Board rejects Westport farm’s full liquor license

Selectmen’s Weatherlow Farms vote follows second heated hearing

By Bruce Burdett
Posted 4/24/19

At the close of a second sometimes heated hearing, the Board of Selectmen voted unanimously last Tuesday to deny Weatherlow Farms’ bid for a year-round 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. full liquor license.

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Board rejects Westport farm’s full liquor license

Selectmen’s Weatherlow Farms vote follows second heated hearing

Posted

At the close of a second sometimes heated hearing, the Board of Selectmen voted unanimously last Tuesday to deny Weatherlow Farms’ bid for a year-round 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. full liquor license.

After hearing objections to the license from a final audience member (nobody spoke in favor), board Chairwoman Shana Shufelt said that she believed the board could do one of two things.

It could, she said, hold off on a decision until it gets answers to four issues that had arisen, or it could vote one way or another.

Selectman Steven Ouellette immediately moved to deny the license.

Board member Richard Brewer said he would support that motion. He has read the town bylaw regarding agritourism “and I don’t see where it allows alcohol unless we specifically permit it” as now happens when the board grants alcohol licenses to the farm for specific events.

“I don’t see where it comes under agritourism at all,” he added, and how the sale of alcohol is tied to farm visitors purchasing agricultural products or enjoying an agricultural experience.

Although she voted to deny, Ms. Shufelt had expressed concern earlier in the meeting about what might happen next.

She is not aware, she said, of a legal basis to deny, which means that there will likely be an appeal to the state.”
Audience members were fine with that as one after another urged selectmen to take a stand.

“No abutter is for this,” said neighbor Frank Sherman. Imagine, he asked, that “you are outside having a cookout with your family and there are 300 people next door drinking and partying 100 feet from (my) house. I want you to ask yourselves, would you vote for it in your back yard?”

“There are hundreds of farms in Massachusetts, thousands of farms across the United States where alcohol is being served,” Ryan Wagner, owner of Weatherlow Farms said, and he has taken care to follow every rule

Heated exchanges

Mr. Wagner said he had obtained answers to most of the questions that had come up at the previous board meeting two weeks earlier.

But some remained. The Board of Health had not yet come to a conclusion about septic and water supply issues that adding a full liquor license might entail. Nor had the building official reached a conclusion on a zoning issue.
And two selectmen said they had met with two Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources (MDAR) officials to inquire about whether the liquor license request met with their approval.

Those officials said “they didn’t really have concerns with events similar to what you did last year,” Ms. Shufelt told Mr. Wagner. “They were a little less certain … once the sale of alcohol came into the picture.”

That produced a sharp exchange between Mr. Ouellette and Mr. Wagner.

“Mr. Wagner said he would run it by the state,” but the two officials selectmen we spoke to said they had never heard of this. It was a big concern, Mr. Ouellette said.

“We are fully compliant” with the state. They are fully aware of what’s going on right now. I can guarantee you,” Mr. Wagner said.

“So you have talked to them specifically about an all alcohol license on the property,” Mr. Ouellette asked.

“They have, they have the right to ask anything, they have the right to visit me anytime. We are in full compliance,” Mr. Wagner replied.

“You didn’t answer the question. You are dancing again. I asked you if you talked to them about an alcohol license,” Mr. Ouellette continued.

Yes, he did, Mr. Wagner said after another back and forth.

The two also sparred over emails received by the board — Ms. Shufelt said there were 16 to 18 about evenly divided between supporters of the license and those opposed.

At one point, Mr. Wagner said that those emails showed that a number of neighbors support his request.

”I’m just trying to find how many neighbors (sent emails). I haven’t found one yet,” Mr. Ouellette said as he leafed through the emails and mentioned addresses in Little Compton and elsewhere (one on Sodom Road).

“I’d like people to take your word for something Mr. Wagner, okay? You told me the MDAR knew, you told me there’s a lot of letters from neighbors. There’s one.”

While supportive emails mentioned improvements made to the farm property, calling it a nice destination in Westport, some of the objectors pointed to concerns about the request that the license allow serving to 11 p.m.

Asked about that, Mr. Wagner said the “farm store” (he corrected someone who used the term “cafe” that has been used previously) is only open five days a week for a total of 32 hours with a latest operating time of 6 p.m. during busy season — less during the rest of the year.

He said Westport has issued many liquor licenses that specify hours that are later than the hours the business is actually open. “That is done to provide flexibility to any kind of scheduling.”

Further, “Massachusetts state law states that licensees cannot be barred from serving alcohol between 11 a.m. and 11 p.m.”

Selectmen Brian Valcourt said he is bothered by the idea that the license might be approved at the same time that the planning and zoning boards have spoken of the need to “modify those bylaws because they are allowing too much.”

But until those bylaws are fixed, they are the law, Ms. Shufelt replied.

“For us to grant a license to someone for something that in a year’s time would not be granted, I think would be irresponsible,” Mr. Valcourt said, “Do we think it is appropriate to grant an all liquor license to a farm operating in a residential/agricultural district. I think that is the crux of the question. I don’t think it is appropriate.”

Audience speaks out

Old County Road resident Arlene Martel said the issue has impacts on Westport beyond that immediate neighborhood.

Once granted it would be very difficult to revoke, she said, but “Mostly I disagree because Weatherlow Farms is a farce. It is a perversion of the town bylaw for agritourism. We have a pretend barn, a store market that’s going to morph into a cafe …”

“The board can simply say no,” she added. Weatherlow Farms does not need a full liquor lcense to conduct its business. “Do not allow Weatherlow Farms to bulldoze this through before those bylaws can be tightened up.” Her words were greeted by the evening’s only applause.

Paul Vigeant of Drift Road said, “What I find frustrating about the conversation is that it is a conversation about a farm and it’s a conversation about a bar … We pride ourselves on being a right to farm community” but this “travesty” is about becoming a “right to drink community — on a farm.” He likes the idea of granting liquor licenses for individual events at the farm “but I don’t think a bar is consistent with the intent of this law.”

Steve Medeiros of Sodom Road said that the town now has 250 parcels of land that qualify, under section 61-A, as being over 5 acres used for agriculture.

But that list could quickly grow, he said.

“What’s to say someone can’t buy a patch of woods, fence it off, pasture goats in there a couple months of the year which is pretty much what’s getting done here,” and then say “I want to build a bed and breakfast or a cafe or a wedding venue.”

A Sodom Road resident said she works on a dairy farm, ”a by the book farm”, and said she worries about driving to work before dawn and encountering people who have been out drinking late.

“My grandmother didn’t sign up for a bar to be open until 11 p.m. … in our back yard.”

Zoning Board of Appeals member Gerald Coutinho said the proposal goes beyond what he believes the zoning board approved.

He said he looked back at the records and “everything that was presented to us was all related to inside the barn. There was nothing related to outside, nothing in the store … He can be whatever he wants to be if he gets this.”

“He should be coming back to the zoning board now,” Mr. Coutinho said, “if he wants to expand beyond inside the barn. Right now he doesn’t have the authority to do this.”

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