The Select Board voted unanimously at its Nov. 12 meeting to establish midnight as last call time at the town’s 22 licensed on-premises providers of alcohol, adding an hour to the 11 p.m. closing time set in 2018.
While the vote changes town policy, it is not a dramatic change in local practice. Fifteen of the 22 licensees, including 12 of 16 restaurants, have been operating under waivers that have been allowing them to remain open until midnight.
“I appreciate that this reflects actual practice because I’m uncomfortable going against our regulations,” Select Board Vice Chair Cathy Dowd said at the Sept. 24 Select Board meeting, when the changes were first proposed.
During the first of four discussions on the issue, the policy was described as a flexible amalgam of state and local regulations in which the Select Board has wide discretion in establishing a local policy and enforcing any subsequent violations.
State law allows for a 2 a.m. closing time, with last call generally made 15 minutes before the actual closing time.
The policy was then discussed at a Select Board public hearing at its Oct. 14 meeting, when members of the town’s Board of Health advocated retaining the 11 p.m. closing time.
The Board of Health also expressed concerns over the Select Board’s past decisions to hold sanctions in abeyance when establishments fail compliance checks for the first time.
“There have been compliance checks twice a year for alcohol since 2018 and only on one occasion has every vendor passed,” Board of Health Chair Stephen Epstein testified at the public hearing.
“We’ve had multiple times where multiple vendors have failed,” Epstein added. “What you’re doing isn’t working.”
Epstein said the Select Board should instead “send a clear message to vendors that we are not going to tolerate selling to underage customers anymore. We need to have a zero tolerance policy for this. The most recent science is, there is no safe level of alcohol.”
In its discussions over multiple meetings, the Select Board elaborated on its approach to enforcing violations that occur during semiannual compliance checks conducted by the Needham Police in which they use “secret shoppers” — usually underage college students — to attempt to purchase alcohol at local liquor stores and restaurants.
If licensees fail the test, the Select Board has the option to hold a first offense in abeyance. It says it has received guidance from the Massachusetts Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission that compliance checks are viewed as “educational in nature” and carry a different set of penalties.
The Select Board also has established a requirement that licensees use scanners to confirm identification and penalize licensees when they don’t follow that process. That means all compliance check failures effectively result in two violations — the serving of the alcohol and the failure to scan — which the Select Board says is a stricter policy than most other municipalities.
“I appreciate and participated in making our regulations stricter,” Select Board Chair Heidi Frail said. “But I do think it behooves us to have some flexibility.”
“We are here to have our licensees behave according to the law, not to put them out of business or hamper them significantly.”
“The goal is to change their behavior. I do think that having that flexibility when we have so many regulations that they have to follow is really important.”
Select Board member Kevin Keane said he understands the concerns of the Board of Health and asked police officials for data on activity they see around late-night closing times. Police told him there has been one OUI arrest to date in 2025 of someone leaving a restaurant and there had been one in 2024.
“And then otherwise the cases seem to be intoxicated parties are falling asleep in cars or in parking lots. They’re not necessarily tied to the restaurants,” Keane said.
Board of Health member Rob Partridge pointed to research that argued against any policies that extend the window of available drinking time.
“Research has shown that extending the hours of availability of alcohol is associated with higher rates of injury, violence and impaired driving,” he said at the Oct. 29 Select Board meeting.
“I’ve been an emergency physician for 35 years. So, this is more than just numbers for me. When bad things happen from alcohol consumption, it harms patients, loved ones, families, and frequently people who haven’t even been drinking.”
Member Marianne Cooley referenced a general concern that if the town’s on-premises establishments have different closing times it could lead to bar hopping, with patrons leaving one establishment with an earlier closing time to head to another to extend their evening.
The Select Board ended up passing a policy in which it maintains its wide discretion in assessing penalties. The Select Board, the policy reads in part, may “impose an order that is more lenient or more severe than suggested by the guidelines when the facts surrounding a violation so warrant.
“In determining the appropriate action in any given case, the Select Board shall consider the violation, the facts of the case, other relevant factors including the Licensee’s prior record, and aggravating or mitigating circumstances.”
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