Board kills the chicken

By G. Michael Dobbs

Managing Editor

SPRINGFIELD -- Peter Sygnator, the chair of the Board of License Commissioners told Reminder Publications that he would be "happy to cooperate, to meet with any city department about any license."

City Councilor Bruce Stebbins made a proposal during the Board meeting on Thursday night during the discussion on whether or not a common victualer's license should be granted to the Kennedy Fried Chicken location on Main Street.

The Board voted four to one to deny the restaurant a license.

Sygnator said it was his understanding that Joseph Lussier, the attorney for Kennedy Fried Chicken, would be filing an appeal to the decision in Superior Court. Lussier would have ten days to do so.

That location was the scene of a shoot-out on Jan. 1 that left one person dead and five wounded. The same owners operate a location on Walnut Street.

Stebbins was one of several city councilors who attended the meeting in opposition of the Board granting a license to the restaurant owners. He proposed the Board meet two to three times a year with Police Commissioner Edward Flynn and the City Council to identify "hot spots" in the city.

City Councilor Timothy Rooke also spoke in opposition to the license request and called for better communications between city departments.

Mayor Charles Ryan, Police Commissioner Edward Flynn, and Health and Human Services Director Helen Caulton-Harris joined the city councilors in their opposition.

Caulton--Harris spoke of the numerous health violation at the location and said her staff had to expend twice as much time and manpower there than at other restaurants.

Ryan said that obtaining a common victualer's license is a "pretty benign situation," but called the string of events surrounding the restaurant as "indefensible."

Flynn walked the Board through two and half years of police calls involving the location. He noted some in detail and tallied up 143 calls for service at the location. There were 35 calls alone in 2006.

He called the restaurant an "attractive nuisance," and explained that, because it was open past the closing time of the nearby bars, it kept people who should have left for home longer in the downtown area.

During the past two and half years, the Board has called in the owners of the restaurant to discuss incidences. The Board had reduced the closing time from 4 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. and had recommended to the owners in July 2004 they hire off-duty police officers. The owners cancelled their request to hire officers on July 30, 2004.

When asked by Sygnator to explain why the officers had been cancelled, Lussier initially said the owners took that action because conditions had improved at the restaurant. Later Lussier admitted he could not give Sygnator a "comprehensive answer" to the question.

Lussier blamed the fact the restaurant had been operating without a renewed common victualer's license on a "paper snafu." He said the restaurant should not be blamed for the crime that was happening near the location and that the owners were performing their civic duty by making calls to the police about incidents near or at their site.

Lussier said the midnight to 2 a.m. time for the restaurant was "extremely profitable."

The attorney maintained the owners had been "proactive" in addressing concerns and the owners "didn't do anything that created the situation."

The sole commissioner who voted for the license, Juan Rivera, noted that last November when there were questions raised about the operating times of the Walnut Street, the Board did not receive any reports from the Police Department to indicate there were still ongoing problems at the restaurant