Fort Oglethorpe weighs future of its ABC Board

‘Somewhere down the road, we probably need to look at either making some reappointments to our board, or our charter also allows us to do this without a board. We only really have this when a new business opens up and this is the first time in almost two years that they have.’

Fort Oglethorpe’s City Council recently had to approve two applications from businesses to sell malt liquor beverages due to the inability of the city’s ABC board to get a quorum together.

During the Sept. 10 City Council meeting, Mayor Earl Gray said the ABC (Alcoholic Beverage Commission) board hasn’t had a quorum present to approve pending applications.

“Our ABC board has been having difficulty getting a quorum to meet,” Gray said. “Our city charter allows us to approve and make the decision for that in the event that we cannot get a quorum for the ABC board. We can in fact approve the applications for malt liquor beverages.”

The council had two applications to consider during the meeting.

The first was from KDAT Food Stores Inc., which will doing business as Food City number 214 located at 150 U.S. 41. The second application was for Publix Supermarket Inc., which is expected to open at 3775 Battlefield Parkway in the coming weeks.

“This is just a procedure to move forward so that they can get in the process,” Gray said. “It takes three or four weeks to get these things processed, and then the police chief has to approve everything.”

Earl Gray Fort Oglethorpe mayor

Gray also presented idea to the council that it could look to re-evaluate the ABC board moving forward.

“Somewhere down the road, we probably need to look at either making some reappointments to our board, or our charter also allows us to do this without a board,” Gray said. “We only really have this when a new business opens up and this is the first time in almost two years that they have.”

Gray said that since the charter allows the Fort Oglethorpe City Council to handle the process, it’ll be up to the council if they want to keep the ABC board or not in the future.