Chickamauga City Mayor Ray Crowder, left, swears in new Councilman Don Martin at a recent City Council meeting. Martin is taking the place of former Councilman Shannon Whitfield.Chickamauga City Manager Micheal Haney believes the mentality in the city is changing. Tourism is now the city’s bread and butter, he said.
“The cotton mill was what Chickamauga depended on and now we depend a lot on tourism,” he told the City Council, requesting a referendum to let residents decide whether to allow liquor by the drink. “A way to bring in restaurants is to attract customers in with liquor by the drink.”
Haney said neighboring cities take what the city could earn in taxes on liquor by the drink and he would like to have a self-sustainable city without having to have a property tax.
“A lot of people like to have a drink with their meal,” he said. “A lot of towns allow liquor by the drink. It would be for eating establishments only. We want what Dalton and Fort Oglethorpe have. I think it just passed in Walker County.
“If citizens wish not to vote it in then it stays the same.”
The City Council unanimously voted in favor of putting a referendum on the ballot May 24.
Gordon Lee High School also on referendum
Also on the ballot will be a referendum asking the council to take out a bond in the amount of $2.5 million for the Chickamauga City School System to demolition the current Gordon Lee Memorial High School building.
“If we give the state the little over $3 million that we get in ESPLOST, then they would put with it $11 million,” said Chickamauga School Board Chairman Corky Jewell, adding the bond money for demolition is all that is needed in addition. “We have architectural renderings done. This one is a full two-story building from end to end. We have available to us $15 million in ESPLOST. We will build the new school before we take down the old school. We will have to tear the building down. We intend to put in parking. There are several places that parking should be eliminated because it can’t be navigated. We are set up on a 15-year repayment schedule.”
Jewell said he is looking at July 1 as the construction start date for the new school. The project will take 30 to 36 months total.
The council also unanimously approved a referendum for the funding option that will be placed on the May 24 ballot.