Editor's note: This article was amended on Nov. 3 to clarify that there have been no formal discussions among members of the Centre City Council regarding a proposed alcohol ordinance. The Post inadvertently misquoted Mr. Chandler, who meant only that he himself had reviewed ordinances from other cities in the state. The Post regrets the error.

CENTRE — “Vote Yes on Nov. 2nd at City Hall.” “Stand Up to Stay Dry. Vote No.”

Campaign signs first dotted the roadsides a couple of weeks ago. Ads began appearing in The Post on Oct. 4. WEIS-AM listeners are currently being inundated with pleas to head to Centre City Hall on election day.

Every Centre resident is being asked to pick a side over alcohol.

Glen Chandler got the debate started this spring, not long after the passage of a new state law allowing wet-dry referendums in any municipality with at least a thousand residents. The Centre councilman created, copied and distributed petitions to local convenience stores.

“In 1987, Ed Yarbrough and I tried this,” Chandler said. “When they passed this new law a lot of people came to me because they knew I was for it before.”

Weeks late, a few hundred signatures had accumulated on the petitions. After city officials verified that enough of those names belonged to Centre residents, the Council approved a wet-dry vote on Sept. 14.

Even after the vote was set for Nov. 2, opposing sides kept to themselves – at least for a while. A few weeks ago, however, a group of local churches combined to form Concerned Citizens of Cherokee County and soon began filling newspaper pages and local airwaves with arguments against legalizing sales.

Rev. Wendell Dutton, who heads the Cherokee Baptist Association, said choosing to fight this particular battle was an easy one for his organization because of what he perceives as the unique nature of the city, as well as the moral and biblical implications of alcohol.

“The thing about Centre is, it's the hub of activity in this county,” Dutton said. “This is a countywide community. Because of that, the people in Gnatville, the people in Blanche, the people in Key all identify with Centre. That's the reason why we've gotten behind this. Whatever happens in Centre is going to affect every corner of this county.”

Chandler said that despite the push by alcohol opponents, there is no stopping the flow of alcohol into the area.

“There's a lot of stuff going around about 'vote no',” Chandler said, “but I believe 70 percent of the people in this county have alcohol in their homes.”

Promoting the idea that alcohol is already plentiful is largely how Chandler and other proponents have chosen to frame their push for legal sales.

“The city is not dry now, it's just that Centre doesn't get any of the taxes from it,” Chandler said. “All they have to do is drive five miles to buy it.”

Dutton said the current level of acceptability of alcohol in the county is no reason to make accessibility any easier.

“I think the thing we need to understand is when you make something more accessible, more available, it's going to provide people with an opportunity to get it where otherwise they might not,” Dutton said. “That's one argument that's always thrown out there, that it's already here. Prostitution has been around longer than anything else in the world, but we still have it and we still stand up against it.”

Speaking of the world's oldest profession, Chandler said one of the Association's print ads, which implied an unavoidable connection between legalized alcohol sales and the spread of prostitution, was the reason he decided to speak out.

“I know they've got to do their thing, but that doesn't have anything to do with this alcohol vote,” he said.

Dutton said he sees nothing wrong with painting a mental image in voters' minds of what he and his supporters believe a yes vote could possibly lead to in the future.

“There's nothing graphic there, the ad just talked about alcohol-related activities,” Dutton said. “My personal opinion, I wasn't offended by it. What we're hearing from the community of faith about our ads is 'good job, keep it up'.”

Chandler said voters have put their trust in local elected officials to make sound decisions – something he said will continue to happen in Centre if alcohol sales are approved. Chandler said he has already begun studying existing ordinances from as many as eight wet municipalities in Alabama.

“All the members of the Council are in agreement that, if the vote is yes, the ordinance will be written the right way,” Chandler said. “Bars, and drinking, and fighting – we're not going to have that in Centre.”

Chandler said early financial estimates from a conversion to wet appear promising. He said he's talked with officials in Fort Payne who told him that their switch to legal alcohol sales added around $800,000 to the city's $8 million annual budget.

“Just going by that 10 percent figure, if the same held true for us, I think we could add around $250,000 to $300,000 annually,” he said. “If it does pass.”

Financial records provided to The Post earlier this year by the town of Cedar Bluff — which, with around 1,500 people, is roughly half the size of Centre — show that alcohol sales there generated just over $125,000 in 2009.

Chandler said any additional funds could be used to enhance city services, including the police and fire departments.

“We eventually want to buy a new fire truck and hire a full-time fire department so the city's ISO rating (currently a 5 on a scale of 1-9) will drop to a 4 and homeowner's insurance will go down,” he said. “We'd also like to help the city schools with things like increasing handicap accessibility, and weight room improvements at the high school.”

Dutton and his supporters believe any increase in revenues from alcohol sales would come at a high price.

“The Council on Alcohol Abuse did statistics and evaluated revenue from alcohol versus expense. Their figure was that every dollar of revenue costs fifteen bucks,” he said. “The only people who stand to make a killing from this is the alcohol industry. Alcohol is not the cash cow it is made out to be.”

Chandler said he has called officials in other towns in dry counties that have gone wet in recent years. He said they all told him the same thing when he asked about drinking and driving.

“If the town's dry, people are going to drive somewhere else to get it, if they want it, and maybe start drinking on the way back,” Chandler said.

Dutton didn't dispute the claim that legalizing sales could result in a drop in DUI arrests. However, he proposed that a drop in one type of crime could lead to a rise in another.

“I have a good friend who is an elected official in a neighboring county,” Dutton said. “He said that in his area, DUIs had gone down but there was a much higher number of domestic violence calls since going wet. Weigh one against the other.”

That's what voters in Centre will be asked to do on Nov. 2. The vote will take place from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at City Hall.