Last month, state lawmakers made it possible for local communities to designate outdoor areas for public alcohol consumption, but they left it up to each city and town in New Hampshire to decide whether to take up the opportunity.
Concord residents will get their first chance to weigh in on whether they want to embrace social districts in September, just days after the law goes into effect.
To allow social districts — set boundaries where customers can “sip and stroll” with drinks purchased from designated local vendors — the new state law requires municipalities to win resident approval. In Concord, that process will begin with a decision by the city council over whether to include social districts on the November ballot.
The council will hold a hearing next month before making its decision. If social districts move forward as a ballot question, there will be another public hearing on the question itself the following month.
“We don’t have any particular areas in mind,” City Manager Tom Aspell told councilors on Monday. “It’s just, if you want to keep this option out there, this has to be on the ballot.”
Councilor Jennifer Kretovic, who supports the move, said social districts could prove a boon to the organizations and festivals that regularly hold events downtown and promote a type of full-throttled tourism Concord has sought out with the revitalization of Main Street.
Implementing social districts in Concord could have a happy timing, she added, as their roll-out would overlap with the city’s tricentennial celebrations next year and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
“Oddly enough, our Constitution was ratified because people were drinking alcohol,” she quipped.
Other councilors had reservations.
Councilor Ali Sekou, who represents Ward 8, worried about the guardrails against overservice and overconsumption in these areas and questioned whose responsiblity it would be to enforce those guardrails.
Voter approval come November wouldn’t automatically create social districts in Concord, noted Deputy City Solicitor John Conforti.
Some rules around implementation, like signage, container labeling and disposal, are already laid out in state law. The liquor commission must also set up its own administrative guidelines, and once it does, city leaders would have to set boundaries and other rulesthat would be subject to the liquor commission’s approval.
Other states, including Michigan and North Carolina, have taken up social districts in recent years with mixed popularity. The biggest determinants of social districts’ success are the rules governing where they go and the requirements that exist for participating businesses, among other regulations.
The upcoming hearings, and the ballot question itself, wouldn’t address those details. For now, the simple question at hand is whether Concord even wants to create the opportunity for social districts.
Concord residents will be among the first to address that question statewide.
The law permitting social disctricts goes into effect on Sept. 5. The city council will meet for a public hearing on a potential social districts ballot question on Sept. 8.
