CEDAR BLUFF — The years-long saga over legal alcohol sales in Cedar Bluff may soon take a big step toward its ultimate conclusion.

During a planning session held March 4, town officials indicated that they anticipate being able to give their citizens the chance – possibly this summer – to reaffirm Cedar Bluff's status as the only “wet” municipality in otherwise “dry” Cherokee County.

During the planning session, Councilman Evan Smith said he recently attended a meeting of local business owners who told him they plan to circulate a petition that will ask the town to, once again, pose the wet-dry question to residents.

“They are hoping for June,” to have the referendum, Smith said of the business owners. “They will need to collect signatures from thirty percent of the people who voted in the last election, in 2008 – that's about 125 names.”

During the discussion that followed, there was some question among the audience and council members about who is responsible for determining if names on a petition actually belong to registered Cedar Bluff voters.

“That will have to be done by town officials, probably the town clerk, after the petition is turned in,” a spokesperson for Probate Judge Melvyn Salter told The Post Friday morning.

Alcohol sales were first legalized in Cedar Bluff in August 2003, when over 70 percent of residents voted to allow sales of beer and wine, provided a portion of the taxes generated be used to fund non-academic programs at Cedar Bluff High School and other public works projects.

Immediately after the referendum passed, a group of residents filed a lawsuit questioning whether the newly-passed legislation that allowed the town to hold the vote was constitutional. After that suit was settled out of court a second legal action, filed in December 2005 by William Geral Greene, again questioned the legality of the wet-dry vote.

Greene's lawsuit still has not been settled. But a law passed last year by the state Legislature made it legal for any municipality in Alabama with 1,000 or more citizens to hold a wet-dry vote. (There were 1,470 people in Cedar Bluff in 2000, according to the most recent U.S. Census.)

Town officials hope that holding a second successful referendum will erase any question about the legality of legalized alcohol sales, provide for the dismissal of Greene's suit, and allow businesses in Cedar Bluff to sell alcohol without the looming threat of having their licenses revoked.

Smith and fellow Council member Mark Hicks publicly discussed the fact that a second wet-dry vote would not be held in the First Baptist Church fellowship hall, otherwise the town's main precinct on a typical election day.

Smith said that, assuming a correctly completed petition is presented to the Town Council or the town clerk, the resulting wet-dry referendum will be held at the Cedar Bluff Community Center, located on Old Highway 9 in downtown near the post office.