It’s been three months since the Sangamon County Board eliminated 3 a.m. liquor licenses – and only two out of the four bars affected remain open.

The board voted 21-5 in April to eliminate all 3 a.m. liquor licenses for unincorporated areas outside Springfield. When the bars renewed their licenses in June, only licenses allowing alcohol sales until 1 a.m. were available.

Two of the bars remain open: Mama Lee’s Sandbar, 6111 Mechanicsburg Road, and Parkway Pub, 309 N. Dirksen Parkway. Two others closed: Third Base Sports Bar, 410 W. Maple Ave. S., and The Cove, 1616 N. Dirksen.

A bartender at The Cove said the owners are angry about the decision.

“Let’s put it this way – the owners are so upset they sold the bar,” said the bartender, who didn’t want her name published.

The Cove, which has tentative plans to reopen as a liquor store, had been operating as a 3 a.m. bar for six years. The employee said the owners had been able to afford staff during slow, daytime business hours because of how much they made between 1-3 a.m. Now, that income is gone.

Cathy Scaife, chair of the county board’s liquor committee, said that the decision was deliberated for a while, and it was not something they rushed.

“Our policy has always been that a 3 o’clock [license] is a privilege, not a given. Everyone knows that,” she said.

Scaife said the liquor committee had seen a steady increase in incident reports from police, including shootings and violence directed at responding officers. This has become a growing concern for the committee members.

“Everybody says we’re trying to shut down business – we’re not trying to shut down business. We’re trying to make it safe,” Scaife said.

Tom Madonia Jr., the county board’s vice chair, called the decision “a huge mistake.” He said the incident reports from police were minimal, and that only one of those four bars was an issue – Third Base Sports Bar. Madonia said the trouble wasn’t even from inside the bar. It was from people who were partying in their cars in the parking lot.

“And it’s not just the bar owners it’s affecting. It’s the people that work late nights and late shifts. When you get off at the hospital at 1 o’clock, you might want to have a drink afterwards if you had a bad shift. And now we’re taking that away from those people,” he said.

Both Madonia and Scaife said Mama Lee’s Sandbar is known to close early if the bar has no customers, and that the owner was already considering making the change to a 1 a.m. license.

However, Madonia said that other bar owners weren’t contacted about this decision before it was made. Scaife said that they were, just not directly.

Representatives of Mama Lee’s Sandbar, Third Base Sports Bar, and the Cove declined to comment.

Following the county’s vote in the spring, the Springfield City Council this summer also considered eliminating 3 a.m. liquor licenses and making all bars stop serving alcohol at 1 a.m. Instead, a compromise was approved, allowing all bars in the city to stay open until 2 a.m. That new rule for city bars won’t go into effect until January when businesses renew their liquor licenses.