Brookline to do what Boston can't: Ask for more liquor licenses
By adamg - 8/23/12 - 12:19 pm
The Boston Business Journal reports Brookline selectmen are asking the state legislature to grant them the right to issue 11 more liquor licenses because the town is currently plumb out.
That's the same basic situation in Boston, where city councilors mostly know there's no way in hell Beacon Hill would get anywhere near a request for more licenses, thanks to the efforts of Dianne Wilkerson, so right now licenses in Boston can go for upwards of $300,000 and the city is asking the legislature for just one single new license - which would go to the Irish Social Club in West Roxbury, where an official for some reason just gave its license back when it seemed the place was closing forever, only it wasn't.
Comments
Good
Maybe someday we'll see sanity on liquor laws....
someday.
Insanity
How do we change this? It is so simple, yet seems impossible to do in Boston. Anyone have insight to what it would take for reasonable amount of licenses to help encourage new restaurants, bars and make it more inexpensive for non-high end places to open?
What it would take to get more licenses
STOP. VOTING. INCUMBENTS.
Um...
Republicans are in the pocket of Big Church ... which hates alcohol with a religious passion. Remember when churches could veto liquor licenses here...
Perhaps you meant, let's see some more primary challenges?
Great as far as it goes
But how often is this even addressed in races outside Boston? If a state legislator from the hinterlands doesn't think this is an issue voters care about, which doesn't really effect them or their constituents directly, and about which they've never had a serious debate, in the primary or the general election, how many are going to stick their necks out and advocate for a change? The status quo is nice and safe for them, they'd be fools to change it.