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T’ville drys gain apparent ground on distance rule The dry forces in Thomasville have apparently won one small battle in the war on proposed alcohol sales. Mayor Sheldon Day said Monday night that wording in the proposed alcohol control ordinance has increased the distance that a business selling alcohol has to be from a church or school from 200 feet to 300 feet. Although no action was taken on the ordinance Monday, a large group of anti-alcohol citizens attended the council meeting and heard Rev. Robert Kirkland of the Thomasville Baptist Church tell of the problems he knew personally from alcohol. He said both his father and grandfather were alcoholics. He said Alcohol Control Board (ABC) agents should have input on the ordinance since they regulate alcohol sales. He said citizens needed to have input from mental health professionals about the addictiveness of alcohol. He said numerous public hearings should be held on the proposal. “Informed voters are better able to vote intelligently,” he explained. He asked for a detail schedule of how an alcohol referendum would come about and when. Lastly, he asked that the distance that a business has to be from a church or school be increased from 200 feet to 300 feet “to help preserve the Thomasville downtown historic district.” Thomasville Baptist Church is located in the downtown area and some of its members fear alcohol sales will be too close to the church. Kirkland said he and others were “passionate” in their opposition to alcohol but they were also “compassionate” in that “we don’t hate alcoholics.” He concluded, to applause from the anti-alcohol audience, “Good, solid, progressive communities don’t build from revenues from alcohol sales. They build it from good people.” Day explained the timetable. The council will not meet again this month due to the Christmas holidays and the earliest a hearing on the proposed ordinance could be held would be sometime in January. He suggested that more than one hearing could be held. “There is no set time frame [for an election] but because of the sensational nature it behooves us to move forward and have an election so it can be put behind us,” Day said. He said a petition requesting a referendum must contain 237 signatures and addresses of Thomasville registered voters. “A petition may be coming within the week,” he said. The council must, by law, give a minimum of 60 days notice for an election. With the passage of an alcohol ordinance not coming until the end of January, it could be the end of March, April or even May before a referendum is held, he said. Day said that the city needs to be sure that a good ordinance is in place. It needs to be restrictive but one too restrictive or too limited could be challenged in court “and they would throw out the whole ordinance.” Someone in the back of the meeting room spoke out, “That would be good” but Day explained that it wouldn’t be good, that there must be an ordinance to govern alcohol if it is voted in. Day mentioned that professionals from the LIFE Tech Transition Center could be enlisted to share information on alcohol addiction. He said many of the prison parolees there have addiction problems of some type or other. Rev. Kirkland latched on to that to point out that “Eighty percent of people incarcerated in Alabama have an addiction problem” and said that should say something about the severity of the problem. Rob Moore of Citizens Against Alcohol Sales (CAAS), the group formed to fight the referendum, asked about the language in the draft of the control ordinance. He said he was happy to learn that the distance for alcohol sales had been increased from 200 feet to 300 feet but he thought 500 feet would be better. Day said the ordinance’s wording was changed to reflect that of Monroeville’s, which voted in alcohol sales last year. Moore pushed for the distance to be from church property lines but Day said most definitions start at physical structures and not property lines. Day did note that alcohol sales are limited by the new zoning ordinance to B1 and B2 districts, which are pretty much along Highway 43, some parts of Highway 5 and some areas of the downtown historic district. Richard Martindale, a retired minister, announced his opposition to alcohol and said the control ordinance is important if it is voted in. “Jackson thought they were ready for it and they weren’t,” he said in criticism of the control ordinance enacted there. Jackson voted in alcohol sales last year also. He did not elaborate on what he thought was wrong with Jackson’s law. Day had said that copies of the proposed ordinance would be available to citizens and could also be e-mailed to those who wanted it. Martindale said another way to publicize it would be to post it on local websites. The Alabama Southern Community College employee said, “It couldn’t be Alabama Southern’s, we aren’t exactly against it, officially.”
The final question relating to the issue was what would a referendum cost. City Clerk Debbie Ballard said about $6,000.
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