 Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 and extended again by chapter two of the acts of 2023, this meeting will be conducted by remote means members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so in the following manner by emailing Steve McCarthy at McCarthy s at Amherst a m a dot gov. No in person attendance of members of the publicly permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means in the event that we are unable to do so for reasons of economic hardship and despite best efforts. We will post on the Amherst website and audio or video recording transcript or other comprehensive record proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting. And with that done, we'll call the meeting to order at 502 p.m. and take a roll call of attendance Dylan. Here. Allie. Here. Doug. Here. And I'm here. Gaston is absent. So we are four present and one absent. And next we move on to public comment. Is there anyone here for public comment? If so, please. Indicate that by hitting the raise hand button at the bottom of your screen. And we have someone here for public comment. All right. Miss. Yeah, I'm a rolly job a rolly. Welcome. Thank you very much. Thank you. Hi, my name is Catherine. I'm representing Lincoln real estate in town. And I would like to speak on behalf of one of my new tenants for a moment if I might. Okay. I am formerly leased a commercial space located at 41 bolt would walk to hails blue lagoon and associates including Patrick Chapman and junior Williams. They have since been evicted by court order as of August 1st 2023. I'm hoping Steve passed along an email to you all, which included the eviction notice as well as part of the state law regarding liquor licenses. They have not returned their liquor licenses or given it up. We have a new tenant whose name is a Gabe Krause and Andrea Hunter who began a lease on August 1st, and they would love to begin the application process. This will be their second bar and entertainment location they have one in Westfield. I'm looking forward to adding to the Amherst community and what I'm really hoping for is that you all could meet and cancel the existing license held by a former tenant of mine that no longer has possession of the space under Massachusetts General Law chapter 138 section 77. Thank you very much. So, Steve, and you forwarded that to everybody. I did yep. Catherine sent me an email earlier. Okay, wonderful. Thank you very much. So, thank you so much for your comment we can take that under advisement. Of course, we can't address that we don't have a discussion discussion item on the agenda, but we can certainly take that under advisement. Thank you very much. And is there anyone else here for public comment. No, okay. Thanks again. And let's move on with the rest of our agenda. Up our common pictures license applications. One Royal chicken and kebab ink one bold would walk. And is anyone here for that license, Steve. I'm not sure if anybody is here for that license, please just raise your hand. Oh, if not, did everyone have a chance to look at the packet that Steve sent around and read through the license application. Is there anything different about this one Steve. It's a, they're proposing a rather late night service, but there is no alcohol. It's going to be a chicken kebab type of places. On one. Can tell by the name yet. Okay, great. Are there any questions or comments about this application. I forget if I saw reading in there. Did it list what their hours of operation we're going to be. I'm going to be in the application. Let me pull that up. I thought I saw it in there, but trying to see it again now midnight. Yeah. And to 2am on Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Yep. Cool. Oh, I'm always in. Oh, sorry, go ahead. Doug, did you have a question? I just want to ask Steve with regard to the hours, there's no issues regarding zoning or anything with regard to going that late. I believe they are still going through the administrative review process. Obviously, they'll be subject to whatever restrictions zoning puts on it as well. Okay. If there are no questions, is there a motion to approve? Thank you, Doug. Is there a second? Thank you, Dylan. We'll take a vote. Doug. Hi. Kelly. Hi. Dylan. Hi. And I vote I that is 4 to 0 with 1 absent the common pictures license for Royal chicken and kebab ink at 1 bold would walk is approved. Next up be liquor license change of manager application Amherst burger company LLC 104 North pleasant street Anthony Joseph Ferrari. Is there anyone here for that application? If so, raise your hand. Sure, I can, I can double check with the applicant and we could we could move on to the next 1. Okay. Next one. Top of the campus, Inc. 1 campus underway, Cynthia Narduli. And this Narduli is here. Correct. She in. Oh, here she is. And Bill Pete. Okay. Hi, welcome. Hi. So, do you have a change of manager application? And would you like to introduce that? Yeah, so this is a bill Pete from top of the campus. And we've had a change in roles. So Elizabeth Curtis was the manager on the license for top of the campus at the campus center. And Cynthia Narduli has moved into that role. So we'd like to, we're basically just changing the manager on that license. Great. Thank you. And everyone look over that license. Any questions on this one? Comments. If not, is there a motion to approve? Thank you, Doug. Is there a second? Thank you, Dylan. Any further discussion? If not, we'll take a vote Dylan. Hi. Allie. Hi, Doug. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming in. Take care. You too. So back to Amherstberger. Any news? I've just reached out to them. We can hear back. Maybe we can jump to the next topic. Okay. ABCC note. ABCC notices of violation. So I did pass along to you. The ABCC did have three of their, their. Violation reports for Simra LLC Amherst market on triangle street. Oh yeah. So I thought I would just pass those along to you for your information. Okay. Oh yeah, sure. Go ahead. Steve, do you have any idea of when they'll actually. Cause that, that'll go to an ABCC hearing relative to that. Correct. And do you have any sense of when that's going to happen? Yes. It should be in the email. Let me see if I can pull that up quickly. Well, you're. Nothing, you know, it's up here. Do you recall under that liquor license? Do you know who the manager is? Is it? Cause the same employee seems to be involved in all cases here. And that could be just because that person always works on those evenings. But I was just curious if, if that was, if in particular that person was listed as either. The manager of the license over. So the hearings will be on September 19th. And that will be on September 19th. So the hearings will be on September 19th is the 1st 1. Then the next 1 would be October 3rd. And the last 1 would be October 24th. And I will pull up. The file for that. Licensee and see what the manager's name is. So the manager would be a teeth. I don't know off the top of my head. If that, if he was mentioned in. In any of those. Reports. Barsad and seeing in 1 of them. Yeah, that's the, that's the employees. So that's a, not the manager. Okay. All right. So do we have times for those hearings or. Do we have to check that out online? I can provide those all to you. If you're, if you're interested in. Yeah. That would be great. Thank you so much. I think it's useful to have in case somebody can attend. This is a good reminder to reach out to the acting police chief to kind of. Check in because I think we're going to see how. The Amherst police are interacting with the ABCC. Yes. Yeah, I do have a meeting scheduled coming up with him. So that is a great reminder. Thank you. And I will make sure to bring that up. To see. See if they have been able to make any contact with them. Yeah, that would be nice. He did say he was working on it our last meeting, but I don't know if there's been any progress since then. Great. And I have not heard back from the other applicant. I'm just realizing now. I may have miscommunicated the time to them. So I would not hold that against them. I don't know if the board would like to. Continue the meeting or maybe just see if, see if they get back to me or, or just approve it as it is. It's all within. Your discretion. Yeah. Did anyone see anything that jumped out at them for this application? Does it look all right? I mean, I'm just happy when someone proactively files the right. Exactly. Paperwork. And then the manager has been, you know, profiled in the paper and. Right. Okay. If that case, if there are no one wants to. Continue this. If there are a motion to approve the change of my manager application for Emerson burger. So moved. Thank you, Doug. Is there a second? I'll second. Thank you, Dylan. Any further discussion? If not, we'll take a vote. Dylan. Hi. Hallie. Hi. Doug. Hi. And I vote I that is four to zero with one absent. The change of manager application for Emerson burger has been approved. Okay. Great. So now we go on to discussion topics and a is marijuana regulation. And we had a meeting on what is today, Thursday, Tuesday morning. And did Steve, did you send around that guest on sheet to everybody? I did. Yeah. I sent out that morning and it was in the packet too. Okay. Great. So I don't know if anyone's had time to look over that. Does somebody else Dylan, did you want to kind of bring Doug up to speed? Cause you were a little pretty heavily involved with that. Yeah. It looks like what we're, we're looking to do is we're taking out the approach of trying to write a kind of a proposal bylaw for the council guests. I'm going to be taking the lead on that. And then doing. Local regs. I was going to take lead on that. I was probably going to take a, you know, it's going to be some of the, what what's there is looking to do and then kind of build off. I think the regulations you have been working on Doug is kind of the approach that we're looking to take. And we're really kind of aiming to get something to the board back on those in September. For everybody to review. That's where we're at now. We kind of had that standalone meeting and the takeaway was we probably won't do a standalone meeting again until. We actually have something to meet about. And that's kind of where we're at. Yeah. So there'll be an update on, is it September 7th? Is the next. The next one. I think that's it. At five. And I thought the, the articles were both very interesting. Yeah. And I thought the, the articles were both very interesting. So. And is that the, when I got from the, is that, is that the host community agreement is not necessarily going away? Is that the. I didn't say that it was, but it. The article said that. Change is coming. Yeah, but not. Coming, but okay. Well, anyway, lots to. There was an article in mass live, I think two weeks ago, I can look for it, but I think the. Cannabis commission is in chaos right now. So I wouldn't expect. Oh, really? Okay. Their chair stepped down and. Kind of has left them in a large, I'll look for the article, but it sounds like they're trying to get their bearings right now. So I don't know. Okay. All right. Okay. Okay. Great. So, well, we have the seventh to look forward to, to kind of get into that a little bit more. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Question about that one. Steve, when does, when does the cannabis control commission meeting? How do we, how do we see their meetings? Are they in person? I don't know. Actually, I think you can view them online. But I could try to look into that for you guys and, and let you know. They're. Their next meeting is September 8th at 10 a.m. Might see about attending those meetings. I can ever make them. Yeah, that would be interesting. Are those online or they just. They are. You can meet. I just looked up and I'm actually looking at their August 10th meeting notice, but it's. They're in person with remote access via teams live. So I, so I think it's possible to kind of tune in as it were. Much like people do to our meetings. Okay. Cool. Great. Thank you. Anything else on this. For today. If not a rental regulation. So everyone has the current copy of the rental by law and I think we can move on to the next meeting. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. And the first discussion is coming up in September. Before, I think at town council, the September 8th. Is that. Is that correct? So, um, I don't know. Does anybody have anything else on this? Anything else to add? No. Okay. All right. So, I just wanted to update you all. I am still moving forward with that idea. I've had a lot of buy in from different stakeholders in town. And tomorrow morning, I'll be meeting with the town engineer on site to. To look at ideas that might work to. To lay that out. So hopefully the next meeting, we could. Have. Maybe some amendments to the regulations and. And take care of anything else needs to be taken care of and try to have that pilot this fall. Okay. Great. Doug. And then Dylan. This is particularly related to prey street, I believe. Yes, prey street. Okay. That's about expanding. Identified locations as well as, um. Sort of cooperative approach relative to that, right? Yeah, potentially, um, potentially closing part of the street for, uh, that activity to take place safely. So. Um, yeah, expanding that. For locations for that when, um. When, uh, when practical. Great. Thank you. Dylan. Did you have a question? Same question. That the idea is, yeah, we're talking about the prey street moving on all over there. Um, are we thinking. Another mention where we're still thinking the parking lot or we thinking even just along prey street. Uh, while we're, while we're talking about that. Right. There was some discussion about that. Yeah. The idea we've been discussing would be to, um, you know, close off part of the street closest to North pleasant street. Um, and, um. You know, it's a small section of the street there and a lot of the food trucks a place to, uh, to park and people to mill about without a. Resting walk into traffic. And that would just be done, you know, on particular, particular weekend nights. Um, Um, Yeah, well, I think we've got a lot of positive feedback so far. So we will, um, We'll see you'll have been looking forward to meeting with him tomorrow. Uh, what, um, What needs to happen at the, uh, the council level. Um, for this to happen. It would have to be a bylaw amendment. Um, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know who to choose against this is a 여러분들. Um, Um, for this to happen, this will have to be a bylaw amendment. I believe the, I spoke to the time manager about it according to looking a little bit further whether it would be something he can do under the powers that are delegated to him. Whether it would need council action. So that is another loose than we will have to tie up. I'll be, I'll be lobbying them hard. It's like, look, you got my support. But Pre Street, it's got to happen. Right. Doug, quick question for Steve, you're talking about feedback you've gotten. I mean, a couple of questions on that. Have you heard anything from the either like a Garcia's, which is just a couple doors down? I know that the spokes probably fairly positive because they don't do a lot of food service. So they're looking for any options that somebody else can provide that. But you know, and I'm drawing like on the other one that's in the one he's pleasant. And then, of course, there's construction going on right now next to what he's pleasant. So have any of those folks given particular feedback about they like or dislike or whatever? I mean, I think about brick and mortar businesses often struggle with with food trucks just because it's competition. It doesn't have some of the fixed costs they have. At the same time, you know, you know, the sort of apartments there might find it welcome. They might also find it a nuisance. So I'm just curious if anybody's commented relative to that. The feedback I've gotten from the restaurant community has generally been positive. I think I've heard is a lot of them are dealing with more more business than they they have the capacity to to deal with. I haven't spoken to Garcia's in particular, although I think it will be important before anything is launched to make sure it's touch base with all the businesses right in that area. And I think it would be launched on kind of a pilot basis to see how it works and see if there's any feedback certainly for this this fall. Does that answer your question or? Yes, thank you. Thanks. Anything else on this topic, lunch carts and food trucks? If not, let's move on to up counting meetings and agendas. Our next one is September 7th, Thursday at five o'clock and then the next Thursday, the third Thursday in September, which is the 21st. And I think at the 7th, we can probably decide if we need another meeting on marijuana regulation or when to schedule another meeting on marijuana regulation. I know everyone's schedule is sort of in flux in September because we're all tied to the most of us tied to the academic community. And Dylan has his job. So we can look forward to working that out the next time. And are there anything else that needs to go on to the agenda in the future, or should we just move on to topics not reasonably anticipated 40 hours prior to the meeting? Yes, just talking about topics. Given the hearing schedule for the ABCC, I think the first one was in September. What was it again, Steve? It was I think the 19th. It was the 19th. Yeah. Yeah. So on the 21st, we theoretically would be able to kind of perhaps have that on there just to discuss how the ABCC approached it. Right. One or more of us in this group might be able to attend and watch. Probably not likely me, but I don't know if others might have, you know, up to tune in, but it would be interesting to sort of see how they approach that given that they know in advance of multiple violations of a similar sort. Right. The first one. It might be helpful for us when we're dealing with our own, just to sort of see how they deal with that circumstance. Yes. Definitely. I'm surprised they didn't schedule them all in one day, but I'll make a note of that. Yeah. OK. Anything else for upcoming meetings and agendas? If not, topics not reasonably anticipated for eight hours prior to the meeting. Anyone topics coming up, Dylan? I mean, I mean, we all know we all know it's coming up. I think do we want to are we looking to avoid kind of a repeat of the high horse situation of having to act as kind of a intermediary between landlords and tenants or have we I know we talked about it after the high horse. No, we never really. And it came to a conclusion of a decisive way to sort of handle these situations. It's I mean, is it do we are we going to hear something like that open something up to allow for, I don't know, somebody to respond to their license being taken away or, I don't know what's going to be our kind of in general procedure for this type of thing, what do we kind of decide on? This is in response to Hazel's. It looks like Hazel's is going to be that situation again. I know we had kind of talked about trying to get something more, more general for this Hazel's type of situation. Yes. But in kind of standardizing it rather than doing, you know, kind of a case by case landlord dispute system. I think I could be unfair how we should handle them in general, because it has come up before actually twice. It was it was high horse and then lit, right? Yeah, it was another one. I did take a quick look through our liquor licensing regulations, and I don't think there was anything specifically about this situation. I did reach out and give the the owner and manager of Hazel's a call today. I try to see see what's going on and I left a voice feeling I was unable to to get in touch with them today. Could we invite them to our next meeting before we take action on anything and see? Because I know that's with high horse. I think it was over a few meetings before we made a decision, because I think we didn't we give the owner pie horse some time because he was looking for a new location? We we remember that we revoked it then and there. OK, the I think the reason was if somebody does not have access to a their license premises, they cannot hold a liquor license for that premises was the idea. But it's one of these ones where then what do we need to do about it? Because if they don't hold it, then they don't hold it. And then if we're voting, are we obligated to vote? Yes. And if so, then what's the point of our vote? If we don't have a if we can only vote yes. So I don't think we kind of ever ironed out the details of that, hoping it wouldn't come up ever again. And yet here we are not that far out there. Yeah, that's right. The board certainly not obligated to take any action. And I would be happy to reach out to to Hazel's and invite invite the owner to just discuss with the board and update. If I take your suggestion, Hallie, a non-disciplinary hearing would just to invite him in to discuss what's going on and what his plan for the future is the next meeting. I could certainly do that if the board so inclined. Doug, a couple of things. One, Steve, is the particular license that they have? Do we no longer have any open licenses? So it is a circumstance where this prevents the well, I guess you can have two licenses in the same spot. If there was one available, that's one piece of it. The other thing is, and you and I had a brief conversation a little while ago about you can't renew the license. So that puts them on the clock anyway. You know, by December 31st, they either have to apply for it's security premises and apply for a change in location. At the same time, I think, and again, this part of the conversation we'd have is how long we allow a non-tenant or non person without access to a property to hold hostage the business, the new business in that location. I think that's that's what happened with Lit. Is that yeah, the business owner hold on to the license and the owner had to come in because they no longer had to ask us to the premises. Isn't that what I think that's what happened, right, Steve? I think it was and he was just sitting on it to kind of. I don't know exactly what was what was going on. But yeah, he was he was he didn't have the license there and he no longer had control. And yeah, the board is is able to revoke in that circumstance. I think case law supports, but the board is not obligated to take any action. You're right, Doug. The they would not be eligible for renewal because you have to sign under penalties of perjury at renewal time that you have control of the premises. So I think that's that's when we do have 10 liquor licenses available of the type that Hazel's has. But I so I think the concern for like in real estate and miscube Rolly is that there nobody else could apply for a license there while somebody else holds one. Right. I think I think the question for us maybe it's recital to this is what's a reasonable time frame to allow someone to pursue other options for location that seems fair, but not punitive to the in this case, the landlord. Obviously, in this circumstance, they took action for eviction in April. It got finalized August 1st. You know, so if you're the tenant, you know, and you think you might prevail in that circumstance, then you don't want to, you know, you don't want to be put under the gun and be looking for other properties previous to a final judgment on that. At the same time, you know, the landlord's thinking, well, we told them to go away in April and now it's four months later, now we have to wait another four months to get the property back for our new tenant. You know, so I think those are kind of how long is long enough? What's what's reasonable? You know, to have success because what we really want is success for all of them. Right. We want them all to have good, you know, business outcomes for everybody. But that's I think that's the thing we should ponder over the few weeks. But I think it's worthwhile to come and ask them to come in and talk about their what their plans are. Everybody thinks that's a good idea? Bring on that for the next. So Steve, if you could please arrange that for the 7th. Yep. So take me to draft a letter from the from the board inviting him to come to the next meeting and in a disciplinary fashion, just to just update the board and the status. Yes. Does that sound good to everybody? Yeah. OK. All right. I will. If I could add just kind of one more thing to get us kind of thinking about this. Think about it and then unless anybody has a better idea, possibly even adoption of the idea firing from the hip here, but even something like if we do adopt in our regulation for this type of situation that should a licensee lose control of access to the building that they're automatically will have it revoked one month or say maybe two months from the time of eviction, we could just simply put that in there and that that can change become either sooner or later based on the request of a app, you know, tenant or property owner, we could put it in there and we could officially say, yes, we will act in that capacity in the dispute, but to have something just kind of on the books that it's like if nobody's making a compelling case, either way, it's like, all right, you know what? It's two months. That's what it is. Two months to license returns and we could we do something like that if people like that kind of an idea that way we've got just kind of the rules written out. You know, if we feel that an applicant is holding a license hostage, cool, we'll move it up if we feel like they're getting pushed out and they're really making efforts to find something. They need more time to open that as well. But that's just kind of my general thinking and approach. And every circumstance, the board would have to hold a formal formal hearing with notice to the licensee and everything, but it certainly seems like something that would merit, you know, further inclusion in our rules and regulations because we've seen similar situations before. So, yeah, I'll see if between now and hopefully our next meeting, I'll see if I can talk to Jason DeCaprio over at the High Horts, because I think you'd have my sense of what that time frame looks like. So, you know, I'm not trying to pull some time frame out of the ether and see if I can get some information on that, too. OK, thanks, Dylan. Doug, the other thing I would suggest is if I mean, other communities have had this happen, I mean, obviously it's a little different. You know, if all your licenses are gone, you know, then they have that, you know, then they have monetary value that can be sold. So it's a different circumstance, but obviously, you know, in communities that haven't hit their quota, then there might be others that have dealt with this issue and have some strategy. So it might be worth a little research in that area. Good idea. I didn't even consider that. Yeah, there's a good idea. OK, great. So, Steve, you will draft that letter and we'll see if we can have the people from Hazel's attend a meeting and would you would you like me to the border? I don't need to just run that by Marion before being sent out with that. Makes sense, sir. Yeah. OK, is that OK? So it's fine. OK. All right, thank you. All right. OK. Anything else? Any other topics not reasonably anticipated 48 hours prior to the meeting? Anything else? No, OK. If not, is there a motion to adjourn? Move. Thank you, Doug. Is there a second? Second. Thanks, Dylan. I'll take a vote. Dylan. Hi. Hallie. Hi. Doug. Hi. And I vote aye. That is forwarded zero with one absent word adjourned at five thirty five p.m. Thanks, everybody, and see you on the 7th. You in September. Yeah, thanks.