In Plymouth, to ban or not to ban the sale of nips—that will be the question on the ballot in a special election to be held soon. This…the result of the effort of the town’s liquor store retailers, who collected the required signatures for the special election, even though Town Meeting recently approved the ban in a 72 to 67 vote—to go into effect next July 1st.
WATD’s Bobbi Clark has more…
Peter Balboni, owner of Pioppi’s Liquor store who initiated the petition to have the issue become a ballot question, says he talked with Town Clerk, Kelly McElreath:
“We needed 3% of the registered voters to sign our petition in order to put a ballot out for the vote so that everybody can be heard. So we learned from the Town Clerk that we needed nearly 1500 signatures from registered voters and we were able to succeed in getting, as of Friday, 2200 registered voters—and they’re still counting.”
The petitioner had to submit those signatures to the Town Clerk by October 31st—ten days from the date of Town Meeting which occurred on October 21st. Upon verification of those signatures, Town Clerk McElreath notified the Select Board:
“The Select Board then shall meet and call a referendum election to be held no earlier than 35 days, but no later than 90 days.”
Ken Stone is with Sustainable Plymouth, supporters of Article 15 to ban the sale of nips in town:
“According to the Town Clerk, this referendum will actually cost approximately fifty-seven thousand dollars of taxpayers’ money–the equivalent of a couple of aids in the school, and maybe some support staff at Town Hall. And that’s based on only having to gather fourteen hundred fifty-nine signatures out of forty-eight thousand people who are registered to vote.”
Nip ban referendum, discussion and vote is on the Select Board agenda, Tuesday, the 7th at Town Hall at 6 p.m.
In Plymouth, Bobbi Clark, WATD News.
