Dry Counties Fall like Dominoes

It’s kind of like dominoes. You line them up in such a way that one will just barely touch the next one when it falls. The second one will lose its balance and fall, just barely touching the third one, and so on until every domino has fallen.

Once the other states started allowing sales of alcohol, it was only a matter of time until Kentucky followed suit. And when the state voted to allow the sale of alcohol on Sundays in restaurants and in retail package stores, then each county either had to have their own negative ordinance, or go along with the flow.

The Coalition for a Progressive Greenup County is planning a petition drive to gather support for a local option election to allow the sale of alcohol in retail package stores, by the drink, and on Sunday in restaurants only. The Coalition is made up of local business owners and community members who believe that these sales will bring more business into the county, since they believe that people are already drinking, but are just making their purchases over the state line.

Registered voters are going to receive information in the mail so that they can read it for themselves and know what is going on. A Coalition spokesman, Steve Miller, said, “This will allow all registered voters of Greenup County the opportunity to review, understand and sign the petition for a future local option election.”

It’s a very democratic thing to do: let the folks who live in Greenup County decide whether they want alcohol sales there or not. The petition itself has already been reviewed by the Kentucky Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control and as of October 25, 2011, it had been sent to Greenup County Court Clerk Patricia Hieneman and Judge-Executive Bobby Carpenter for notification of circulation.

Miller said that if this is approved, “the Sunday sales provision could be an important economic development tool for Greenup County.” He already knew of at least one restaurant that was interested in opening up business in his town.

Another domino about to fall.