RANDOLPH — For five months and counting, Sun Sun restaurant has been a dry establishment, unable to serve liquor to its customers.
Now restaurant customers and employees are counting the days until the drinks can flow again.
If all goes as expected, that day will be Friday, Nov. 1.
For Skye LaVoie, the day can’t come soon enough. LaVoie has been working at Sun Sun for six years, and she has a good sense of the ebbs and flows of business at the restaurant.
“Compared to how it used to be,” LaVoie said, “it decreased an insane amount.”
She now works six days a week to earn what used to take her two days, she said.
“In the past two to three weeks, I have definitely seen an increase,” LaVoie said. “When this first happened, we got maybe five people a day. I just had someone come in and ask, ‘Did it happen yet?'”
A special election has been scheduled for Oct. 9 to allow voters to decide whether they want to allow liquor to be served at restaurants in town seven days a week. The ballot will include two questions, one covering Monday through Saturday and the other covering Sunday.
Randolph Town Clerk Lynn Mealey said town officials had committed to holding the vote as soon as possible, but that was contingent on receiving a petition with at least 130 verified signatures of Randolph voters requesting it.
The first petition, submitted July 29, fell short of the required number.
LaVoie said some people had written wrong addresses or were not registered voters in Randolph.
The second, filed a week later, was successful and the vote was scheduled for 60 days after that date.
At a brief public hearing Tuesday, town officials reviewed the warrant and answered questions on why the vote was needed.
Earlier this year, the state Bureau of Alcohol Beverages and Lottery Operations denied a routine request for a liquor license transfer for Sun Sun after town officials had approved it because the state agency could find no evidence that town residents ever endorsed alcohol being served at a bar or restaurant.
The decision surprised both Runxaing Feng, who had recently bought the restaurant and had applied for the license transfer, and town officials, who have approved annual renewals and prior liquor license transfers with no problem.
A search of records at the Randolph Town Office and at the Secretary of State’s Office earlier this year showed that no vote had ever taken place.
While the previous owner of Sun Sun and owners of previous restaurants at that location had been granted liquor licenses, it’s not clear they should have been given.
The first inkling there might be a problem came more than a year ago, when some someone at the Bureau of Alcoholic Beverages contacted town officials to say no copy of the local option vote could be found when the previous owner applied for a renewal. Even so, the bureau issued the routine renewal license, leading town officials to believe the record had been found somewhere.
Kyle Hadyniak, director of communications for the state Office of Administrative and Financial Services, which includes the Bureau of Alcoholic Beverages, said via email this week that if the voters approve the move, the state will license Sun Sun effective Nov. 1, the first day of the following month as state law dictates.
Voting will take place from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., in the Town Office at 121 Kinderhook St. Absentee ballots are available at the Town Office.
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