By Jeremy D. Wells
Carter County Times
In the days before Christmas, a number of Olive Hill businesses opened to notices from the city that they were no longer allowed to serve or sell alcohol. Letters from Olive Hill police chief and alcoholic beverage control (ABC) administrator Bruce Palmer dated December 18 were distributed to the businesses on the morning of Thursday December 19, alerting the impacted businesses of out of date alcohol licenses and/or unpaid monthly alcohol taxes.
Palmer, who recently took over the role of ABC administrator, noted in those letters – several of which were shared with the Carter County Times – that “the City of Olive Hill has been diligently operating under the belief that all necessary licenses and payments were up to date.” The letters then went on to spell out the deficiencies, whether they were out of date alcohol sales licenses, or the listed months of unpaid alcohol taxes.
Several of the businesses who felt the effects of the temporary ban told the Carter County Times that they had records of their previous payments, and that they would be contacting the city with the evidence of those payments whenever they were able to gather it together. Several appeared to have done so by later that same afternoon, with others catching up with back payments of unpaid taxes in the following days.
Palmer said it wasn’t what he hoped to do in his first days as the ABC administrator, but that a careful review of the records after taking over the office showed that most of the businesses selling alcohol in the city were behind on payments to some degree – with some several months delinquent.
Businesses were given until December 23 to begin the process of coming into compliance. After that date, Palmer said, he would be required to report the businesses to the state licensure authority.
While some of the businesses criticized the approach as “a hammer” when something more akin to a polite knock on the door would have been sufficient, Palmer noted that the language of the letter was taken directly from the state.
City council members also noted that the approach worked, with up to 85 percent of the delinquent taxes and fines paid by the same afternoon, according to the city council source.
Contact the writer at editor@cartercountytimes.com
