Signatures on Track to Get Loganville Package Store on the Ballot

It looks like on whether or not to bring a package store to the city.

At the Loganville City Council meeting on July 12, Jamie Dempsey, representing Loganville Citizens for Choice, announced that the movement almost had enough signatures to get the measure on the ballot.

"I'm here to report to you today as of this morning we have almost reached 2,279 out of a potential of 2,292," Dempsey said.

Dempsey said he was pretty comfortable they would hit the required target, as well as a buffer, in the next two week. It takes 35 percent of registered voters in a particular municipality for a petition to qualify to get on the ballot. That is more than double the number of people who usually vote in Loganville. Dempsey said he believed the petition would be submitted to the city within the next 12 to 15 days. Several people in attendance signed the petition at the end of the meeting.

"We've culled out quite a few," Dempsey said, adding that there were more voters registered in Walton County than in Gwinnett. "There are 5,155 in Walton  and 1,392 in Gwinnett."

Dempsey, as the owner of Moosehead Marketing Solutions, was contracted by Loganville Citizens for Choice to investigte whether it was the desire of residents to have the issue put on the ballot in November. With two package stores in Walnut Grove and one under construction in Grayson, many believe that Loganville is losing business to neighboring communities by not having a package store of its own. There are, however, people in the community who don't support the idea. Dempsey said that 660 people had refused to sign, but - for the most part - they were polite in their refusal.

"I would like to report that as a function of the drive, we were able to garner some good information that should be useful to the city," Dempsey said, adding they had found some inaccuracies on the list of voters supplied by the city. "Fourteen of these voters are deceased, 747 have moved - that's almost 10 percent of the voting population. There were 139 vacant properties and 20 of them were oddballs - they may have had people living, there but they weren't supposed to be."

Although he is not ready to disclose who is behind “Loganville Citizens for Choice,” Dempsy said it is possible that Loganville will get into much the same situation as happened in Grayson earlier this year. A Grayson business owner, Joe Kalish, hired an . However, and it wasn’t Kalish’s application that was successful –

Loganville Mayor Ray Nunley said about 10 potential applicants had already made enquiries with the city. Loganville, too, will only issue one license. , legally it is unlikely he will be able to avoid it. If the measure is passed in November, there is likely to be a flurry of applications for the one license to be issued.