Liquor will be on the agenda as the Fayetteville City Council meets Tuesday night.

Council will discuss whether to give voters a chance to decide on legalizing liquor by the drink in the city's Nov. 2 election.

Lane Brown, a local Realtor, has been circulating a petition to force the question onto the ballot, but time has run out, and Brown says he is about 100 signatures short of the required number.

State law requires that alcohol questions be placed on the ballot if 35 percent of the registered voters sign a petition. Brown said he has about 1,650 signatures and may be able to get the rest within a week or two.

“I will continue going on. The petitions are coming in a little slower,” said Brown. “I just don't know if we've got enough time.”

City clerk Judy Stephens answered that question. “We would need 60 days to verify the signatures and get it on the ballot,” she said. “Sept. 3 would be the last day.”

City Council can, by majority vote, put the question on the ballot without a petition, and that's what Brown is asking the group to do.

If council refuses, Brown said he will keep working to force the issue through petition, but that will require a special election at additional expense to the city taxpayers.

“I'm still having trouble with this,” said Councilman Kenneth Steele during a work session Wednesday. “We had an election five years ago and it was turned down. We have a petition for referendum and Lane has not gotten sufficient signatures.”

Brown pointed out that hundreds of new residents have moved to Fayetteville since the last vote on the liquor question. And the referendum failed by only a handful of votes the last time, he said.

During the work session, council discussed the possibility of setting up a liquor pouring zone in its historic Main Street District to bolster revitalization efforts there, but there was little sentiment for placing the issue on the ballot without a petition.

Councilman Glenn Brewer pointed out, though, that Mayor Mike Wheat and Councilman Larry Dell were absent from the work session, and suggested keeping the item on the agenda for Tuesday's business meeting so the full council would have a chance to discuss it.

The meeting is normally conducted on first Mondays, but has been moved to Tuesday this week because of the Labor Day holiday.

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