Mayor Domenic Sarno has gotten lots of flack for his recent decision to require bars to apply for a special permit to offer “entertainment” (playing music, having at t.v. on) after 1 a.m.—especially when, earlier this month, he granted those coveted permits to only two of the 41 bars that applied for them. (The mayor has since granted permits to another eight businesses.)
Sarno said the measure would improve public safety in the city’s entertainment district; critics, meanwhile, questioned just how cutting off the jukebox, but not the alcohol, an hour earlier would make the streets safer.
A new proposal from Sarno addresses that concern—but not in the way angry bar owners would like. The mayor is now calling for closing time in Springfield to be moved from 2 a.m. to 1 a.m. “I am in favor of an earlier closing time as it brings continued continuity to closing time and more importantly better overall public safety to visitors, our neighborhood residents and to the business community,” Sarno said in a statement to the Springfield Republican.
(Sarno perhaps committed a strategical error in defending the proposed 1 a.m. curfew by pointing out that that’s they way they do it in Northampton—an argument that’s unlikely to win over many in Springfield.)
Bar owners (and their lawyers) are, of course, flipping their collective lid; attorney Tom Rooke told the Republican that an earlier curfew would amount to “the final nail into the coffin of the business community of Springfield,” with Sarno wielding the hammer. (Tom Rooke is not to be confused with his brother, City Councilor Tim Rooke, who has also been a critic of Sarno’s; most recently, Tim Rooke has been pressing the administration to seek competitive bids for the city’s health insurance package to see if savings can be found. The mayor is now considering that idea, as reported here by the Reminder’s Mike Dobbs.)
Sarno’s call for a 1 a.m. bar curfew would need the backing of the License Commission (four of whose five members are appointed by the mayor, with City Council approval). In an interview with the Republican’s Peter Goonan, the commission’s chairman, Pete Sygnator, sounded non committal at this point. “The commission recognizes the mayor’s efforts to quell some of the 2 a.m. closing time disturbances in the Entertainment District and the commission has independently explored methods we can use to assist the mayor in his goal,” Sygnator told the paper, adding that the body wouldn’t take up the curfew issue until a specific proposal is filed.
