Resaca Council members have been fairly lenient toward applicants who apply late for an alcoholic beverage license until now.

According to town ordinance, the deadline to apply is Oct. 1, but the council has approved late applications. Council members said Thursday that they will be more stringent about that deadline beginning in 2012.

Town Attorney Peter Olson pointed out that Thursday’s meeting had to be called in order to approve several late applications this time.

Council Members also made changes to the town’s alcoholic beverage ordinance in regard to requirements for a contact person and to applicant ownership restrictions.

Before, the ordinance required that the business manager be a resident of Gordon County, but now, applicant businesses may simply list an employee who lives in the county as a contact person, Olson said.

An individual member of the applicant corporation must now hold the alcohol license; before, a corporation could hold the license, Olson said. However, corporation partners must be listed for purposes of transparency.

The council also eliminated several rules that the town wasn’t requiring of applicants anyway.

There was “a lot of stuff that was in that ordinance that we weren’t following,” said Mayor Sammy Allen.

Eliminated were the requirements that the applicant run an announcement in the newspaper – “an unusual provision,” according to Olson – and post a sign advertising the application.

The ordinance was last updated in December 2010 after voters opted to allow the sale of alcohol by the drink.

During the Thursday, Dec. 29, called meeting, Resaca Council Members approved the following applicants for malt beverage licenses:

- US Food Mart Inc. #3

- US Food Group of Investment, Inc.

- BP and KK Enterprise, LLC

- Pilot Travel Centers, LLC