Facing loud opposition, town board backs off ‘beer gardens’ plan

Riverhead’s beer garden idea turns out to be short-lived.

The Riverhead Town Board today backed off plans aired at last week’s work session to restrict the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages at street fairs and festivals.

The details are yet to be hammered out, but visitors to the Polish Town Fair this summer and the Country Fair this fall will be able to carry their cups of beer as they stroll the festivals’ aisles.

Instead of the beer garden — an idea that sparked widespread condemnation on social media and drew the ire of some local bar and restaurant owners — he town will require people carrying alcohol to wear wristbands to indicated they’ve been properly carded. All five town board members approved of the revised plan during a discussion at today’s work session.

“I’m almost blown over by the good sense coming out of town hall now, after some of the things I’ve heard,” Polish Town Civic Association president Tom Mielnicki said after being informed of the board’s change of heart.

“We could live with that.”

Riverhead Townscape board member Mary Ellen Ellwood, who is also a member of the board of the Riverhead Rotary club, which sells beer at Townscape’s Country Fair, said the plan “sounds like a good starting place.”

Ellwood said the idea of a “beer garden” — a restricted-access central space where people could buy and drink alcohol — “caught everybody off guard.”

“Any small steps we can take to reduce youth access to alcohol at fairs are positive ones,” Riverhead Community Awareness Program executive director Felicia Scocozza said this afternoon.

Riverhead CAP brought the proposed restrictions to the town board last week. The organization, whose mission is substance abuse prevention, told board members that street fairs are “high-risk” environments for underage drinking.

CAP had commissioned surveys of all 6th, 8th, 10th and 12th graders in Riverhead public schools in 2008 and 2014. The surveys showed that a significant percentage of students who reported consuming in the year before the survey said they obtained it at a street fair.

Twenty-four percent of 10th graders and 36.7 percent of 12th graders who drank alcohol said they did so at a fair or festival, Scocozza told the board last week.

“This wasn’t just some small sampling,” she said, responding to criticism on social media networks. “It was a very extensive research project done by a firm that’s recognized by all the major drug and alcohol funding sources that provide grants for this type of research, she said.

The survey results showed overall a major reduction in drinking among 8th graders from 2008 to 2014, Scocozza said. But there was a moderate increase in reported drinking among 10th and 12th graders.

“When you’re drinking, you need to be cognizant of the message you’re sending the kids. We all do,” Supervisor Sean Walter said.

The wristband requirement will provide “a level of additional scrutiny,” Walter said. It will allow police to enforce the law more easily, he said.

The supervisor said he’s fairly certain “beer gardens” are going to be imposed on event organizers by insurance companies in the not-too-distant future. “It’s a big liability and they want to contain the risk.”