Frankfort Tourism Director Joy Jeffries says Anderson County Fiscal Court’s 5-1 vote to allow restaurants to sell alcohol by the drink on Sundays won’t hurt restaurants here.
“It will help Anderson County but it won’t hurt us,” Jeffries said. “Nobody is going to leave here to go there to drink. I can’t imagine it would affect us at all.
“It certainly helped our restaurants here when we got it and I’m happy for Anderson County. They’ve worked a long time to get it through. Most of the counties have done this by now. I was pretty proud of our community. It went through pretty peacefully here in 2005.”
Jeffries said her husband is a retired minister and they’re teetotalers. But the Sunday alcohol sales “is an economic issue,” she said.
Their choice not to drink “isn’t really a religious issue,” Jeffries said. “The Bible teaches temperance, not abstinence.”
The city of Lawrenceburg had already approved Sunday alcohol sales in restaurants.
Anderson County’s vote last week ended a year-long debate about the issue. Anderson Fiscal Court also approved allowing the county’s two bourbon distilleries and Lovers Leap Vineyard and Winery to sell their products on Sundays.
Sunday alcohol sales in restaurants are also permitted in neighboring Shelbyville and Shelby County, Versailles and Woodford County and Georgetown.