Council eyes punishment of restaurant for alcohol sales
City Council to hold show cause hearing for Ciro’s after liquor sales made at food truck event
WOONSOCKET – A popular downtown nightspot will have to answer to licensing authorities for allegedly arranging the sale of beer at an off-site gathering of food trucks earlier this month without the necessary permits.
Council President Dan Gendron said the City Council, sitting as the Board of License Commissioners, have instructed the operators of Ciro’s Tavern on Cherry to appear in City Hall for a show cause hearing on June 7.
Gendron said the hearing was scheduled after City Solicitor John DeSimone reviewed the circumstances of the case and concluded that Ciro’s full-privilege liquor license did not permit beer to be served at the Market Square “Food Truck Night,” a quarter mile away.
The alleged violation occurred on May 12, at the first of four food truck nights to be held in a joint venture of NeighborWorks Blackstone River Valley and Food Trucks In, an organization that
promotes the mobile victualing business. NeighborWorks staffers say they were under the impression that they could allow alcohol to be served at the event using Ciro’s catering permit – but City Clerk Christina Duarte says she has confirmed that Ciro’s does not have that type of license.
Duarte said NeighborWorks has indicated it wants to apply for a temporary permit, in its own name, to serve alcohol at a future food truck event. But the scheduling is too tight for the permit to be issued in time for the next one, set for June 2. “They will not be able to serve alcohol at the next event, but per- haps by the third event, they will,” said Duarte.
The series of food truck events has been a cause of some consternation for the city’s established restaurateurs and their supporters on the City Council since NeighborWorks began promoting the event earlier this spring. Food Truck Night was billed as a hip, trendy affair – gourmet food trucks are all the rage in the restaurant business – designed to pump some new life into the downtown area, but some restaurateurs with brick and mortar foundations in the city protested what they viewed as unnecessary competition from outsiders.
Councilwoman Denise Sierra, a longtime restaurateur and proprietor of the former Burrito Company, called it a “slap in the face” to the city’s restaurant establishment. She and Councilman Richard Fagnant were the only two councilors who voted against NeighborWorks’ application for a parking permit to hold the food truck event earlier this year.
Fagnant isn’t making any apologies for apparently bringing the sale of beer to a grinding halt after he dropped in for a spot check of the premises for the inaugural event.
“These people weren’t following protocol,” said the councilman. “That is never again going to happen on my watch.”
Actually, Fagnant only takes partial credit for the imbroglio over booze involving one of the city’s hottest nightspots and NeighborWorks, a leading community development organization responsible for building numerous affordable housing and mixed-used projects in the Greater Woonsocket area. He says the only thing he did after visiting the grounds of the food truck affair was call the police after he saw a frayed electrical wire running from a generator on the sidewalk to a plastic canister of gasoline propped against the back of a food truck.
Fagnant says his intention was to rectify what he saw as a safety hazard. However, a policeman who responded heard an announcement offering the sale of alcoholic beverages on a loudspeaker and asked a representative of NeighborWorks whether the organization had obtained a liquor permit. According to Lt. Edward Doura’s report, organizers said they were selling alcohol under Ciro’s catering permit.
If Ciro’s actually had such a permit, there would have been nothing improper about the restaurant using it to serve alcohol off-premises, according to Duarte, the city clerk.
She said the operators of the restaurant came to her office in person recently and informed her Ciro’s doesn’t hold such a permit – as Duarte suspected based on a preliminary review.
With no record of prior infractions against its existing full-privilege liquor license, it’s likely Ciro’s will face little more than a warning from the board of license commissioners over the food truck affair.
Jill Moylan, a proprietor of the restaurant, could not be reached for comment on this story.