At the last Bristol Town Council meeting on Wednesday, July, 7, the council revoked the Class B Victualer Intoxicating Beverage License of Toasted Bun Hospitality, owned by Christopher Kleyla, doing business as the Statesman Tavern. It was a decision that was met with regret and resignation by the council.

“This is not so fun,” said Council Chairman Nathan Calouro. “Since the time I’ve been on the Council we’ve never had a show cause hearing get to this level.”

Town Solicitor Michael Ursillo then asked if anyone was present representing the interests of the Statesman. After a couple of minutes spent trying to give anyone who might be attending via Zoom time to announce themselves, the hearing continued.

“So the record will show that there is no one here representing Statesman Tavern,” said Mr. Ursillo. “I will also state for the record the fact that the Statesman Tavern president and the registered agent for the Statesman Tavern have all been sent notice of the show cause hearing by both regular mail and by certified mail, so there’s no question that they have received notice about this hearing this evening. You’re right, Mr Chairman, I have also been here for quite some time and I cannot recall a time when a situation has proceeded to the point of a revocation hearing, so this is highly unusual for the Town of Bristol.”

Mr. Ursillo went on to note that with all liquor licenses there are a number of conditions that must be met, and those conditions are set by both state law and by town ordinance.

“It is a privilege to have a liquor license, not a right, and therefore it is subject to a number of conditions to ensure the health, safety and well being of the citizens who go into the restaurant and consume the liquor,” Mr. Ursillo said. “In this case a key condition has not been met, and that condition is to provide a certificate of good standing to the clerk’s office showing that the holder of the license is in good standing with both the Rhode Island Division of Taxation and Secretary of State State.”

Town Clerk Melissa Cordeiro then reported on the eight months of efforts to communicate with Statesman Tavern’s ownership. She cited over 26 different phone calls, letters and emails that were sent out. In addition, the Bristol Police visited the Statesman Tavern and provided the owner with a notice of violation in March with a violation, with followup correspondence mailed on March 23. “We’ve tried consistently, numerous times, to get them to comply,” said Ms. Cordeiro.

“So, in short, every effort has been made to work with this local business to try to assist,” said Mr. Ursillo. “The Council, in my opinion, has no choice but to move to revoke the liquor license that was issued last November.”

The Council agreed, voting unanimously to take the unusual route of revoking the license. The Statesman Tavern may continue to operate at this time, but they will be doing so without a license to sell liquor.

“It’s incumbent upon us to make sure we have laws and ordinances, and we want to make sure that we follow all of them and we enforce all of them,” said Council Chairman Calouro. “The flexibility that was given in this instance, was greater, in my opinion, than what would normally be … we’ve been through some tough times and I think we all believe that anything that we could do to be that much more flexible, we’d do, but we’ve gotten to a point where that flexibility is at its end.”

“It saddens me that we actually have to take this action, that we’ve arrived at this point, but they certainly have not left us with many choices so we have to do what we have to do.”