Serving liquor in Summerville restaurants is being considered by city officials. In fact, if it wasn’t for Mayor Harry Harvey, it would have been voted on Monday night.

After some discussion about how to legalize “liquor by the drink,” Councilman David Ford made a motion to put the issue on the ballot for voters to decide. The mayor quickly derailed him and stopped any second on the motion.

“We could go ahead and vote tonight to go ahead and start it [voting process],” Councilman Ford asked.

“You could do that tonight. That would start the procedure to ask the [city] election superintendent to comply with the Georgia Election Code and call an election at the next available time, which I think is March,” Summerville Attorney Albert Palmour said.

“I would like to make the motion,” Ford said.

The next thing that was supposed to happen is for the mayor to call for someone to support Ford’s motion.

“We really, I think, need to kind of study this and talk about this a little bit more. We can if you like to. But we need to look at this, study this a little bit more and kind of see where we are going and where we are as far as this is concerned. I don’t think we are quite ready to call for a referendum or anything like that,” Mayor Harvey said.

There are two ways of getting the liquor by the drink question on the ballot. First. The council can vote to put it on the ballot. Second. Registered voters can sign a petition asking for liquor by the drink, according to Atty. Palmour.

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