No alcohol sales for hotel after COVID violations
The Douglassville Hotel has been temporarily banned from selling alcohol after it was found to have been in violation of state COVID-19 restrictions.
The restaurant at 8 Old Swede Road, Douglass Township, was included on a state Department of Agriculture list released Feb. 3 of restaurants ordered to close the previous week for COVID-19 infractions.
State police confirmed Thursday, Feb. 4, that troopers from the Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement followed up on the Department of Agriculture closure order at the Douglassville Hotel and Wednesday evening, Feb. 3, informed its owners they had to stop selling alcohol.
State police and Department of Agriculture officials said the restaurant can resume alcohol sales after a new inspection and
proof it is in compliance with COVID regulations.
Alvin Millisock, who has owned the hotel for the past 11 years, said on Feb. 4 that the restaurant was cited for allowing customers to continue drinking alcohol after they finished their meals.
One of the COVID restrictions put in place by Gov. Tom Wolf forbids the serving of alcohol without accompanying food orders. Restaurants are also not allowed to let customers sit at bars.
“People sitting at a bar isn’t going to hurt anything more than people sitting at a table at the bar,” Millisock said. “It’s the same thing.”
Millisock said he believes the issues brought up in the inspection have been addressed. He was expecting a health inspector to visit the Douglassville Hotel later Thursday,
Feb. 4, to reinspect the establishment.
In the meantime, he’s left to worry and fume.
“I want to know how many small businesses they’re willing to let go out of business,” he said. “We’re third-generation owners and we’re going to lose everything over this crap.”
Millisock was outraged, questioning the reasoning for the governor’s COVID orders that he said treat restaurants unfairly.
“How long is he going to shut things down?” Millisock said. “I don’t know who to call. I don’t know how to contact the governor.”
Millisock said about half of the hotel’s sales are from alcohol, and immediately after the order Feb. 3 to stop serving it, all of his customers left.
With the weekend coming up, when the restaurant is at its busiest, Millisock said the alcohol ban needs to be lifted quickly. If it’s not, he said, he worries about the fate of the restaurant and those who work there.
The owner said he doesn’t know how his bartender, who lost her husband last year, will be able to put food on the table. He doesn’t know how he will be able to pay his mortgage and keep his home.
“These guys don’t know how they’re affecting people’s lives,” Millisock said. “You can’t play with people’s lives like this. My whole family works there. What are we going to do?”
The hotel is the most recent of several Berks establishments that have been ordered to close for violating COVID restrictions. Most were ordered closed for violating a nowexpired temporary order that banned indoor dining.
Some restaurants that have been ordered to close for violating COVID restrictions, including some in Berks, have refused to do so. The state has petitioned the Commonwealth Court for an injunction and damages against some of the restaurants.
Rising property taxes seems to be the story in all too many communities across our region. And yet so many of our schools still indicate they don’t have the resources required to deliver a topnotch education. These problems are largely rooted in the “hold harmless” seed planted by the state three decades ago, before I was a member of the Legislature.
The hold harmless policy states that school districts cannot receive less state funding than they did the year prior. The policy was enacted in 1992 and hasn’t been changed since.
In fact, since then the state has guaranteed districts small annual increases, even when they have decreasing enrollment.
In a reasonable world where public funds are spent only where there is need, a system that gives more money to educate fewer students each year would make no sense. Case in point: Across Pennsylvania, districts that have lost students since 1992 now have $3,200 more per student, while districts that are growing have just $1,000 more per student, according to a new report from Public Citizens for Children and Youth.
The vast majority of school districts in southeastern Pennsylvania are growing, including in my legislative district, and the state’s funding system puts taxpayers in a bind, causing property taxes to rise year after year just so schools can stay afloat. Working families, seniors and businesses in these communities are footing the bill for the state’s irrational funding approach.
While we in Harrisburg have made progress in containing pension growth, a major driver in the need to increase school spending, more still can be done to make sure every education dollar the state spends gets to students who need it.
Pottstown School District is Exhibit A for the damage that the hold harmless funding approach has done to districts on the losing end.
Pottstown’s pension, charter school and special education costs alone have grown by $3,800 per student since 2002, while state funding grew by just $1,460 per student — just 38% of what’s needed to cover the costs.
The district also has one of the highest poverty rates in the state, so it struggles to make up the gap locally, despite its best efforts.
Pottstown now has the fifth highest tax burden in the state. Residents are strained and so are businesses, and these trends do not bode well for the need to regenerate this gem of a community.
I am proud that the state Legislature took a major step forward in 2016 by enacting a new education funding formula that allocates funds based on the number of children districts educate and the actual costs of educating those students. The distribution of $700 million now follows this rational and sound approach.
However, the state needs to go much further in fixing this haphazard method of doling out money. We must be wise about how we spend limited tax dollars, targeting them to where they are needed most. That’s why I’ve co-sponsored a bill to have even more of the state’s education money be distributed through the formula, so we are spending money where students are actually going to school.
There are other potential avenues to address the issue as well, and on behalf of the schools in my legislative district, I will continue to be a voice for state education policy that decreases property tax burden and gets funds to districts like ours that need it most.