Grafton restaurants get liquor license renewal discount due to COVID-19
Remember those cold weeks during the COVID-19 shutdown when restaurants had to subside on takeout orders and if you wanted a mixed drink, beer, or wine you had to (gasp) get it elsewhere?
The town of Grafton does, and the Select Board Tuesday agreed to two measures to help counteract restaurant and bar losses: they are reducing renewal fees for alcohol pouring licenses and extending permits for outdoor dining.
Temporary Town Administrator Carter Terenzini said the reduction in user fees is making the rounds in local government as a way to assist restaurants that lost business due to Covid. The typical reduction is 25 percent.
“If all licenses were renewed under normal conditions, we would expect to receive $15,350,” Terenzini said. “If one were to reduce this amount by 25 percent, which is the most common approach being considered to date that we have learned of, you would have a loss of $3,837.50. If one were to reduce the renewal fees by 50 percent, you would lose $7,675.00.
“While I understand that each of the individual businesses may have experienced negative impacts unique to them, I do not see a manner in which you could provide more than one single, across the board reduction, should you decide this is something you want to do,” he added. “At the same time, the majority of communities seem to consider this event a cost of doing business and do not seem poised to take any action at all.”
Select Board member Doreen DeFazio agreed it was a good, pro-business gesture and moved for a 25 percent reduction, which unanimously passed.
Grafton restaurants that now boast outdoor dining can now extend it well past November 1, the initial final date. The Select Board adopted an ABCC regulation that allows the town to extend outdoor dining as far as 60 days past the end of the state of emergency. How outdoor spaces may be adjusted to cope with winter in New England was unmentioned.
“Many people have actually enjoyed these outdoor spaces in nicer weather,” Terenzini said.
Select Board member Ed Prisby said he was in favor of the idea, but asked if police and the health department would be able to enforce violations.
“There have been complaints about noise, there have been some complaints about Covid violations,” he said.
Terenzini said department heads expressed no concerns about the extension.
