County again rejects earlier last call for Saratoga bars

A Saratoga County committee has again refused to move last call earlier, leaving bars in Saratoga Springs and across the county free to serve until 4 a.m. The county Board of Supervisors’ Public Safety Committee voted down a request on Tuesday, September 1, 2026, to even hold a public hearing on a 3 a.m. cutoff, The Daily Gazette reported.

The proposal came from the two supervisors who represent the City of Saratoga Springs on the county board, Sarah Burger and Minita Sanghvi. It was the second time in about 18 months the county has turned the idea away. Because the committee rejected it, the measure will not go to the full Board of Supervisors, according to WNYT.

What happened on September 1

The vote was lopsided. Here are the basics, drawn from coverage by The Daily Gazette, WNYT and CBS6.

• The Public Safety Committee has seven supervisors. The two from Saratoga Springs cast the only votes in favor of holding a hearing on an earlier last call.
• The other members are Scott Ostrander, John Antoski, Eric Butler, Jesse Fish and Willard Peck, according to The Daily Gazette.
• The measure needed four votes to move forward. A speaker at the meeting said the committee did not have them, and the motion was denied, CBS6 reported.
• The proposal would have moved last call from 4 a.m. to 3 a.m. Under that change, bars would have had until about 3:30 a.m. to clear patrons, since last call and closing time are not the same thing.

Why the city keeps asking

Saratoga Springs cannot change the hours on its own. State law allows on-premises alcohol sales until 4 a.m., and only the county can call a hearing and ask the State Liquor Authority to set earlier hours. Sanghvi told the committee the city has tried for years to act locally, but legal advice keeps sending it back to the county, CBS6 reported.

City officials frame the issue as public safety. Burger told the committee the city’s police are stretched thin because Saratoga Springs is the fifth-largest city in the state by area, according to The Daily Gazette. She also argued that the problem does not stay inside city limits. Many of the people arrested in the early morning hours are not city residents, she told WNYT.

Commissioner of Public Safety Tim Coll told the committee that the law enforcement community supports the change. In earlier rounds, Coll said an earlier last call could reduce early-morning fights and police overtime.

What the bars say

Bar owners and staff have pushed back each time the idea has come up. Alex Straus, owner of The Night Owl, told CBS6 that changing the hours would hurt the county’s tourism draw, since Saratoga bars stay open considerably later than bars elsewhere. A bartender at The Bourbon Room told the station that 4 a.m. brings in business and that he saw no safety concerns with the current hour.

Another speaker at the meeting said the late-night trouble is a city issue, not a county one, according to CBS6. That argument has carried the day with supervisors from outside Saratoga Springs, where many bars already close well before 4 a.m.

How the debate got here

The push for earlier hours in Saratoga Springs goes back more than a decade, but it picked up after gunfire on Broadway in November 2022. City police shot an off-duty Vermont sheriff’s deputy after he and a man from Utica exchanged gunfire downtown, The Daily Gazette reported at the time. Both men survived. Later stabbings and fights kept the issue alive.

The key steps since then:

1. In late 2022, then-Mayor Ron Kim proposed moving last call two hours earlier. It went nowhere at the county.
2. In February 2025, the city council backed a resolution asking the county to act. The proposal called for a 2 a.m. last call from November through April and 3 a.m. from May through October, with an exception for New Year’s Eve, according to CBS6 and WAMC.
3. In April 2025, the county held a public hearing and then rejected that plan, according to WNYT.
4. On September 1, 2026, the county Public Safety Committee declined to hold a hearing on the simpler 3 a.m. proposal.

Even the 2025 plan would not have been final. Any county change still needs approval from the State Liquor Authority.

What it means downtown

For now, nothing changes on Caroline Street and Broadway. Bars that want to stay open until 4 a.m. can keep doing so, and bars that already close earlier will keep doing that. When The Daily Gazette checked in 2022, many downtown bars already closed around 2 a.m. by choice.

For residents who live above or near the bar blocks, the late hours remain a quality-of-life issue. For the police department, the 4 a.m. closing means overnight officers continue to handle the rush when bars empty.

What happens next

Burger and Sanghvi said they will keep pressing the issue at the county level and keep looking for a way to address bar hours locally, according to The Daily Gazette and CBS6. Sanghvi called the committee’s decision disappointing and short-sighted.

Here is where things stand:

• Bars in Saratoga County can still serve until 4 a.m. under state law.
• The proposal is dead for now, since it did not clear committee and will not reach the full board.
• Any future change would need a county hearing, a county vote and approval from the State Liquor Authority.
• The city has no authority to set earlier hours on its own, according to the legal advice city officials describe.

We will follow the issue if it returns to the county agenda. Have a tip on this story? Contact our newsroom.