Barroom politics

Former Mayor Chip Clancy took major heat from the city’s bar owners and many others in that sphere when he turned back the clock on the bar rooms and set closing time at 1:00 a.m.

Now there is talk making the rounds in city circles that Mayor Judith Flanagan-Kennedy may be considering a turn back of the clock, an improbable return to yesterday for the city’s bar owners.

Such an attempt to undo so correct an adjustment is not fitting of the mayor and her self-professed devotion to proactive municipal rule. Returning to yesterday, reopening Lynn’s bars between 1:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m., would constitute a major error in judgment for the mayor in her first term when impressions are made.

Why? Ask Police Chief Kevin Coppinger.

Unless the police chief bows to political pressure and comes up with a new matrix claiming that longer bar hours turn into a better, safer Lynn, he is duty bound to express just the opposite – that this is a bad idea.

In fact, it is a bad idea. They don’t get much worse in a city where alcohol and drugs have ruined hundreds of lives, including the lives of those who don’t use drugs or alcohol but who were the unintended victims of those who do.

If Lynn residents want to drink between the hours of 1:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m., they can do so inside their own apartments or homes. In fact, they can drink all night inside their own apartments and homes without endangering anyone but their own families – which, frankly, is another issue.

The harsh reality of the added drinking hour is that those who’ve been drinking use that hour to become totally sloshed instead of just being half-sloshed. Then they leave, get into their automobiles, and many of them become a self-propelled artillery shell or like an artillery shell shot from a big gun, with the automobile becoming an instrument of mayhem and possible death.

The other harsh reality is that if Lynn goes back to the 2:00 a.m. closing, then those seeking an hour’s worth of drinks from out of town will descend upon our city because they can’t drink in their own cities and towns.

Downtown Lynn is dead as a doornail.

Most of the civilized city is quiet after 1:00 a.m.

The truly civilized and family people this city needs to endure are not out drinking in bars after 1:00 a.m. They’re at home, where they ought to be.

If the mayor doesn’t understand that, then this city is heading for trouble. And if she were to work a miracle and get the hour restored and a drinker in his car runs down an innocent at 2:00 a.m., the blood of the innocent dead person will be on her hands.

I know the mayor. She’s a lawyer and a good mother. I know she doesn’t want that.

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