Liquor Store Petition Gains Momentum

Earl Wilson, who is spearheading a drive to get a package liquor store referendum on the the November ballot, said his effort gained momentum on Thursday during the State Primary and County General Election.

Wilson, along with some associates, spent 12 hours at Camp Jordan Arena, East Ridge’s only polling site on Thursday, getting signatures from registered voters favoring the referendum.

“We got 586 signatures at Camp Jordan on election day,” Wilson said on Thursday.

Wilson needs 705 signatures of registered voters to get the measure on the ballot. Wilson said that he recently turned in petitions with 337 signatures to the Hamilton County Election Commission. He said that officials there invalidated 87 of those signatures.

“I’m going to stay at Keeble Street until I get word from the election commission that we have 705 people verified,” Wilson said.

The deadline for turning in the petitions is Aug. 20, officials said.

About Dick Cook

Dick Cook has lived in East Ridge since the Kennedy Administration when his parents bought a house on Marietta Street. Dick graduated from ERHS in 1976 before going on to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he studied Political Science. Dick worked for the Chattanooga Free-Press and the Chattanooga Times Free Press for 22 years. Free-Press Sports Editor Roy Exum plucked him out of production in 1989 and gave him a job as a sports reporter. Dick covered everything from prep sports to the whitewater events on the Ocoee River for the 1996 Olympics. When Chattanooga's two paper's merged, he became the Crime Reporter covering both the Chattanooga Police and Fire Departments. He was among reporters who were honored by the Associated Press for the TFP's coverage of the 2002 fog-shrouded crash on I-75 in Catoosa County, Dick and his wife, Cathy, live on Marlboro Avenue where they are seen frequently chasing around their three grandsons.