The Jemison City Council amended an ordinance reducing the annual license fee associated with the sale and distribution of alcoholic beverages from $2,000 to $1,500 on Monday.

The previous ordinance, found in Section 8 of Article 3 Paragraph 3 (G) of the city code, set the annual license fee that is levied and collected by the city at $2,000.

Mayor Eddie Reed said Jemison wanted to comply with what neighboring cities charged using the city of Clanton and Calera, both set at $1,500, for comparisons.

“We mirror surrounding cities’ fees that are set and I think it would be good for the council to amend our ordinance to do the same,” Reed said.

Reed deferred to Jemison Police Chief Shane Fulmer who had researched the surrounding cities’ fees and recommended the fee be changed.

Councilman Rex Bittle asked if the money brought revenue to the city but Fulmer said Jemison only had three liquor establishments requiring the licensing so revenue would not be drastically increased.

Council members unanimously voted to amend the ordinance.

Fulmer presented a 2012 report on the Jemison Police Department’s yearly activity.

Fulmer said 2012 was a good year with more than 206 felony cases for the year and 177 of the cases closed.

“I am happy to report that our department was able to have 86 percent of the felony cases we reported on closed during 2012,” Fulmer said.

Reed commended the police department and thanked them for the work they did in protecting the citizens of Jemison and pointed out to council members the department received 7,847 calls for service during 2012.

“This is an incredibly large number of calls,” Reed said. “The police department is doing a great job and I could not be more proud.”

Fulmer’s yearly report showed incident and offense reports taken involving kidnapping, rape, robbery, burglary, arson, assault, theft of property, drug related or miscellaneous reports came to a total of 812 reports taken which was up 2.9 percent from 2011.