BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Union County Commissioners passed an ordinance allowing the sale of alcoholic beverages outside the county’s municipalities on Sunday afternoons.
Chair Channing Dobbs said the change only affects one establishment, Springtown Saloon, north of Worthington Springs on State Road 121.
Dobbs added that he opposed the change.
“I believe we’ve got one day to keep sacred,” Dobbs said, “and we make it Sunday, but that’s just my take on it.”
Commissioner Mac Johns called Dobbs’s comments strange and hypocritical.
He pointed out that Worthington Springs’s SunStop store, formally branded S and S, can sell beer on Sundays because it is within the municipality. Springtown Saloon and SunStop are about one-half mile apart.
Jimmy Tallman said he previously agreed with Dobbs but has come around to Johns’s point of view.
“In Worthington Springs, they sell beer all day long,” he said. “In Lake Butler, they sell beer as well, and this one gentleman is kind of pinpointed.”
The new ordinance allows alcohol sales from 7 a.m. Saturday to 1 a.m. Sunday and then from noon Sunday until midnight. The new ordinance continues the prior ban on sales between midnight and 7 a.m. Monday through Saturday.
