicClerk PDF)
• Agenda packet (IQM2 PDF)
• Other (CivicClerk PDF)
• This meeting on the city portal