March 6, 2012: Our readers write

The sky did not fall
I saw comments about the “leadership” position taken by the mayor and city council in the paper Thursday concerning alcohol in city parks. It reminds me of the verse in the Bible that says if the blind lead the blind, they will both fall in the ditch. If you truly want to be leaders, you would stop futile attempts to legislate morality. I grew up in this town, and for years I wished alcohol would be legalized.
To drink or not to drink isn’t the issue. The quality of food and entertainment in a given locale always will hinge on the availability of alcohol. Now we have some decent food, but still nothing exciting, due directly to the 70 percent-30 percent rule. I predict that because of misguided fears about “party goers” and “intoxicated persons,” either Vine Grove or Radcliff will become the first actual city in Hardin County, because they welcome progress instead of fighting it at every turn. E’town will be the retirement home of the county.
By the way, if there is an issue to be discussed about Freeman Lake, it’s not beer bottles and cans offending my Christian sensibilities. It’s the goose feces that covers every square inch of the park within 150 feet of the water.
I would trust my 3 year old to dodge a few hundred drunken people at Heartland Festival, but no one could be expected to avoid all that poo.
A new event planner will not help. The city’s events will continue to flounder and be unprofitable. Few will come and few will care. That is unless the city council and the mayor show some real leadership and do what the city needs, and not necessarily what Ma and Pa Kettle think is best.
Without alcohol, there is no event. Beer now lines the shelves of gas stations and grocery stores, the sky did not fall. The alcoholics now only have time to drink one beer on the way home from Kroger instead of four beers on the long ride from Lebanon Junction.
Jimmy Coffey
Elizabethtown