REAL ESTATE REPORT

Area Home Values

it sounds. A JP precinct that’s dry can’t beturnedwetinacitywideelection unless all of the precinct is within the city.This was one of the issues in the run-up to the November election, when there was some doubt as to whether the JP precinct in Oak Cliff that went dry in 1956 was contained within the city of Dallas.Turns out it was.

it sounds, and for many of the same reasons. When Lubbock voted wet in 2009, the drys claimed that part of the county was dry from previous elections, and that a city-wide election couldn’t affectthoseareas—whichincluded in court.>>

Is most of Dallas still dry for religious reasons?

Religious groups have traditionally taken the lead in fighting wet-dry elections in Texas, and they played a key role 50 years ago when Oak Cliff went dry. But there doesn’t seem to be much organized religious opposition to November’s two wet-dry ballot issues.

Does this mean that neighborhood churches don’t care about the issue any more? Or that Dallas is less religious than it used to be?

No on both counts, several religious leaders say. It’s not so much that alcohol isn’t important; rather, it’s that other issues have become more important, and abstinence isn’t the issue it once was. In addition, Dallas has changed significantly from the smaller, predominantly mainstream Protestant city of the 1960s and 1970s to a million-plus population urban center that includes more Catholics, Jews and non-denominational Protestants — all of whom are less concerned about alcohol.

“We’re just getting to this point later than other cities,” says George Mason, pastor at the moderate Wilshire BaptistChurch. “The city is more diverse, and we have more people who have different attitudes about this subject.”

Also, says Rev. Tim McLemore of SMU, alcohol is no longer the good vs. evil issue that it has traditionally been among the mainline Protestant groups that have been in the forefront of the U.S. temperance movement. Mason says this is even true for some conservative Baptists.

“We have knowledge about the benefits of the limited use of alcohol that we didn’t have 100 years ago,” says McLemore, who notes that the United Methodists have changed their views to allow “judicious use” of alcohol. “So we’re less inclined to take a black and white view.”

Finally,churcheshavelessinfluenceovertheir members than they did two and three decades ago. Times were, Mason says, if the church said not to drink, believers didn’t drink. These days, that veto power is largely gone.

What am I actually voting on?

Dallas voters will decide two issues in November’s wet-dry election:

2. Whether to allow the sale of beer and wine, but not spirits,atretailersthroughout the entire city. Currently, only one-third of Dallas — roughly WhiteRock Lake to Irving and downtown to Walnut Hill — is wet for retail sales.

1. Whether to eliminate the private club regulation for restaurants that sell alcohol in dry areas. The private club rule, in place since 1971, requires restaurants to admit customers into the restaurant’s club so they can buy alcohol. It also requires the restaurant to keep a paper trail of club members.

FOR INFORMATION

VISITDALCOELECTIONS.ORG.

Neitherissueisdependent on the other. Voters can elect to allow retail sales but keep the private club restrictions, or vice versa.