At a board meeting on July 10, Munsey Park regulated commercial solicitation in the village. It was the third law passed by the village this year and can be found at Article 1 of Chapter 132 of the village code.
While not all solicitation can be banned, the village can regulate commercial solicitation. If a commercial solicitor wishes to solicitate in Munsey Park they can apply for a license to do so. The application requires a $25 nonrefundable processing fee and if approved a $250 annual fee to the village.
A licensed solicitor can only solicitate on weekdays and Saturday between the hours of 10 a.m. and 9 p.m. or 30 minutes after sunset, whichever is earlier. Any solicitor licensed cannot have more than five individuals engaged in the solicitation at any one time.
The village is also creating a “Do Not Knock” registry for Munsey Park residents that they can sign up for on the website or by visiting the village clerk’s office. Solicitors will be banned from going to these homes and could be suspended or penalized if they do so.
“It effectively bans all solicitation in the village and in reviewing that section of the code, we did not think that section of the code was up to current standards so we undertook a review of that,” said Mayor Lawrence Ceriello. “We do want to have controls over solicitation. That is typical for villages such as ours as well as some cities larger than us. We cannot prohibit some solicitation, but commercial speech we can regulate.”
Solicitation such as political, religious, educational, or charitable can still be done in Munsey Park and there is no need to apply for a license for those that wish to do so.
During the board meeting, Trustee Joseph Williams brought up the low-levels of water at Copley Pond and what solutions the village can try to bring it back to normalcy. The low-levels of the pond were hurting wildlife within them, including the turtles. The village recently poured water into the pond as a temporary fix.
The consensus of the board was to reach out to The Pond Guy, Inc. to find something more sustainable than pouring new water into the pond.
The board does not meet in August and will have its next meeting on September 11.
