Hingham Restaurants to Pay More for Liquor Licenses

Hingham restaurants holding liquor licenses will pay more for their renewals after the Board of Selectmen last week approved an increase in fees based on establishment size. 

The town will institute a sliding scale, based on an agreement among selectmen that the fees do need to go up but that small businesses should not be overly burdened, according to an HCAM-TV broadcast of the board's meeting Nov. 7.

Selectmen voted 2-1 in favor of raising the renewal fee from $2,000 per year to $3,000 per year for restaurants with more than 175 seats. Of the 26 restaurants in Hingham with liquor licenses, 10 have that many seats, Town Administrator Ted Alexiades said.

Establishments with 101 to 175 seats will pay $2,500 (there are seven of those), and restaurants with 100 or less seats will pay $2,000 (nine of those).

Board member Irma Lauter, commenting on a previous proposal to move to $4,000 for all liquor-licensed restaurants, said that the five-week notice would have been "a little tough to double your fees."

Instead she moved to institute the sliding scale, and said that next year she would support going to $4,000, so long as businesses were notified well ahead of time.

"We really want to encourage the smaller restaurants – I'm going to call them mom and pop – to stay in town," Lauter said.

Paul Healey said he had not wavered from his stance that the fees should be raised, but that he agreed with the sliding scale. 

The town examined raising the fees by looking at 20 different communities, board chair Bruce Rabuffo said. He voted against the measure, citing a lack of coherent data on how much restaurants pay the town and how those payments are calculated.

Rabuffo said he wanted to more thoroughly examine payments made through the town's meals tax, liquor license fees and property assessments before moving forward. 

"I'm not inclined to do anything this year until we can reconcile those differences," he said. "I want to make sure we're right when we do it and we're consistent."

Alexiades said that it would be very difficult to get together the correct data from all restaurants in a short period of time, and that he needs to get the town's budget together within the next few weeks.