From this week's LEO

Temperance on Market
With everybody else complaining about too much dry, Metro Councilwoman Cheri Bryant Hamilton is worried about too much wet. Specifically, she’s concerned about the recent proliferation of liquor stores in her precincts in Shawnee and Portland. Citing a link between hooch and crime, a group headed by the councilwoman lined up the necessary 25% of residents and petitioned the County Clerk to allow the neighborhoods to vote to make it illegal to sell booze there. The plan calls for a September 11 wet/dry vote.

Neighbors are worried about crime in the West Market Street area, which has more liquor stores than a Quentin Tarrantino film festival and a Dean Martin standup routine combined. Pleas by local residents to state officials to deny liquor licenses have gone unheeded, forcing the residents to push for the wet/dry vote.

The group faces an uphill battle. Not only does alcohol make furniture more comfortable and others more attractive, it also produces two trump cards in America: economic development and tax revenue. When residents in Old Louisville tried to go dry last year and residents in the Original Highlands tried to put the kibosh on that neighborhood’s Disneyland of Drinking in 2004, the measures failed for just those reasons. If a simple majority of residents vote the Shawnee and Portland precincts dry, the businesses would have to close by December.