Westborough Weighs Removing Liquor License Quotas
When a restaurant or liquor store owner wants to open in Westborough, they sometimes have to wait more than a year to get approval from the town and state for a liquor license.
That's because the state sets a quota for each city and town of how many liquor licenses it can have, based on its population. For Westborough, that number is 23.
So, for Westborough officials to issue any permit beyond its 23-limit quota the town must get special approval from Town Meeting voters and Beacon Hill lawmakers, which can take months.
Westborough Town Manager Jim Malloy is trying to change that.
He wants to remove the state quota limits and allow the local board of selectmen authority to grant liquor licenses without needing permission from the state legislature.
"To me it seems that the (state) legislature spends a lot of time on this issue, we spend a lot of time on this issue, so it would be a whole lot easier if we could just have local control," Malloy said.
Currently Westborough has 33 liquor licenses, with another two pending approval. Each one after the 23 required a special "home rule" to be adopted by the legislature granting the over-the-quota license. Malloy said the quota limit from the state can be a turnoff to restaurants that are looking to locate in Westborough. If the restaurant needs a license to open and it takes a year to get one, the restaurant or business may look to another community to invest in.
But some liquor license owners said it's a good thing to limit the number of licenses a community can have. Some argue that allowing an unlimited supply of licenses devalues the licenses already owned by businesses.
"Having one of those limited number of licenses allows you to have some value as a business," said Mike Cimini, who owns Yankee Spirits, which operates three liquor package stores in the state. His flagship stores is located in Sturbridge, a town that successfully removed the limit on licenses in the past.
According to Cimini, allowing new liquor stores to open in a community can hurt the sales at existing establishments.
Furthermore, he said business owners that hold a license can sell their license to another business through a transfer process. But, if the town has the authority to issue the licenses for much less, the business owners lose their ability to make a profit on the license sale.
Cimini said since the town of Sturbridge removed the limits, there has been a "revolving door" of new restaurants with liquor licenses that take business away from the restaurants that used to hold one of the limited-supply licenses.
Westborough Board of Selectmen Chair Leigh Emery said it's a difficult issue to weigh.
On the one hand new growth in town has slowed in recent years, so she wants to encourage new businesses to the town. On the other hand, she doesn't want to devalue existing licenses.
"I think we lose businesses to other towns because it's so difficult to get a liquor license," she said.
Leigh said there could be a compromise the board could adopt if the state grants the town authority to issue licenses. For example, the board could only grant new licenses if there is not one for sale in the community.
The selectmen have asked Malloy to study the issue and see if area legislators would be willing to sponsor a law that would remove the quota limits for cities and towns.
State Sen. Jamie Eldridge, who represents Westborough, said he's considering filing legislation that would remove the quota limits. He said the current quota system is "outdated" and does not encourage economic development.
"The real balancing act is the public safety angle," he said. "We don't want to see a city or town have an extremely high number of licenses, so there may be a role the state can play in enforcing that."
Eldridge said that the benefits of attracting new businesses to a community outweighs the concerns current liquor license holders may have about their licenses losing value. He said when licenses are sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars by license holders, that can also be a deterrent to businesses opening in the state.
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