The Dalton Police Department has seen an uptick in the number of calls related to the city’s bars, said City Administrator Andrew Parker.
“It’s usually after midnight,” Parker told members of the Dalton City Council on Thursday during a meeting of the city Finance Committee. The Finance Committee is composed of members of the City Council.
Parker told the council members the agenda for Monday’s council meeting will include a first reading of a revision to the city’s alcoholic beverage ordinance. The council meets at 6 p.m. in City Hall. The meeting is open to the public and will be livestreamed on the city’s YouTube channel.
“Right now, our alcohol ordinance allows patrons to be served alcohol until 3 a.m., which seems to be well in excess of our peers,” he said. “The proposal is to allow alcohol to be served until midnight and then the bars must be closed by 1 a.m.”
Parker said the proposed change contains an exemption for New Year’s Eve that would allow bars to serve patrons until 1 a.m. Council members indicated they did not want that, and Parker and City Attorney Terry Miller said they will remove that exemption.
“We believe people have been coming here from Chattanooga and Rome and other places after their bars close and causing problems,” Parker said. “They’ve all been from out of town. I don’t think there has been one local person.”
“A lot of it is nuisance stuff,” he said. “People tossing away beer bottles or urinating in public. But we’ve certainly had serious offenses, aggravated assault, sexual battery, homicide, DUIs.”
The council members are also expected to name the city’s representatives to a citizens advisory committee that will help determine projects to be funded by a proposed Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST). The proposed representatives are businessmen Zab Mendez and Jim Waskin and former City Council member Denise Wood.
The committee members are supposed to be finalized by the end of this month, and the committee will begin meeting in August.
Members of the Whitfield County Board of Commissioners have said they want to place a SPLOST referendum on the ballot in 2024. A SPLOST is a 1% sales tax on most goods sold in the county that can pay for capital projects.
A SPLOST approved by voters in 2020 expires at the end of October 2024. It has funded among other projects the creation of Riverbend Park and Rocky Face Ridge Park, Whitfield County Fire Station 12, two soccer fields at Heritage Point Park, renovation of Dalton’s John Davis Recreation Center and road paving across the county and the city of Dalton.
The council members will also vote on whether to accept the resignation of Annalee Sams from the Ward 2 seat. Sams has said she is running for mayor in the November election. The council members are also expected to vote to call for a special election for the unexpired term for that seat, to be held the same day as the regular municipal election, Nov. 7.
The council members are also expected to vote on whether to reappoint Octavio Perez to a four-year term on the Dalton-Whitfield-Varnell Planning Commission.
They will also consider a request by Benjamin Cordova and Mary Mendoza to rezone from transitional residential to high-density residential .59 acres at 1905 Abutment Road to develop two duplexes.
