The president of a citizens’ group appears to believe that the Commerce City Council is the cause of the 100-year drought plaguing the Southeast.
Clifford Slater, president of Commerce-Jackson Concerned Citizens, asked to address the city council Monday night after a motion to allow beer consumption at city-sponsored events failed.
Mayor Charles L. “Buzzie” Hardy Jr. gave him the floor.
“We’re supposed to respect our children,” said Slater, in an apparent reference to the alcohol issue. “ I believe that’s why we don’t get no rain and stuff like that because of all the stuff y’all come up with.”
The mayor did not respond to Slater’s comment.
Like the weather, the City Lights Downtown Festival will be dry this year.
The council failed to approve an amendment to the city’s beer and wine ordinance Monday night that would have allowed the consumption of beer in Spencer Park during the June 28 festival.
The plan was to allow consumption of beer at city-sponsored events. Beer was available at the 2007 City Lights Festival, but the council learned that it needed to amend the section of the ordinance that prohibited consumption in public.
Ward 4 Councilman Bob Sosebee, who chairs the DDA that sponsors the City Lights Festival, made the motion to amend the ordinance.
It died for lack of a second.
“I hope y’all just realize what you did,” Sosebee said, without elaborating.
The citizens’ group’s vice chairman, the Rev. John Webber, thanked the council for its action — or its lack of action in this particular case, declaring that “We’re all going to stand before the judgment seat of God.”
The Commerce-Jackson Concerned Citizens fielded a slate of officers in the 2007 city elections. None were elected.
