 Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021, 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 emmerstma.gov. That's M-C-C-A-R-T-H-Y-S at emmerstma.gov. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access proceedings in real-time by 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 town website an audio or video recording transcript or other comprehensive record proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting. And with that done, we'll do a roll call done. Here. Hallie. Here. Gaston. Here. I'm here. There's four here with one absent and we're called to order at 5.02 PM. All right, the next thing is public comment. Is there anyone here for public comment? General public comment. Not unrelated to anything on the agenda. If so, please raise your hand by pressing the hand button. And I don't see anyone here for public comment. Okay, so next on the agenda is the short-term liquor license applications, Aaron Jolly, Amherst Chamber of Commerce, Wine and Malt, Eric Carl Museum, December 14th, from five to seven. And is Mr. Jolly here? Oh, there is. And Claudia has money. Has money? Yes. Thank you. Welcome. So this event is the Chamber of Commerce holiday party. Yes, it's our annual event. Can you hear me? Just to make sure. I'm on headphones, sorry. Yes, it's our annual holiday party. We're holding it at the Eric Carl, it's their 20th anniversary. We've asked Aaron to join us through Savannah's to promote bringing food and drink. And we have pianists and it's going to be a holiday networking bingo and pretty typical networking event celebrating their 20th anniversary. And we've worked many times with Aaron and now in his capacity at Savannah's. So we're looking forward to it. Great, thank you. Yes, Gaston. Hi, thank you. I guess two questions. One is you wrote for whether it's a cash bar, tickets, other. So I wonder if you could explain that the drink tickets a slash other, what that means. And then also, well, actually, I mean, exactly. Could you please explain that? So we're going to be doing beer and wine at this event only. And I've spoken with Claudia since I applied for it and we're going to be giving out drink tickets to per person for that two hour timeframe. Okay. The reason I ask is because the fact that your event is open to the public means that it can't be an open bar. If it were a closed guest list, then you can have an open bar since it's a public event, it can't be an open bar. And so I guess that leads me to wonder how you make sure that it's only two tickets per person. I guess, to be honest, I guess I would only be taking a drink ticket from someone. We're certainly not handling cash. I planned, I'm obviously served-saved. I was going to bring a bartender that served-safe and I was going to bring another person with me to kind of work with the bartender to kind of assist whether it be stalking, running to the car, loading stuff and bringing stuff in. Traditionally, when I've done these events over at the last one I did when I was still at the pub over at the Amherst Works, it kind of was an event that I always joke with Claudia. It's almost over before it started and I've never really seen it taken advantage of or never really witnessed any individual. I'm going to be providing single-color red tickets like raffle style tickets to those folks and to make it as we have one registration table, everyone will go through that table. You can see on that layout and everything's going to be pretty smooth, pretty easy to manage. Okay, very good. Thank you. Thanks. Did you have another question, Gaston, or is that? Well, the other question was whether it was a closed guest list, but I saw that it's a public event and so that's what I wanted to pin that down. Okay, great. Any other questions or comments about the short-term license? No, if not, is there a motion to approve SST-22-76? Thank you, Doug, is there a second? Second. Thank you, Hallie. Is any further discussion? If not, we'll take a vote. Doug? Hi. Gaston? Hi. Hallie? Hi. And I vote aye. That is four to zero with one absent. The short-term license has been approved. Thank you so much for coming in and I hope your event goes well. Thank you. Thank you all. Thanks. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Okay, so next up is liquor license, change of hours application. Emerson Company doing business in on Bultwood and Ms. Calles, which is Garcia's Mexican restaurant and bar. So they don't, yes, Doug? I was just gonna say given that both of them are asking for a similar kind of change, I wanted to ask Steve if there was something about that that has prompted this, either some impending legislation that's coming out or something that's motivated both of these businesses to make a pretty significant change in their hours. So just before the actual individual licenses, I was kind of hoping Steve might comment. No, I believe these are independent applications with no connection. There hasn't been any changes in the regulatory scheme. I think it's just a coincidence that we're getting both of these the same meeting. Okay. And so we do get inquiries like this sometimes a lot with license renewal and it can't be done with license renewal, but it opens the conversation to submitting an application. Okay. And then we just got a little, they each submitted a little letter Steve and that's sufficient for an application for change. Yeah. The application materials are surprisingly sparse for ABC applications. All right. Just curious. If I could ask one more question along the lines of Doug's to kind of clarify the rules before we start here. What is striking is the, how many hours both establishments are looking to be open. And I guess what is the, our exact policy about how many of the hours that you're licensed to serve, you have to be serving and open. So I believe the official, there's a little bit of a lack of clarity with that. I believe the official ABCC guidance is that they are supposed to be open for the entire time they're licensed. However, in the normal practice of things there's often some flexibility especially in a seasonal community like this. I think that's taking that ABCC guidance I think that's really incumbent on the board to try to set a line there. Thank you, that's helpful. All right, thank you. Yes, Doug. Actually, so since we're getting the mechanics out of the way early, and this relates to only one of the two licenses I noticed it on the interval that the starting time was 8 a.m. on Monday through Saturday. Is that, I just don't recall our earliest start time for alcohol service. I know that on Sundays we adopted this sort of brunch, for lack of a term, hours that allowed for earlier opening on Sunday which is around that 10 a.m. time. I was just, I was struck by the 8 a.m. and it's not to say that it can't or shouldn't. I just, it struck me and so I was wanting to check with Steve about the particulars. 8 a.m. is the earliest statewide allowed time to start alcohol service. I believe we have other licensees that also have that but I can't remember off the top of my head. I just want to confirm it was, it was not like in violation of our own sort of local zoning or regulation. I didn't recall that we had any specific to that. I know we do on Sundays, but just want to make sure. No, I think on every day the board allows and has issued the maximum times allowable by state law which is 8 a.m. on 8 a.m. starting on weekdays and 10 a.m. on Sundays and 2 a.m. on for being open at night. Although zoning regulations generally don't allow or at least any zoning permit issued generally doesn't allow to be open until 2 a.m. We do have one licensee it's open till 2 a.m. but that's on Amherst College's property. So that's exempt from zoning. Thank you. Thanks, Steve. So are we going to do this one at a time? Do you want to bring us on Mr. Mandela was approved to? I guess we'll go on over here. So I have Kimbra. All right, so her man, hello, Deborah. Hi. Welcome and so you're from the inner Faultwood. Yes. Okay. And you're opening your hours and you're the one with the 8 a.m. start time. Yeah, I really took that from our previous license. So we modified our hours obviously with COVID. And so I just kind of wanted to bring them back. Our primary motivation is to be able to start at 10 a.m. on Sundays. That's really the primary reason for asking for the switch. Okay. All right, thank you. Any further? Hey, Dylan. We're doing the in at Faultwood hours change right now. So any questions about this one? Any other concerns? No. If there are no other concerns, is there a motion to approve the change of hours for the in at Faultwood? What's the official name? Don't move. Okay. Thank you, Doug. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Hallie. Any further discussion? If there is none, we'll take a vote. Doug. Hi. Hallie. Hi. Gaston. Hi. Dylan. Hi. And I vote aye. That is five to zero. The change of hours has been approved. Thank you so much for coming in. Great. Thank you. Yeah. And best of luck with the new hours. Thank you very much. All right. So the next one is Garcia's. Hello, Mr. Mandiola. Hello there, guys. How are you? All right. Good. How are you? Thank you for your application. Does anyone here have any questions about the change of hours for Garcia's? Oh, Doug, did you have something? I think the main thing is just sort of, you know, what was a sort of motivated factor for you for making the change, make the request? Sure. So we started Garcia's in November 8th and when the students are in, we like to stay open sometimes a little late and when the students are gone, we obviously, this are found in hours sometimes with clientele. So we want to make sure we kind of emphasize open hours when we have the clientele here. So now we're trying to go into the nightclub scene with the hours and stay up a little late. Safely, of course, we don't want anything to happen to anyone, but we want to make sure that we have the hours available so that way when we have somebody say some corporation that wants to do a social and now we have speakers, a DJ, and they want to rent the place. We want to have the hours backing up the business so we can create that extra revenue when the students are not in or whenever we need to book one of those special events. So basically it's just to kind of comply with the ABCC's necessity for liquor licensing. Okay, thank you, Doug. It's one other one, and I probably should ask this of the previous one, but I'll ask this one. Are you gonna keep your kitchen open the whole number of hours to go with the change? I mean, obviously if it's a special event, that's a little different circumstance, but I mean, if you're having like extending hours with, you know, when the students are in town, that kind of thing, are you playing on keeping your kitchen open that late or how are you trying to meet the need to kind of give some sustenance that kind of pairs with the alcohol? That's a great question. So one of the things we spoke to Steven about the kitchen and the necessity of being open that late at night, we need to provide something to eat for the guests that are in the establishment. Although some of the businesses and numbers don't do it right now, we need to provide a menu available for guests. So we will have a kitchen staff member or a couple of members in the kitchen to provide a menu available for guests. So they will be able to order any food throughout the time, which is gonna be from like nine to one a.m. So there will always be food available for people that wanna get something to order from nine to close on those evenings. So we'll definitely have food for them. Great, thank you. That's good to hear. Absolutely. Yeah, thank you very much. Are there any other questions or comments? Yes. Yeah, I've got a two-part question. First, sorry, what were your hours still currently? It's still 11 or was it till midnight? No, so the hours right now were 11 to midnight. But what happens is if you are 11 to midnight and you want to have say like a nightclub hours and we wanna start at nine, if we finish at midnight, it's gonna be only a couple of hours because we're really gonna, like at nine p.m. we will close the restaurant when the new hours kick in. So I will open the club at 10. So if we had the same hours, we would only open from 10 to midnight versus 10 to one to give those folks a little bit of a space and a time to relax and enjoy music and dance. Okay, but it is currently till midnight, right? That's the current hours. Right now it is, yeah, right now it is. Have you guys given it a shot? Just how's it been? Have you been able to do till midnight a couple of times? Have you had any success? We started the first year, meaning last year, we started close on that midnight and we were getting some business and for some reason or another, the crowd from last year was able to go out more at night and drink and have dinner late at night. This class, maybe I should call it a class, this class is a little more conservative and they don't go out that late for dinner or drinks. So we started closing earlier this year. So we want to keep the hours more conservative because in reality, nothing good happens after like 10, 30, 11 p.m. special on the weekend because nobody is looking for a place to have dinner. So we're thinking maybe on 30 hours to like 9 p.m. and then open the nightclub scene which people will be more open to come out and hang out and relax versus a place to have dinner and hang out late at night. Great, thank you. Does that answer your question, Bill? I think so. I mean, my only question is just have you guys been trying it all to cater to the nightclub scene yet and just doing till the midnight? And if you have, just how has it been going? Has it been successful? And we're just looking to extend that now for one or we're just jumping into this totally going in and just saying, we're gonna try it now going from nine to one. Have we tried it all before and we're looking to go to one or are we totally new ones? I don't know if I understand your question correctly. So we haven't dug into the nightclub scene yet. It's gonna be the first time. So we have just been at restaurant but we have invested into putting speakers and lighting and open up the space and getting a security personal so people don't get too drunk and getting people that know what they're doing at the front door to make sure we check all the IDs. So when we run the nightclub scene it's gonna be only 29 and older, nobody else. If you guys didn't check in, I don't care who is your relative and admirers you're not coming in, period. So we wanna make sure that we run a responsible establishment but we have not tried staying late open for a club. So we invested into the sound system, the lighting system. We have a DJ in place. We have a security personal coming in. We have been in talks with the town, with the officials to make sure that we fill out all the paperwork, to make sure that we're in compliance to be a nightclub scene kind of like we're a restaurant or we wanna be a nightclub anyway. So we wanna make sure that we're as safe as possible but we have not tested those waters yet. So now we invested all this money so we want to go in and see we can create more revenue safely with the folks in Amherst obviously the students but also when they go on break we wanna be able to bring some bands, local bands not many people who are like 30 and older not people who are younger. So we wanna be able to have those hours backing us out but that's why we wanna go into the later hours of the night which is like one a.m. Oh yeah, that answers my question. And yeah, I mean, I know we're not at the vote yet but I'm excited to see this. I don't think I'll ever see this nearly as much as I'd like to but it will be. Thank you so much. All right, great. Thank you. Any further questions? If not, is there a motion to approve the change of hours for Garcia's? I would just suggest there's also a, excuse me there's also a zoning application in conjunction with this. Now just suggest that the motion be approved in compliance or to operate in compliance with the zoning approval as well. Okay. We continue upon that approval, right? So did you, okay. So does that just include that in your motion, Doug? Yes, please. Okay. So include that in Doug's motion. Is there a second to Doug's motion? I'll second. Thank you, Dylan. Any further discussion? If there is none, we'll take a vote. Dylan. I vote aye. Hallie. Aye. Best on. Aye. Doug. Aye. And I vote aye. That is five to zero. The change of hours is approved. Thank you so much for coming in, Mr. Mendiela and best of luck with that. It sounds really exciting. Thank you folks. Have a great weekend, okay? You too. Bye-bye. Okay, bye. Okay. So great. So just to, before we start, did he say that there are businesses that are not in a like an offhand comment, not doing it following the snap? Well, did you touch that? I thought that I wasn't, I wasn't about to dig down on that one. I know, I can't think of a bar that doesn't offer food in some capacity that we've asked for. No bars have a menu that I'm aware of, but they all have pretzels or popcorn. Okay. Maybe that's what he meant. That's available. We're gonna offer a menu. Okay. Anyway, so discussion items moving on to, so first one is rental registration, which we have a little time on. So Gaston, were you? Yeah. I think we put that on for the next meeting. Okay. That's what I, the note I made last time. So Holly and I are gonna catch up next week. All right. Super. Okay. Yeah. All right. On the previous issue, I mean, maybe we need to organize a dragnet and try to get munchies at all the bars. I know. Yeah, I was saying we should get those jackets with blue with the big yellow BLC on the back. We can get badges too. Just so we can see. The same, badges and guns. Let's go. Board of License Commissioners, where are your snacks? That says snack inspector. Right. Okay. So we'll put that on. Holly will meet in the next week or so. And then we'll talk about that on the 15th. Start talking about, okay, great. Thank you. Next up is, ooh, annual report. Okay. So the town meeting is coming up, town annual meeting is coming up. And we do an annual report and I have a couple of drafts of previous annual reports which I'll just fill in new information. I hope to have a draft for you today, but I didn't. So it's actually due on the 15th. And I couldn't remember. I was just wondering if you could, I know we did lunch cart regulations this year. What else did we do in the past year? Does anyone? Did we do? Did we do? Well, we did alcohol registrations regulations. Oh, alcohol regulations. That's right. Oh, okay. There's sort of ongoing work relative to, like, you know, don't use marijuana. I think the rental registration, you can say those are projects that are, you know, complex and still in process, I think. And so, you know. So ongoing work, rental ride. I mean, we ended the oppression of vending machines. Oh, vending machines. Yeah, the coin operated amusements, wasn't it? Officially? Yeah. Coin operated. All right. Amusement devices or whatever it was. Okay, vending machines, ongoing operations registration, but don't use marijuana. We look forward to live entertainment and flammable liquids. Is that right? Oh, it's exactly like that. I mean, for live entertainment to, well, I guess I like to play with fire too. Yeah. That's what that flammable liquid licenses. So we can have that in 2023. Okay. Is that, that sounds like enough stuff. They, they emphasized very, very short. So I'll put a draft of this together. I'll send it to Steve. He can send it around to everybody and that will be done. And if you think of anything else, you can let Steve or me know. Steve, can you think of anything else? I'll have to top my head. I think that's pretty exhaustive. If I can give some, some figures about approvals and. Oh yeah, yeah. That's right. We need the numbers on that. Okay. Super. All right. Wonderful. Great. Well, that takes care of that one. Next is liquor license renewals. Steve, how's it going? Yeah. So I thought I would just give you all an update on how it's going. And it has been interesting. We did have a couple of licensees that did not renew. One of them is the university club. Yeah. Up on, up on the university. Obviously, I don't think that ever really opened after COVID. And when I sent around some inquiries, I guess the vice chancellor of administration and finance is set on eliminating it. And there is some controversy among the faculty, but that is the way they're going. So the liquor license is not being renewed. Oh, that's too bad. Okay. All right. And much more relevantly for the board, university liquors did not renew their license either. So they had closed and lost control of their premises sometime around August, maybe. And I was working up until the last minute with the owner to attempt either a sale transaction or to change the location was the last direction they were going in. And due to various issues, it wasn't going to be a simple application by any means. And ultimately, he decided that it was not worth pursuing. So now the board has an interesting situation on its hands, which is rare in any community, but especially in Amherst, we're only gonna have one license type at quota where there is an in-demand license type that is just available and hasn't been sold. And usually businesses will try to sell them if at all possible because they can get a significant amount of revenue and the owner of this store did not. But we did just see one of these licenses go for, I think, 130,000 in the last transaction provisions. So there's quite a bit of demand. So this is not something we've done before, but I think there's definitely interest in everybody to be fair with everything. So I did some inquiry with council. My first thought was that an auction might be a good way to go to get some revenue for town projects or something. I had read articles in the Gazette about auctions that happen in other towns, but I guess that is just the state that does that if the department of revenue ceases the license for non-payment of taxes, then in that case they can auction it off, but it wouldn't be proper for a town to do so. So that's out. So you're left with either a kind of a first come, first serve solution, which I think would be very impractical because then you're going to be having people, camping outside of town hall at 2 a.m. Like it's a Harry Potter premiere and trying to elbow everybody out of the way to get the first one to the counter. And then what happens if that one has an error or something? So I think there's some big problems with that, although it would be lawful. And then the other option is to pick between them somehow. So it could be based on merit, what the board thinks the best proposal is. It could be based on a lottery maybe. I haven't proposed that specific idea to council, but I think that would be doable. So I think it's an interesting question. And yeah, so that's something to think about. Very interesting. Doug. Couple of things. I think that some of the other circumstances where a license might go to auction is if it's been used as collateral and instead of like a nonpayment of taxes, if someone was in a circumstance where a bank sees their property or something like that, those can be auctioned much like a property can be. But the interesting thing about a lottery, I can tell you is that it does because that is effectively a form of gambling. There's a lot of restrictions on it and there's a lot of permissions you gotta get to get that as an option. I'm not saying that's not a bad option. I just think there's some hoops that would have to be jumped that does allow for some fairness if you're doing it properly to have it be a lottery. But I think that the idea of a merit-based application process for a sort of license, because I don't think we can just suddenly say, oh, it's, I mean, I guess we could, but the license has a fixed dollar value now. We renew them for $1,500 or $3,000 or whatever. We can't suddenly say, oh, it's $100,000 for this. On the other hand, I do think we can certainly, I think I would be interested in the idea of sort of defining some metrics of which we would have applicants try to meet. One of the things with like the marijuana is that the idea of trying to promote minority businesses and that sort of thing was supposed to be part of that. It's, I think, admitting success. But again, that could be a thing if we decided, that was a criteria we thought was of high value to us, diversity of ownership or something like that. But anyway, just some interesting options to us who are for us to consider. Thanks, Doug. Hallie. I was gonna ask Steve if any known businesses have expressed interest in it because I would definitely wait, give some preference to a local business that's successfully running. I'm not, like I was thinking like an Atkins or someplace that sells beer and wine, but not hard alcohol. I was just trying to think like somebody who's successful and has been a part of the community is wondering like if anybody has expressed interest in that. Yeah, there's been a lot of interest in this. One person has been an existing licensee of this same type who wants to open a second location. Gaston. I think you're muted, Gaston. Yep, I need a review of the procedure if you don't mind, Steve. So they're not renewing the license so that license disappears unless they sell it before what happens. So this was a pretty complicated case. You know, I think we did mention this before at a meeting where the Board would have been in this right to immediately revoke the license, I believe, because even though a pocket license, the case lies that it has to get six months to kind of cure itself before the Board can act. If the licensee just loses control of the premises, then I believe the case lies not quite as black and white but supports that the Board could just immediately revoke it. And I think the Board kind of, I think this is just a, maybe even a topic's not reasonably anticipated, but I think the Board kind of said, you know, we'll leave it to renewal to sort out. And so we did set a deadline so the license wouldn't be eligible to renew if the licensee didn't have control of the premises. And so we set out a deadline to him to have a fully completed application for either a sale or a change of location by the renewal period. And he was working with an attorney right up until Tuesday to try to do that. The deadline was yesterday for all the renewals. And ultimately, you know, I think he, it was kind of left to the last minute to an extent, but I think he kind of considered the work it would take and consider his circumstances and ultimately decided to let it go. So it's a very unusual situation where a license which has so much demand and value just becomes available to just back on the town's roster. So Steve, this is sort of like what happened with High Horse and Lit except with a different kind of license, is that right? There's some similarities, but the biggest concern in that case, we did have all alcohol on-premises licenses available on quota, those particular locations were already occupied by a licensee. So nobody could apply in those locations without the previous licensee being not there. In this case, it's just a quota slot opening up unexpectedly in a high demand. And this is the only license type we're at quota for. Okay, right. So, oh, sorry. No, go ahead. Steve, is it your understanding that we're within our rights to extend this period of time and have this past or quasi-licensee come before us? The requirement is that the renewal, there's a, it's actually explicit in state law, which strikes me as strange, but that the renewal application must be signed within the month of November. And he did present an incomplete renewal application to me that for reasons I won't go into could not be accepted, but we had set a requirement to him, and I was consulting with counsel along with this, but that we set a requirement that he had to have a complete application or wouldn't be eligible for renewal. And he made the decision yesterday to just to not seek renewal ultimately. I mean, I feel like where we don't really have all the facts to make good judgments here. I mean, I can try. I can go into more detail if you'd like. I'm trying to be mindful of his privacy, but I mean. Yeah, why don't you, can we just? Well, I mean, I guess it's, I mean, I moved to wanna avoid any licensees kind of economic waste, but people can make choices that kind of make that feeling go away. And I don't have enough facts to kind of end up on in that space where it's like, okay, too bad so sad as my property law professor used to say. Well, I guess I will say what the biggest barrier was that the licensee had moved across the country after his business closed and didn't really address the license in a timely fashion. And to either sell the license to somebody or to, and so one of the requirements for the section 15 licenses is that a majority of the directors of the corporation have to be Massachusetts residents, which he no longer was. And if so to sort of be in compliance with that, he'd have to file a change of director's application and both the change of director's application and the change of in the sale application require a Department of Revenue and Department of Unemployment Assistance Certificate of Good Standing. And my understanding is he was not able to produce those. And did he admit that he didn't have Massachusetts domicile or did someone else re-second please? He did, yeah, he did tell me that on a couple of occasions. Okay. His lawyer and he were exploring options of re-establishing residency in Massachusetts. Well, I'm kind of an expert. I mean, I'm a little bit of an expert on this domicile because I was on the team hired by the Democratic Party to try to get Romney off the ballot his first time because he spent the Olympics in Nevada and paid taxes there. But he was trying to claim that he met the Massachusetts domicile requirement of six years, I think, or seven years. I thought it was iffy, but what was clear is that it's a very, it's a very fact intensive inquiry. There's not one thing that's a litmus test for residency. It's, you look at a whole bunch of things and go from there. But if he himself is admitting that he lost his Massachusetts domicile, then I guess that settles that. Yeah, it is an interesting question. And we were definitely kind of looking at things like that. He was represented by counsel and his counsel seemed to agree with that. And he did sell his house in Massachusetts and bought one in North Carolina. Okay. And so they were exploring options of getting a apartment up here. But I think ultimately there was a path, but he chose not to. Okay, and just to finalize that, my question about the process. So basically our question is how do we handle the open application for this license? Yeah, I think that's a question the board should discuss. And as we go down this conversation, I'm thinking maybe it would be worthwhile inviting Brian Riley to our next meeting to kind of hash that out together. Because I mean, I guess I think technically the board could just never say anything and then it just becomes available on January 1st. And then whatever insiders know about that can take advantage of that. But I think in the interest of fairness, we'd want to post it publicly maybe and give an opportunity to anybody who's interested to apply. And it could be first come, first serve though as well. And I think it's really up to the board to kind of determine. Yeah, done. Yeah, I think that we're, I think there's a couple of things to think about. One is, this is a kind of an opportunity for us to leverage this to the town's benefit. That's one thing. But I also think it's, and then you can think of that benefit in a number of different ways, whether it be by encouraging a particular existing, good standing member of the community to own it or who's going to pay us the most cash kind of thing. So any and all of those could be factors there. But I think the other thing is that that question of fairness about is a really tricky one. Because if we just want the first come, first serve, I think you're right, Steve, that the front door of town hall on January 2nd or whatever it's going to be, could be a very dicey circumstance. And I think that that's unfortunate. I mean, we need to bring some sanity and fairness to that. So I think we want to get our heads around what our options are and make those known. So those that are interested or may be interested as they've become aware of this availability is, you know, that's kind of a rational way to approach this. Gaston and then Dylan. Okay, I mean, just, I think this has to be kind of a big, in big letters for our next meetings is to get people to come and give us their opinions. And I guess my first feeling right here is that we could develop a rubric for evaluating applications and publish that so people know what is important to us. Okay, thank you Gaston. Dylan? Yeah, I mean, I guess I'd like to have council in here to know kind of what is legal and why I don't want to leave ourselves open to it because we're not doing a lottery system. And we get say, you know, 10 applications that meet all the criteria that we set forward. What is the method of choosing in a way that isn't gonna, I think, leave us open to any sort of lawsuits or anything like that. Or even just in a way that, you know, forgetting lawsuits just in a way that I think that is transparent and fair and not just, that isn't just the opinions of the five of us gets to decide who gets to have a lucrative business in Amherst. I like the idea of a lottery for that reason. I don't mind, if right now my current position if we could do it, I don't know, maybe you guys have other ideas but this is just me firing from the hip here. I'd like to do something that we set forward a rubric people apply to us and that application process is to see whether or not you can get into the lottery would be if I were to do it at this moment that's something I'd like to do. I don't know if you guys have better methods and then if that method even is one that that's workable. Gaston. Well, I mean, I think for the reasons that Steve said if we could do an auction that has a lot to recommend for it because at least we're, you know, bringing dollars into the town. So I'm also wondering if we can kind of simulate an auction in a way by let's say, starting the January 1st price for the license is $300,000. The January 8th price is $250,000. Can we just kind of keep bringing the price down so we have a buyer in consecutive rounds? Basically like a reverse auction. Start from the high bid down. Yeah. Is that something I'll have to talk about? Because yeah, it doesn't mean, I mean, why should, it doesn't make sense for the person who opens a liquor store to pocket this windfall. The town should get the windfall if given the owner of the license basically abandoned it. It should, that goodwill should go to the town not to the next owner of that license in my view. Okay. Hallie, did you have your hand? Yeah. Okay, done. So we're agreed, we're gonna invite Brian Reilly to the next meeting to talk about this and see what our options are and go from there. Okay. Well, that's good. Anything else on liquor license renewals, Steve? No, besides that, it's been going quite smoothly. Okay. And then when will we be, when will these come before us? Is it next meeting or? Yeah, I'm planning to try to get as many of them on the agenda for next meeting as possible. We have some that are ready to go. Unfortunately, my agenda posting day was filled with helping everybody doing their last minute renewals. So I didn't get a chance to put them all in there, but I probably better to get them all in one block anyway. Okay, great. So if no one has any other questions about the liquor license renewals, we have next item is agenda. So a肯定 meeting agenda will have rental renewal, rental registration, sorry. Lots of renewal licenses to vote on renewing. And then Brian Reilly, we hope, right? To talk about this new license, currently available, newly available license. Is there anything else that we wanted to put on there? Maybe if we want to just look at our schedule, are we still planning on doing the 15th and the 29th? I think so. I think we usually keep, I definitely the 15th. And I think we're not absolutely tied to the 29th, but I think we like to keep it open in case there are some late comers or like anything that hasn't made, we haven't approved on the 15th. We'll keep the 29th open. Does that sound good to everybody? Okay. I have my second replacement on the 27th. So I won't. Oh my gosh. Okay. But that's okay. Okay. So you won't, you might not be here. Okay. Perhaps we can ask ourselves at the next meeting if what the best time would be if we think we need to have it. Maybe we could do it like knock it out in the morning or something. Okay. I don't know. I mean, it's hard to predict for me. All right. So we'll discuss the 29th at the 15th. And it's generally, it's generally good to have a meeting kind of right near the end of December because well, the actual liquor license renewal form must be signed in the month of November. I'm a bit more flexible with things like insurance certifications and things like that. So, you know, as long as we set a date certain I can send a message out to everybody with outstanding obligations that if you don't get this into me by this time, then your license, you know, you won't have a license for a couple of days in January until we meet again. Okay. So why don't we just say the 29th then, if that's all right and we'll try to keep it just no discussion, not planned for any discussion items. Yeah. Just the last renewals. Just the last renewals. And I'll try to get everything that's ready to go on to the 15th and we will just have the stragglers. Okay. Does that sound good to everybody? Okay. All right. Anything, oh, topics not anticipated. 48 hours prior to the meeting. Wasn't anyone having it done? I just had a question we got. I think you forwarded to us the action of the ABCC relatively. Yeah, the sting operation. So I was curious if you had any more information regarding that relative to additional findings, did they appeal, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm just curious as to where that sits at the moment. No, that was a disposition I think. So I think they do have a eight or nine day suspension to be served in January. So I was never aware of any of this until I got the notice from the ABCC that the violation had occurred and the violation report. And I think it was actually a couple of years ago, but because of COVID it kind of got delayed. But yeah, it was certainly an interesting one. I had no idea they went to those kind of links. Yeah, me neither. Just to follow up. I mean, this is a little disconcerting because it's a business that we've actually locally done a similar action on. Conversations about scorpion balls, if you go back to that. I remember that. Before Porta, we heard this. And so that's the other thing that's a little bit, concerning to me is just sort of the second action there at the same location. Although you're saying, Steve, and I didn't notice this, that's my fault, but you said it was the actual sort of violation that they identified was quite a while ago. If I'm remembering correctly, I think it was, because I've never seen the violation report some time ago. Yeah. I can try to pull it up and see when it was. I think it's December 21. Oh, well, that was the hearing, sorry. February 2020. Right before the pandemic. I mean, yeah. Now, was the only thing to come out of this was an eight day suspension of the license? I don't know if they would include any criminal charges in that, but I also have no reason to think there was necessarily. So that's, this is all I'm aware of. Right, done. Can we offer a suggestion about when those days are? Because, you know, as is the case with summer and embers, the January, you know, second to January, like 20th is a pretty. It's dead time. And the kind of the sting of the, of the force of the penalty is not as great when you do, we have a period of time that's not as busy. So I don't know if we can offer a suggestion for the ABCC about the dates, but we may want to, because it's again, it's not the first violation for that business. That's the other reason why I sort of bring this up. And it's not to say we change anything or not. I'm just, the broader conversation, just to touch on it. Yeah, pulling this up now, it looks like it's for seven days from January 9th to January 15th. It is the ABCC's case and they've already issued when it's gonna be. I mean, I suppose the board can always write a letter, but I don't know if there is any, I don't know if they really, certainly I don't think they ever really consult the L.A. on dates. Yeah, we're just such a seasonal town. It's, it's. Yeah. We can at least have more, more bite than others in Amherst, but. Yes. I guess there's also offer for a compromise in lieu of suspension. What would that be? What do you mean? I believe they can pay a fee in lieu. Oh, okay. $100,000. There is actually a calculation here. Yeah, it's not that much. Oh, no. It's actually quite complicated. It's almost, it looks like a 1040, almost involving their annual receipts from alcoholic beverages and invoice costs and days of operation and daily gross alcoholic beverage profit and it needs to be signed off on by an accountant, I guess. But yeah, it's an interesting glimpse. I don't know. Okay. I don't know. Yeah. Is it worth writing a letter to the ABCC to suggest it or do you think they'd be inflexible? I mean, my gut instinct is they probably wouldn't care, but I don't know. We've never, we've never tried so. We have a question from Brian Reilly next time. Not necessarily now, but we can just sort of pose the question. Right, Brian Reilly. This happens, I mean, because we've had a couple of these now, you know, because does our input matter to the ABCC or not? It's a hell of a business model though, just selling sets, it's one thing, like you get a couple of 40 year olds in there with a fake, but my God, just actively delivering alcohol to 16 year olds? My God, that's... Well, delivering alcohol, just delivering alcohol is illegal. Regardless of the age of the person by, you know? You know, I sometimes think that we don't have a whole lot of authority here, but then the ABCC, it's like, what more could you want? All right, eight days, you can't sell alcohol to kids anymore. After that, you gotta be a little bit sneakier, guys. Come on. What I'm most curious about is how this started. Was it the customer who asked or the business or offered and also how the police became aware of this? Yeah. Oh, I think the headmaster heard about it from some exit interviews from McDuffie students. And so he tipped off the Granby police and they got in touch with the Amherst police and then they contacted a, what was it? A minor operative, is that what it was called? Oh, I guess, yeah, that is there. I guess it was alcohol and cigarettes. We gotta like send this to some writers. It's really good material. I know, it is really good show. Sort of like one of those, looks like guy's name who did, can't remember it now. Those quirky movies? The Royal 10. Oh, Wes Anderson. Wes Anderson, yeah. Anyway, okay. Well, yes, that's something that's good to talk to Brian Riley about that, Doug, next time. I just think if, you know, I mean, we're happy that ABCC's had the opportunity to come and do this kind of thing and finding things we aren't likely to find and so that's great, but, you know, do they care about our opinion? Right. And it goes stuff that's useful to them or whatever. So just curious. Okay. All right, any other topics not anticipated? 48 hours prior to the meeting. Anything? No? Okay. Is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. Thank you, Doug, because there's a second. Second. Thank you, Dylan. We'll take a vote. Callie. Hi. Doug. Hi. Deston. Hi. Dylan. Hi. And I vote aye, five to zero. We're adjourned at 5.56 PM. Bye, everybody. Thank you. See you next on the 15th. Yes. Thanks, Steve. Thank you, everybody. I'll see you in the 15th. Bye.