Legal alcohol in old Saints’ Roost is the goal of a group of citizens who intend to launch a petition drive calling for an election to allow the sale of all alcoholic beverages in Donley County.
Voters would decide the issue during the general election on November 5, 2013, if enough signatures can be gathered in the allotted time. The drive includes the sale of alcoholic beverages and mixed beverages.
Jack Craft is among a group of ten people publishing notice in this week’s Clarendon Enterprise of their intent to file a petition with County Clerk Fay Vargas calling for a local option election to legalize alcohol sales in Donley County.
“My whole intention is to increase the tax base of Clarendon and Donley County and to increase the sponsors we can get for the museum and the rodeo,” Craft said. “By bringing in more outside sponsors, we can give our local merchants some relief and bring more outside money into town.”
Under state guidelines, organizers wishing to call an election must publish a notice of their intent and then file an application with the county clerk with ten or more signatures of registered voters and proof of published notice. The clerk will then provide the blank petition pages to the petitioners, and the Secretary of State and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission must be notified that petitions have been issued.
The petition must be signed by 35 percent of the number of county voters who voted in the last gubernatorial election. Vargas said 1,180 people voted in that election in 2010, which would put the threshold for the petition at 413 signatures.
Organizers are trying to meet a July 8 deadline for submitting the petition to the clerk’s office so that county commissioners can act on the petition at their regular session on August 12. Vargas said the final petition would have to sit in her office for 30 days before county commissioners can receive it and order the election no more than 71 days before the election date.
Old Clarendon was established in 1878 as a temperance colony, and early settlers’ strict prohibition of alcohol earned the town the nickname “Saints’ Roost.” But when the town moved to the railroad in 1887, there was no prohibition, and New Clarendon remained wet until county voters approved the local option to prohibit alcohol in 1902. Currently, alcohol sales are only legal in the City of Howardwick.
In 2011, a petition to hold a local option election in the City of Hedley was found to be valid with 82 signatures, but petition backers did not get it filed soon enough to be on the ballot that fall.
Currently, petitioners are also busy in Hemphill County where organizers are seeking to legalize the sale of alcohol and mixed beverages in the City of Canadian. Alcohol sales began this month in Perryton after Ochiltree County voters approved legalizing package sales in May. Voters in Armstrong County also approved package sales last month. Silverton, Childress, and Shamrock have all also been voted wet in the last few years.
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