The Petition Is In: BYOB May Be Headed for a May 8 Vote

Supporters of a BYOB (Bring Your Own Bottle) initiative in Ocean City turned in a petition with 382 signatures — 30 more than the required 352 — on Tuesday morning.

The petition callis for a public vote on letting diners bring their own beer and wine into restaurants in the dry town of Ocean City. (Click on the PDF icon with this story to read the petition and proposed ordinance.)

If the city clerk in Ocean City confirms that at least 352 signatures (10 percent of the Ocean City vote in the most recent General Assembly election) are valid, the binding quesiton will go to voters in the May 8 election.

"We wanted to get them in as quickly as possible," said Bill McGinnity, an Ocean City Restaurant Association officer who has been a leader in the initiative.

McGinnity said the petitioners collected the required number of signatures without pushing too hard. BYOB petitioners had collected 583 signatures last summer calling for a November 2011 vote, but they later withdrew the petition because of .

City Clerk Linda MacIntyre said her office has already started work in verifying the signatures of registered Ocean City voters. She said she could not speculate on how long it would take, but her office would have up to 10 days to do so.

The process includes the following:

• If the city clerk finds the petition to be deficient, the committee of petitioners will have 10 days to file an amended petition (and the clerk will have another five days to examine it).
• If the city clerk finds the petition (which includes a proposed new ordinance) to be sufficient, it will be submitted to City Council at the next regularly scheduled meeting.
• City Council can then vote on the ordinance.
• If council votes to approve it, BYOB would become law in Ocean City. The vote would be considered a second reading of the ordinance (with the public petition being the first).
• If council votes not to approve the ordinance, the city clerk would then submit the question to the county clerk for inclusion on the ballot in the May 8 election.
• If council takes no action on the ordinance, the petitioners would have to wait 20 days (council's allotted period to take action) before the question could be submitted to the county clerk. In this case, a council decision to take no action would likely cause the petitioners to miss the deadline for getting the question on the May 8 ballot.