(Credit: Steve Thurston, 2021, file photo)
Gaffney's Pub, at left, lost its liquor license for a short time earlier this year. The expedited process would not apply to establishments re-applying for a lost license.
Restaurants and bars in Saratoga Springs looking to get their state liquor licenses got a modest boost from the city council Tuesday evening, Nov. 15. The council approved a resolution that will shave about 30 days off the liquor license application process.
Before a person can apply to the State Liquor Authority for a license to sell alcohol, they must first submit a notice to the city saying they plan to apply. And then they wait 30 days, giving the city time to consider the application first. The council approved a process to waive that 30-day notice.
Under the approved plan, notifications that come to the Saratoga Springs Accounts Department will be forwarded to the city attorney’s office. City Attorney Tony Izzo will then consider the application and reach out to the individual members of the city council. If a majority — at least three members of the five — say “yes” to the waiver, it will be granted instantly, and the applicant can apply immediately to the state without waiting.
"SLA is really not functioning well right now,” Commissioner of Accounts Dillon Moran told the city council before the vote Tuesday and therefore the restaurants and bars need all the help they can get.
The Albany Business Journal reported in March that the backlog was 3,700 applications long. According to the SLA website, the process takes “approximately 22-26 weeks [five to six months] for most types of applications.” It can take as long as nine months, the ABJ reported in March. Moran repeated that at the council meeting.
[Find a link to the ABJ story here.]
Moran said the idea was to shave some time off an already-too-long process.
It is Moran’s understanding that applicants who receive a waiver of the 30-day notice from their local government on average get their licenses faster. He said in a later interview that he was not sure how much help the waiver brings.
Moran said it was a good decision for the economy and good for local businesses.
Under the old procedure, the council approved waivers informally using email. If they did not respond, the applicant would wait to hear and the following council meeting which could be 14 days later, using about half the waiting period.
Commissioner of Public Safety James Montagnino pushed back against the initial proposal that Moran put forward, which gave more power to Izzo to make a quick decision on behalf of the council.
"I don't feel comfortable saying I'm ceding my review authority to someone else," Montagnino said at one point. He made a friendly amendment that the notification be emailed to the council for a quick decision. But that made the situation much the same, Moran and others said.
Mayor Ron Kim and Commissioner of Public Works Jason Golub balked saying they all got too many emails, and the idea was to move the application process forward quickly. The council discussed time limits, saying if Izzo did not hear from someone in 24 or 48 hours, he could move the process forward.
They finally agreed upon the process that asks Izzo to reach out individually and once he receives three “yes” votes, he can approve the waiver.
Moran said during the meeting and in an interview afterward that the waiver would not be granted in special circumstances such as when the applicant is reapplying for a liquor license after having lost one.
"If there's been a loss of a license you would not go out of your way to help [those] people," he said in the interview.
Montagnino in a subsequent interview said he believed this process gives enough authority to the council while expediting the process. He said he saw one application that had a business name on the application and it was submitted by an attorney, and so he was unsure whom would be responsible for the license or even where the location was.
The discussion with the city attorney would allow for more clarity, he said.
The new process accomplishes the goal so that the waiver application "doesn't sit on the shelf waiting for the council to meet again," Montagnino said.
Moran’s expectation is that his office would review the notification before sending it to the city attorney and that he would talk with the attorney before the attorney spoke with anyone else on the council, thereby avoiding some of Montagnino's concerns.