Adding alcohol to public events certainly is in line with major cities. It’s unfortunate that crowd size and participation has dwindled at city events recently. These events don’t really have any advertising to boost participation, although it is budgeted.
A vast majority of vendors at the 4th of July Celebration are and always have been local churches. Now, apparently we’re planning on throwing alcohol in the mix. That’ll be like finishing up at the church, and walking to the bar. Although there may be a cool down period, you know to run off the church folk, in between.
Considering a large volume of calls either originate to or from our local bars, I think it’s a bad idea for the city to facilitate open drunkenness. On the other hand, there’s already so much drinking, that’s supposed to be prohibited at special events, I can see the city saying “hey just let’s cash in on this.”
I encourage residents of Soddy Daisy to contact all city commissioners and express how they feel about serving alcohol in the same place churches are vendors. Two of them are about to be up for re-election. It would be nice if they would bring the city website “up to date” by adding email links to the list of commissioners. But, that’s a conversation for another day.
James Berry
Soddy Daisy