City Council Discusses Limiting Liquor Stores

The Hohenwald City Council held their regularly scheduled meeting, Tuesday, June 6th in the Fire Hall.

After the pledge and prayer, the floor opened to citizen input, a time when any citizen present may speak on the floor for up to three minutes on any issue. A representative from Tennessee College of Applied Technology thanked those who were at the Planning Commission the night before as TCAT shared their comments and concerns regarding the sale of the west side property to Dollar General. He reiterated their desire to have the option to purchase the land, should the Dollar General sale fall through.

Mayor Danny McKnight invited City Attorney Tim Potter to address and inform the council and attendees on upcoming changes being made to law and procedure.

The General Assembly’s changes to law include:

* Beginning July 1st, all municipalities must post their agendas on their public website, not less than 48 hours prior to meetings. Amendments are still an option to be made with this new law.

* Also, municipalities must allow citizens to speak as to every item on the agenda. The City of Hohenwald currently allows citizen input already. The new law specifies, “on the agenda,” and the City Council will determine whether they require input to stay within the agenda.

The ordinance adopting these rules is planned to be in place by July 1st.

After last month’s meeting minutes were approved by all, as well as the report of the Police Department, Fire Department, Building Inspector and Community Developer, the meeting moved to old business.

OLD BUSINESS included the third and final reading of the 2023-2024 Budget which was approved.

The second and final reading was approved by all to rezone the properties of 813-829 West Main Street from Residential to Commercial. This includes TCAT as well as the 2 acre lot of property to the west. Mr. Turner, the developer for the proposed DG project, was in attendance to answer any questions regarding the rezoning.

The second and final reading was approved by all to rezone the property on the corner of West Main Street and South Walnut from Residential R2 to Commercial C3.

NEW BUSINESS

All approved to amend the Energy Code. Codes Inspector Brad Rasbury confirmed the amendments are those of which the State of Tennessee has currently adopted.

The final piece of new business included police policy. City of Hohenwald Chief of Police Kevin Carroll was in attendance to address the issue. “Several months ago,” Chief Carroll informed, “the public defendant’s office requested we present them a policy on body cameras. After reviewing our policy, I realized they were outdated. We updated ours and fashioned them after the TACP, attorney-approved policy. This has inspired us to review all of our current policies to ensure they are the best, most up-to-date versions.” The council approved the changes, and the meeting moved to DISCUSSIONS:

Mayor McKnight suspended the laws of order so as to hold the discussion.

The floor opened, and Vice Mayor Don Barber began, “Every community around us has a maximum number of liquor licenses per population with the ability to amend that as populations change. We currently have two licenses for about a 12,000 population being used with no policies in place. Perry, Hickman, Maury and Lawrence counties all have these policies in place. We do not.” Councilman Kevin King reminded, “This was brought up and dismissed several months ago, but it does need to be revisited.”

Mayor McKnight asked Mr. Potter if he had dealt with this issue with any of the other counties he works with. He had not, due to the neighboring communities implementing the number of licenses they were to allow at the time their communities passed liquor by the drink. Mr. Barber reminded, “When we first passed liquor by the drink, we could not decide on the number of licenses to allow. Therefore, nothing was passed. That’s why we do not have restrictions now, but they are needed.” Before the discussion ended, Mr. Bass asked the room, “Let me ask, does anyone in this room give an ounce of thought to how many liquor stores we have in Hohenwald. Kevin and Don are the only two I’ve ever heard talk about this. The whole time I was out campaigning, I never heard anyone say, “I wish I had my street paved, but I’m more concerned with how many liquor stores we have in Hohenwald.” I don’t know why it’s such a big discussion.”

Mr. Barber responded, “A liquor store is a different retail operation from a conventional retail enterprise. A liquor store is highly regulated by the state, and they leave it to the communities to determine how many they want in their community. I think we can safely say, Hohenwald doesn’t want five liquor stores within city limits. From an insurance perspective, we certainly do not.” Scottie responded, “I just don’t want business owners coming up to me asking why we are limiting businesses in town and worrying about how that will affect their own business.” To which Mr. King responded, “While we are talking about businesses being affected, the owner of one of the two liquor stores we currently have owns a building on Main Street that previously housed a successful clothing retail business. The owner asked the business move out, so he could move his liquor store in there. So, now we have lost a successful economic development to be replaced by a liquor store. And, there’s nothing wrong with having that liquor store, but we don’t want to see this trend of moving out businesses that help our community flourish.” Mr. Bass replied, “Well, that’s just a business decision. To me, this whole thing comes across like you are concerned about liquor store’s competition, but not anybody else’s. At least, that’s how I believe the general public will perceive it. And, the “it’s highly regulated” argument is not going to matter to them.”

Mayor McKnight ended the meeting with announcing the, “ROCK THE LOT” community day being held July 1st in the City Parking Lot. (See flyer inserted in this edition for more.)

*CORRECTION*

A correction needs to be made regarding last week’s article on the planning commission meeting. It was said the owners of the 2 acre lot posted the land up for sale, and Dollar General approached them to buy it. The land WAS NOT for sale when Dollar General approached the owners to buy it. Once approached, the owners saw the sale to be a potential for positive economic growth for this community, and decided to sell the property to the interested party.