2020-05-21 Liquor Adjudication Board Minutes

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Smith: Chair votes aye. The motion is carried unanimously. The motion was carried unanimously. Smith: A written Decision and Order shall be provided together with the Findings of Fact and the Conclusions of Law. A written Decision and Order will be prepared and served upon the Licensee, which shall be due and payable within thirty (30) days of its issuance. V. New Business Smith: Moving on to Item V. New Business. Gerald, you were going to update us and provide some information on the actions that the Department has taken? Takase: Yes, Dorsi provided you with the updates that we've been providing to the Liquor Commission. Since this is our first meeting, I wanted to give you a chance to see what we're doing or make any comments. We're moving out of the "shut -down" andthings are starting to happen again, but some of the critical actions that we took during the shut -down was to allow our Licensees, restaurants as well as dispensers to do take-out wines, beers, and recently, mixed drink cocktails along with their to -go foods. This was instrumental for them in trying to keep their businesses going. We did the to -go beer and wine early on, before the rest of the counties and we're dragging everybody along with us whether they wanted to or not. Mixed cocktails were asked for by a lot of Licensees. We have also allowed that. The reason they wanted that is they feel there is a higher margin to it. Takase: In terms of other things we are doing is, we've allowed distillers to start producing disinfectants, hand sanitizers. They had a lot of alcohol on hand and their demand was down, so they asked to convert. We allowed them to convert. You might have seen that Maui had a problem with their distillers, and it made the local news as well as national news for citing them during this period. I'll report that we didn't have any publicity like that, but, we also did allow them to go in. They both provided sanitizers to the County and we have since tried to give them some business. The Department purchased another $5,000 from both Big Island Distillers and Kuleana Rum combined, to supplement the County's supply. In our next phase as we open up, which tentatively is scheduled to be June 1St, the Department is going to purchase more hand sanitizers and provide at least some to all of the Licensees, because they will all be required to have hand sanitizing stations as part of their reopening. Takase: Some of the other things we did was to allow drive-through services by our retail Licensees. It seems to be working pretty well. It may be one of the things that we adopt in the future. Another thing that will come up is, we received approval from the Liquor Commission to suspend collection of the renewal fees until November of this year when we do our percentage fees. We're giving them about six months to make those payments. We have started to receive some renewals, some are suspending their fees, and others are still continuing to pay. We estimate that we should be able to survive without collecting these fees up front. As they ramp up to get ready to reopen, I'm sure we'll get lots of questions as to what will be allowed. As far as we know right now, restaurants will be allowed to open come June 1St, with social distancing guidelines. If you read the Governor's and Mayor's orders, bars are not allowed to open; but, we are treating all of our bars that serve food as restaurants for reopening purposes. MAY 21, 2020 - LIQUOR ADJUDICATION BOARD MINUTES 18