Billerica Board of Health Spares Two Tobacco Shops From License Suspensions

BILLERICA -- April 7, 2025, Billerica Board of Health imposed but declined to enforce one-day tobacco license suspensions on two shops following second violations. The board voted 4-0 to suspend the suspension for Bell Smoke Shop at 852 Boston Road, whose owner Garvin Bachir had already paid a $2,000 state fine and installed a mandatory ID scanner on his point-of-sale system. In a separate 3-1 vote, the board applied the same suspended-suspension approach to Jim's Quick Stop at 502 Boston Road, where co-owner Isaac Koch acknowledged an employee had overridden an existing age-verification prompt; Koch said the store had been in contact with a company called Boston North for six weeks to install a more secure scan-required system. Tobacco compliance officer Ron Villarde told the board the regional failure rate on compliance checks runs around nine percent and said the $2,000 mandatory state fine "is a stiff bump," leaving suspension discretion to local boards. The board also unanimously approved conservation regulation waivers for a DPW water main replacement in the Pinehurst area and the town's 2025 annual paving program, and agreed on a timeline to adopt updated floodplain regulations before a July 8 FEMA deadline, or risk the town losing all flood insurance.