FORSYTH COUNTY, Ga. – Thursday’s Board of Commissioners meeting lasted just under two hours and was fairly uneventful until the final agenda item – an administrative hearing regarding an appeal by a long-time liquor store owner who was denied renewal of his license. 

Commissioners did approve Toll Brothers request to rezone 33.6 acres just south of Castleberry Road from A1 and CBD to Res 2 for 35 residential lots and several issues were postponed, including a resolution that would allow commissioners to be employed by another municipality and a moratorium on acceptance of requests for conservation subdivisions.

An attorney for the Liquor Locker claims his client was denied renewal based on the existence of a child care center nearby. But the attorney said that in order to deny the applicant’s request for renewal the child care center must be receiving state funds which was not the case.

The denial notice to the applicant stated only that the child care center had “expressed and interest in receiving state funds,” he said. “They couldn’t have. They didn’t even have their state license yet. No students were enrolled. No classes were being offered. Therefore the county should not have denied the renewal.”

Commissioner Todd Levent said, “We have a lot of these little private schools in our community what we have liquor stores next to them because they don’t receive state funds.”

Levent also asked the county attorney if a form letter explaining the applicant’s right to appeal had been included with the notice of denial as required by the county code. The answer was that it had not.

The issue was then postponed until next month’s meeting.