Greensboro to consider anti-peddler ordinance

The Greensboro City Council will consider an anti-peddler ordinance requested by District 3 Councilman Zack Matheny that would restrict the time that solicitors and beggars operate to the hours of 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The council officially tabled the agenda item at its meeting last night, but Matheny asked City Attorney Terry Wood to bring back some language for a new ordinance for the council to consider at when it next meets on April 21.

Matheny said the 6 p.m. cutoff time came from the fact that "you've got single mothers at home with children," and the need to improve safety downtown. "We've talked about safety of parking and parking decks downtown, and that has been of great concern," he said. "We've heard it at a lot of meetings, and that's where that language comes from."

District 5 Councilwoman Trudy Wade said some of her constituents have complained about solicitors, although their hours of operation not the issue. "A couple of community watch meetings that I've attended, they're having problems with solicitors," she said, "but not so much when they come as the fact that they come and then they come back later and then they rob the house."

I don't doubt that there's some truth to this, but I question whether this is a gross generalization and whether there is some evidence to support this. Have any readers had their homes robbed after encountering a solicitor?

Mayor Yvonne Johnson, District 2 Councilwoman Goldie Wells and District 1 Councilwoman Dianne Bellamy-Small said that they were worried that solicitors and beggars wouldn't know about the cutoff time. Johnson and Bellamy-Small also expressed concern that the ordinance would hinder the Girl Scouts and other organizations that go door to door selling cookies and soliciting contributions for charitable causes.

The mayor said she basically supports the proposed ordinance.

"If it goes into effect immediately, Zack, I am not going to support it, though I support it," she said. "And I want a timeframe to notify some of these folks."

Bellamy-Small expressed sympathy for Matheny's initiative, but pointed out that it would affect panhandlers across the city, including at busy intersections such as Lee and Eugene streets outside Greensboro Urban Ministry.

At-large Councilman Robbie Perkins added that the ordinance might also be used against children trick-or-treating on Halloween and against bell ringers for charitable organizations who station themselves outside department stores.

"This is going to affect the bell ringers at the department stores, won't it?" he said. "Because they're going to be ringing the bells at nine o'clock at night. They're solicitiing. That's a solicitor. So you're going to shut them down at six o'clock. So the guys at the Rotary Club can't go stand in front of Belk's at seven o'clock. So you've got a lot of unintended consequences. You know, if a citizen doesn't like what he or she sees going on in front of her house on Halloween and calls the police, the police have got an ordinance they've got to enforce. This has all kinds of holes in it."

Wade suggested as a compromise that a new ordinance use specific language stating that all licensed peddlers over the age of 16 shall only operate between the hours of 8 a.m. and 6 p.m., presumably exempting youth organizations and trick-or-treaters.

No one on council addressed the issue of whether poor people should have the opportunity to go door to door offering their services.

Doesn't the government have an obligation to balance the rights of people to be secure in their homes with the rights of people to pursue a livelihood through legal means? In this case, one group of people that owns and rents homes is relatively privileged, although not necessarily affluent, and another group of people may be marginally housed and unemployed or only marginally employed. Should the latter group be curtailed from offering legitimate services because some people resort to harassment or mark homes for future criminal acts? And let's be clear that many potential clients are at work or running errands at 6 p.m., so this would effectively limit people to going door to door when many potential clients are not home.

I vaguely recall someone coming to my house and offering to mow my lawn, but I don't have a clear sense of how common this type of enterprise is. Have any readers hired a solicitor to perform services such as yard work? Have any readers offered these services and found clients?

UPDATE, April 8, 8:55 p.m.: A clarification: An anonymous correspondent pointed me to the chapter in Greensboro's Code of Ordinances on "Peddlers, Solicitors, Etc." Sec. 20-17 states that the ordinance "shall not apply to bona fide members of charitable, religious, civic, or fraternal organizations which are exempt from the payment of privilege licenses, and who receive no compensation of any kind for their services."

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