No new bar code

LYNN – One o’clock will remain the early-morning closing time for liquor-serving establishments after city license commissioners voted 2-to-1 to retain the 1 a.m. closing and rejected requests to move it to 2 a.m.Commissioners Patricia Barton, John Krol and Miguel Funez took about 10 minutes to discuss and vote after spending 50 minutes listening to 1 a.m. closing time supporters, including former Mayor Edward J. Clancy Jr.”This comes down to common sense. It’s smart public policy,” Clancy said.Barton and Krol voted to retain the 1 a.m. closing with Funez voting for a 2 a.m. closing time.As mayor in 2007, Clancy supported previous commissioners in their decision to move the closing time for local bars, nightclubs and restaurants to 1 a.m. from 2 a.m. Bar owners lost a court challenge to the 1 a.m. closing time, and a 2010 push for a later closing time also failed.At the Lynn Restaurant Association’s request in May, commissioners agreed again to review closing times, and Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy proposed a trial 2 a.m. weekend closing time requiring liquor servers to shut their doors at 12:30 a.m.West Green Street resident Cindy Rodriguez led off Tuesday’s hearing by showing the commissioners and the 80-person audience in Veterans Memorial Auditorium video footage of activity outside her window related, she said, to late-night clubgoers. “There was fighting outside and they were loud. The owners say they police themselves: They do not,” Rodriguez said.Storey Avenue resident Helise Lewis said the 1 a.m. closing has helped keep her neighborhood quiet even though she lives near major streets.”I want to keep Lynn a welcome place to return to,” Lewis said.Other 1 a.m. closing supporters who spoke Tuesday night included Fire Chief James McDonald, Police Lt. Peter Holey and former commissioner Richard Coppinger, who said commissioners tried to resolve overcrowding, over-serving and other problems related to bars prior to the 2007 rollback.”I believed then it was the right thing to do and I believe today it is the right thing to do,” Coppinger said.About two dozen 2 a.m. supporters spoke in favor of the later closing time at a July 28 hearing and the license commissioners also heard that night from Police Chief Kevin Coppinger, who detailed crime reduction that followed the 2007 decision to implement a 1 a.m. closing.Following Tuesday’s vote, Krol said Coppinger’s statistics “blew every argument out of the water” supporting a 2 a.m. closing.”A 2 a.m. closing would open the floodgates, I believe, to making Lynn a last-call destination again,” Krol said prior to the commissioners’ vote.But Funez said prior to voting that he did not believe returning to a 2 a.m. closing time would make Lynn “a destination city.” A disappointed North Shore Latino Business Association Director Frances Martinez, following Tuesday’s vote, said that commissioners should have given greater consideration to Kennedy’s proposal.Like Krol, Barton cited police statistics in explaining her vote and said she sided with Clancy even though the pair had aired public differences in the past.”It’s not often I can say I agree with our former mayor, but it’s a matter of common sense,” she said.