Most Athens residents won’t be buying a drink at one second past 6 a.m. on Sunday, July 2, but it will be legal.

In a 4-1 vote Monday, Athens City Council members legalized the sale of alcoholic beverages on Sundays. City voters had already legalized the sale of alcohol Mondays through Saturdays in 2003.

Legal Sunday hours will be 6 a.m. to midnight beginning July 2 for any establishment licensed by the city to sell alcoholic beverages. Sunday will have the most hours of legal sales because Saturday hours already extend to 2 a.m. on Sunday.

District 5 Councilman Wayne Harper cast the lone vote against the proposal, and not because he believes drinking alcoholic beverages is wrong, he said before the vote.

“I am going to vote ‘no.’ I am not anti-alcohol. I don’t think having a drink is a sin, as long as it is done tastefully and in moderation. I am definitely not anti-business. It will help business if it passes,” he said. “The majority of people in District 5 who voted for me are against this. So, I am going to vote ‘no’ tonight. If this passes, I think Athens is still going to be a great place to live and if it fails, it is still going to be a great place to live.”

The rest of the council voted “yes,” including District 4 Council President Joseph Cannon, District 3 Councilman Frank Travis, District 2 Councilman Harold Wales and District 1 Councilman Chris Seibert.

Wales said he struggled with the decision but stood by his promise to vote in favor of Sunday sales.

“I’ve received more calls on this than almost anything we have ever had. This is a decision not easy for me. It is a decision that will define who we are as a council. But, I said at a public hearing I would.”

Wales cited the four ministers who spoke during the June 19 public hearing on the issue as offering good reasons not to support the measure.

“Like the ministers, it is important to them and it is to me,” Wales said. “It is a moral issue. We’ve got a lot of people holding on to the older ways and that’s not bad. This will move us ahead. Bring in businesses, hotels, restaurants and taxes, taxes and more taxes that will go to improve our education system. Not only that, it (the money) paves our streets.”

He said the city was only spending $260,000 a year on paving until a previous council passed a penny sales tax increase, then the spending went to $1 million a year.

“I realize this is a moral issue, and I am a Christian also. This will not offend me in any way. It will not bother me any more than it would on a Wednesday. The overwhelming majority (of people) have said ‘I understand you are all doing this for the right reasons.’ I did not make this decision easy. I stuck to my word.”

Because Seibert introduced the ordinance at the June 19 public hearing on Sunday sales, the council was able to vote Monday to decide the issue.

Cannon and Seibert did not issue comments prior to voting Monday but they have commented on the matter in the Saturday, June 24, edition of The New Courier. Travis also did not comment prior to voting but he did recite, nearly from memory, the entire Rudyard Kipling poem titled “If,” which certainly applies to the difficulty of being a councilman trying to decide a divisive issue. Travis substituted Kipling’s last line: “And — which is more — you’ll be a Man my son!” with his own, “You will be a City Councilman.”

The city obtained permission from the state Legislature to vote directly on legalizing Sunday sales.

Mayor Ronnie Marks has said Sunday sales could boost alcohol revenue by as much as 20 percent, which is about $140,000 a year based on the city’s roughly $700,000 in annual alcohol sales tax collections. Half the alcohol sales tax collected each year goes to city schools. The schools are currently using the money to repay the debt on the new $55 million high school over the next 30 years. The city uses its half to repay general fund debt.

At a public hearing on the matter, residents spoke 4-1 in favor of legalizing Sunday sales.