The City of Clarkesville and the Town of Alto will both meet this week to discuss alcohol sales within their municipalities during their regular council meetings.
Both muncipialities’ voters approved the sale of distilled spirits within city limits during the Nov. 2021 municipal election, and while they both had the ability to start selling on Jan. 1 with an ordinance in place, neither council had one completed for the first of the year.
The City of Clarkesville will meet Monday, Feb. 7 at 6 p.m. to discuss, among other agenda items, their package sales of distilled spirits ordinance.
In December, the city was in no rush to vote on their alcohol ordinance.
“I think we should take our time with this,” the late councilman Steven Ward said at the December meeting. “We need to look at a map and make sure [we agree with] where Keith [Dickerson, city manager] has outlined and maybe just go out and drive to see where these locations would be.”
The council, since then, has been in the process of discussing specifics of the ordinance, such as how many stores will be allowed within city limits, store inventory minimums, where liquor stores can be located, licensing fees and other specifics that will designate how liquor stores would populate the city.
The council seemed to be in consensus that they are not interested in allowing liquor stores in the historic downtown area.
Proposed Alto alcohol ordinance
The Town of Alto will meet Tuesday, Feb. 8 at 7 p.m. to discuss their alcohol sales ordinance.
According to the proposed ordinance, the Town of Alto will only allow liquor stores to open in the town’s highway business district and must have an alcoholic beverage sales license to open. All alcoholic beverage sales licenses in Alto are $1,300, with an additional $150.00 fine to make amendments to the license. Business owners will be required to renew their licenses annually.
The town will not allow Sunday alcohol sales, nor sales after midnight Monday through Saturday. It would also be illegal to sell alcohol on Christmas or during the hours of elections.
Drive-through and service windows at Alto liquor stores would not be allowed.
You can read the full proposed ordinance here.
