By Billy Davis

Sunday beer sales will become legal March 1 in unincorporated Panola County following a unanimous vote last week by Panola County supervisors.

Sunday sales will be legal from 12 p.m. until 10 p.m., according to the board order approved January 15 by supervisors.

The topic gobbled up fewer than five minutes when the county board took action at its Second District meeting January 15.

District 2 Supervisor James Birge made the motion to allow Sunday sales. District 5 Supervisor Bubba Waldrup provided the second.

The Board of Supervisors’ action amends a county ordinance, passed in 1972, that forbids Sunday beer sales.

Except for a comment from board president Gary Thompson, supervisors did not discuss the issue among themselves.

“What we’re doing is making this a uniform, county-wide deal,” Thompson announced. “The towns are already doing it.”

And they are: Batesville approved Sunday beer sales last fall and Sardis aldermen voted January 5 to approve them.

Sunday beer sales are already legal in Pope and in Como, where Main Street restaurants provide a majority of the town’s tax base.

Among the five supervisors, the topic was first publicly discussed when they convened January 5 in Sardis. That discussion, like the one last Friday, was also quick and did not include any expressions of concern or outright opposition among the board.

At last week’s meeting, board attorney Bill McKenzie had prepared a board order for Thompson to sign.

The board order described the new Sunday hours and also dropped an antiquated county ordinance that forbids beer sales on Election Day.

In other county business, supervisors approved the hiring of two part-time guards at the request of Sheriff Otis Griffin.

He said he planned to hire Roy Lee Cole and James Morgan, paying them $10 an hour to watch state inmates.

Griffin’s request came after two state inmates sneaked away from from a building located behind the sheriff’s department.

The pair of hirings was one of two requests made by the interim sheriff. Supervisors tabled the second: the hiring of a fencing company to erect 1,600 feet of fence around the department.

Griffin came with two quotes for fence construction. Memphis Fence Co. submitted a quote for $38,027.80 while Sideline Fence Co. submitted a bid for $23,637.36.

Sideline submitted a much-lower bid because it is willing to use inmate labor to lower the cost, the sheriff told supervisors.