Commissioners Ralph Smith Jr. and Jo Strickland listen to the board discuss the town’s currently defunct ABC board during a meeting last week.
Alyssa Bergey | Sampson Independent
GARLAND — While golf carts were the hot topic during last week’s Garland Board of Commissioners meeting, the idea of reinstating an ABC Board was also discussed.
Garland’s only ABC store closed in August of 2016 due to financial issues. An audit revealed that revenues were up about 10 percent from the previous year, but the store was not being managed correctly, and that led to its eventual closure.
Since there was no store, the ABC Board was later dissolved too.
But in June, it was revealed that Garland’s Code of Ordinances had not been updated since 2005, meaning that there was still an ordinance on the books pertaining to board.
Mayor Austin Brown said in June they did not have an ABC Board, and the state has a moratorium on ABC Boards that would make it harder for them to reinstate a board and open up an ABC store again.
“We actually looked into that a couple years ago,” Brown said during last week’s meeting. “We would have to put a plan together. You’d have to adopt the board back; you would have to put a business plan together and show the state that it would be profitable. And you would also have to pay back state-owed money from the shutdown. You’ve got the charges dismissed, but you did not get the state fines.”
Still, Commissioner Ralph Smith Jr. brought up keeping the ordinance for the ABC Board in place just in case they wanted to bring it back in the future. He asked the town’s consultant, Kimberly Moffett, from Mid Carolina Regional Council if keeping the ordinance meant they could re-enact it.
She told Smith that the board would still have to go through the state process to bring it back.
“What you can do, is, you can leave a part in your ordinance and put a placeholder in there for an ABC Board. We can come up with some language if that’s what you want … to say to be in compliance with whatever the state approves at that time,” she told the board. “But if you remove it now, you remove it completely from the ordinance. So, you have the option to either remove it completely or put a placeholder in there.”
Smith said he was concerned about cutting it out completely and never being able to get it back. He pointed out places like Wake County and Mecklenburg County only having one board for the entire county, and also mentioned that Robinson County has six in the whole county. He told the board he feared smaller towns didn’t have an ABC board any more.
“But these little towns want one,” Smith said. “Like Newton Grove got their own board, Roseboro got their own board, rather than Sampson County having one whole board.”
He said he can see what the state is trying to do with minimizing the boards, but that Garland hasn’t been able to open an ABC store again because other towns aren’t willing to build their stores in Garland.
He said he went to Roseboro and tried to get them to build in Garland, and how the board asked why — stating they already had Garland’s business and they didn’t want to share the money.
“We have enough White Lake traffic, and I think if we actually had an ABC store it would be beneficial to the town,” Smith said. “And I don’t want to shut the door on us ever having one.”
Moffett said since the ordinance has been on the books since 2005, and the years following the end of the ABC board, it wouldn’t hurt to keep it on the books until the town board figured out what they wanted to do.
It was agreed by the commissioners to keep a place holder ordinance for the ABC Board until it was figured out.
Other ordinance changes made during the meeting include formally changing late fees and when to pay utility bills if the 10th of the month falls on a weekend.
The board decided to allow residents until 5 p.m. the next business day to pay their utility bills.
Ordinance 2024-06-01 was approved to be updated to show the correct figures. The ordinance covers the town employees’ pay schedule, but when it was approved in Junem the second page was incorrect. The approval of the update will correct the second page.
The board also approved updating the town’s Code of Ordinances to display the correct meeting date for the Board of Commissioners as the first Tuesday of every month instead of the second, removing the section regarding purchasing agents since Garland does not use it, changing Progress Energy to Duke Energy in Chapter 51, and updating Chapter 92 to show the correct ordinance for abandoned vehicles.
The last update needed for the town’s Code of Ordinances is finding the updated version of the Animal Control ordinance the board adopted.
You can reach Alyssa Bergey at 910-249-4617. Follow us on Twitter at @SamsponInd, like us on Facebook, and check out our Instagram at @thesampsonindependent.