The Burlington Select Board issued one-day liquor license suspensions to two Burlington restaurants after they failed recent police stings meant to test compliance with laws meant to prevent the serving of minors.
As reported by BNEWS, the Burlington Police Department announced in May their plans to conduct liquor license compliance checks at all businesses that hold a license to ensure compliance.
“Compliance checks are done to prevent people under the age of 21 from obtaining alcohol, and to ensure that local businesses and restaurants that hold liquor licenses, and their employees, are not providing alcohol to minors,” Chief Thomas Browne said at the time. “Effective and regular compliance checks help reduce the sale of alcohol to minors and curb underage drinking, as well as help prevent issues connected to alcohol consumption such as alcohol-related traffic crashes, crime, health issues and poor performance in school.”
On Monday evening it was reported by the board that two businesses, The Treasury and Border Cafe, failed the check. The failure was a first for both businesses.
Under Burlington’s alcohol policy an establishment that has a first-time violation of alcohol sales will have its liquor license suspended for one day. The practice of the board has been to impose the suspension on the next Monday if that is a normal business day for the business but they have stated they will work with businesses on choosing the day. In these cases, a representative from The Treasury said they would like to get the suspension over and opted to halt alcohol sales on Tuesday, July 19. A representative from Border Cafe said they would go with the normal practice and halt sales on Monday, July 25.
The members of the board’s Alcohol Subcommittee, Joe Morandi and Mike Espejo, said they met with management at both restaurants to review the town’s policies in regards to alcohol and said they were both receptive and were apologetic about the failure to check identifications.
Members of the board said this policy is meant to dissuade businesses from becoming lax in its self-enforcement of alcohol policy with its employees and is not something they like having to enforce.
“We met with both establishments and they were contrite and we went over the importance of compliance,” Espejo said. “I’m happy everyone was so cooperative. It’s very important that when we serve alcohol in this town we do so legally.”
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