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Peters Township amends solicitation ordinance

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Some door-to-door salespeople know a trick or two for getting inside a home.

“You ask for water,” Peters Township manager Paul Lauer said. “You come in and say, ‘Let me measure something.’ After it occurs, we get telephone calls saying, ‘We couldn’t get rid of them.'”

Complaints about such practices helped prompt an amendment to the township code regarding peddlers, canvassers and transient merchants. At its Feb. 13 meeting, township council approved the changes.

“We had a problem with people, in essence, inviting themselves into people’s homes, and we want to make sure that the permittee understands that’s not to occur,” Lauer told council members.

The amendment includes specific language for the sake of clarification.

“Our position has always been, if you violate our ordinance, we won’t give you a permit,” Lauer said. “But nothing in the ordinance says that, in fact, is something we have the authority to do. So the police department wants to be clear that they have the authority not to issue permits to individuals who violate this ordinance.”

Solicitor John Smith noted cases in which the township has revoked permits.

“We received letters, at times, from attorneys saying, ‘There’s nothing in your ordinance that allows you to pull the permit once you grant it.’ And so that was something we wanted to take a look at, as well,” he said.

Frank Arcuri, council president, said there should be “some type of appeal mechanism” if the police department denies a permit. The ordinance will be revised accordingly to have that handled through the manager’s office.

The amendment also sets the time when soliciting can occur, from 9 a.m. until sunset. Previously, the stated ending was 9 p.m.

In other business at the Feb. 13 council meeting:

• Council adopted a resolution declaring the township’s intent to continue to retain and dispose of records in a manner consistent with the state’s Municipal Records Manual, in accordance with the Municipal Records Act of 1968.

Considering the applicable legislation preceded the advent of the Internet by a few decades, Peters Township to this point has no official policy addressing the electronic correspondence of municipal staff members.

“There are people here who have emails that go back forever,” Lauer said. “There are people who clean their email box out every day.”

To establish a procedure, he recommended to council:

“We hold onto emails for a given period of time, and after that point, they be authorized for destruction and that we remove them. We’re still trying to come to a consensus among ourselves whether that’s two or three years.”

He plans to present a suitable time frame to council at its next meeting.

“The vast majority of stuff we get in is just general correspondence,” Lauer explained. “There’s not really a requirement to hold onto that, at all.”

Some material, though, could be subject to right-to-know requests and, as such, would need to be retained.

“We need to educate people here as to how to do that, so we don’t delete things we should be keeping,” Lauer said.

• Council agreed to have the public works department take care of lawn maintenance on the municipality’s portion of the former Rolling Hills Country Club property.

“We’re not going to attempt to do it as it was,” Lauer said about the pristine condition of the club’s golf course, “but we’re going to do it on a periodic basis.”

He said public works director Joe Hursen approached him about the department taking on the responsibility.

“We have set aside $30,000 to contract out for that, and he said even if they fell short and had to do some work on an overtime basis, they won’t approach that kind of money,” Lauer told council. “So he believes he can actually get it done and save money at the same time. I think it’s worth giving them a shot and seeing what will happen.”

Officials from the municipality and Peters Township School District, which has possession of slightly more than half of the 190-acre site, have met to coordinate a mowing schedule, Lauer said.

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