"We had a major education campaign here," Zekas said. "We pulled out all the stops."
Zekas said borough leaders felt alcohol-consumption licenses would be essential to attracting better restaurants to Stratford and ushering needed economic redevelopment.
"We're talking to developers, and they're all telling us, 'You need liquor licenses,' " Zekas said.
To get that message across, two public forums were held, information was sent out via the Internet and flyers, and Mayor Thomas G. Angelucci did a telephone blitz, Zekas said. The borough will be eligible for two consumption licenses for restaurants and one distribution license for a package store.
In the past, Stratford defeated at least two similar ballot questions, and lots of residents would probably have preferred to maintain Stratford's dry status, Zekas said.
"Unfortunately, times change," he noted, "and we've got to change with them."
Moorestown in Burlington County and Pitman in Gloucester County, meanwhile, chose to not part company with the state's 36 other dry towns. In those municipalities, the voting leaned more toward emotions than economics.
In Pitman yesterday, some folks were saying that voters' perceptions - or misconceptions - of candidates' stands on the liquor-license issue led to the defeat of incumbent Mayor Alice Polocz and two incumbent council members, costing the Democrats their majority.
"It wasn't a multi-issue race. It was all about the alcohol," said Borough Clerk Dawn Marie Human.
Human said the Republican candidates came out strongly against liquor licenses while the incumbent Democrats said they just wanted to get residents' input through a nonbinding public vote, rather than decide the issue on their own. The Democrats in office "were not necessarily in favor of alcohol licenses," she said, but that message "was ineffectually delivered."
