CullmanTimes.com - Cullman, Alabama

Top News

Discussion

February 20, 2011

Alcohol petition under way in county

By Benjamin Bullard The Cullman Times

CULLMAN — Wet, dry, moist.

Until Cullman voters last November elected to allow the sale of alcoholic beverages within the city’s limits, Cullman was considered, under legislative terminology, a dry county. Some may argue over the country club exemption — which for years had allowed a share of state-collected alcohol tax monies to be apportioned locally — but for the purposes of non-exclusive public consumption, the county was dry.

Now, with at least one municipality providing for the legal sale of liquor, the county falls under a gray area — Cullman’s a “moist” county. That means there is a municipal zone inside the county that allows alcohol sales, while the unincorporated remainder of the county continues to forbid them.

Some advocates for loosening regulations on legal sales consider the city’s having gone wet to be the first block to fall in a possible domino effect, and have begun a petition to put a wet/dry referendum before all the county’s residents.

“I’ve talked even to some of the more religious people who’d probably otherwise oppose it, and what I’ve heard a lot of is that they say, ‘Since the City of Cullman already went wet, we might as well see the benefit in the county too,’’ offers Bremen-area resident Dale Lamar.

“You hear rumors and these things that hang around — talk that the county may have to close a school; that there’s not enough money to run everything. I was born and raised here; I graduated from Cullman and my wife went to Cold Springs. We’re from here, lifelong, and this is just something I had the time to do. It’s not even ‘for’ or ‘against’ wet or dry; it’s a petition to see if people in the county want the chance to vote on it.”

For the past week and a half, Lamar has begun circulating petitions at a number of convenience stores in the county’s southwest corner — and effort pledges to soon expand to the rest of the county — to collect signatures from eligible voters in support of a possible wet/dry referendum that, if passed, would legalize alcohol sales in all of unincorporated Cullman County.

“I’d started it out just to get a feel, at first, for what kind of response people would have to doing it,” said Lamar Friday. “And oh, Lord — everybody has jumped on it.”

Lamar said he’s set out petition sheets at five convenience stores so far, and intends to have as many as 15 more at other locations across Cullman County, if the ownership at other stores is receptive to his request.

* Read the complete story in the Sunday, Feb. 20, 2011, edition of The Cullman Times.

* Benjamin Bullard can be reached by e-mail at bbullard@cullmantimes.com or by telephone at 734-2131 ext. 270.

Text Only
Top News