The recent move to legalize alcohol sales in the City of Leitchfield met its first organized opposition on Tuesday night, November 10, when a group calling themselves Citizens Against Alcohol met at a local church.

Forty-three residents of the county and city were in attendance at the initial meeting of CAA, with Chester Shartzer leading the meeting.

Although the meeting was opened with prayer inside the church building, Shartzer emphasized the reason for the meeting was strictly moral and not religious.

“We are here tonight not for a political meeting or for religious reasons,” said Shartzer. “This is a moral meeting in opposition to the recent move to bring alcohol to our city.”

Shartzer stated he had been to local authorities and spoke to members of the election board to find out what they could do to prevent or stop the movement to allow the sale of alcohol in the city limits.

A petition is currently being passed to acquire enough signatures that will allow an election giving city resident a chance to vote on the controversial topic.

The petition will allow the city to be moist and will allow restaurants that sell food and seat a certain number of people to sell alcohol by the drink.

“There is nothing we can do to prevent this from coming to a vote,” said Shartzer. “But we can oppose this thing and we will fight. It is apparent they are already out there working hard to make this thing happen.”

The day following the meeting and after speaking with Utilizes Superintendent Kevin Pharis, Shartzer labeled as rumors two items brought up at the meeting

The first rumor Shartzer stated a city worker, who was reading water meters approached a resident trying to get support for the legalization of alcohol.

Someone in the crowd mentioned a city police officer was driving a police cruiser with a copy of the petition in the car while he was on duty and asked if it was legal to do that. Shartzer said he would do some research on the subject.

Leitchfield Mayor William H Thomason said, “the city employees were given a handout to reinforce the personnel policies that no one is to campaign or voice an opinion on political issues while on city time or in uniform. It is all in the personnel policy.”

Shartzer added, “No petition has been turned it yet and maybe they are having a hard time even getting enough signatures. But what we need is to form a committee of city residents to fight this thing.”

Shartzer stated he could not lead the charge on this fight because he was not a city resident but that he would be behind the resident that led the campaign.

“Nothing good will come of passing this and it will lead to other things,” he said. “Two weeks ago there was an article in the Courier Journal saying that Murray, had passed a vote just like this in 2000 and this year they are voting to allow packaging stores to sell alcohol.”

“So what we need right now is three or four people to sign a petition and submit it to the city in opposition of this vote,” said Shartzer.

Once the four volunteer names were collected, 18 members of the group agreed to police the polls during the election, to make sure no one supporting the vote made comments or campaigned near the vote polling place.

Shartzer then issued a challenge to the group to go back to their home churches and carry the message,

“Our churches are going to have to get behind this and to all you preachers that are here go to your church and talk it from the pulpit. We have let so much go on for so long we have to stop this here.”