With summer comes the door to door solicitor and peddlers. While the majority of them conduct their business without incident, we do get complaints about some who make the residents feel uncomfortable in one way or another. Unfortunately, these complaints usually aren’t made until after the fact and aren’t much help in identifying who the offending party was (which would allow us to respond, follow up, or pull their licenses). You can access the summary by clicking here: Solicitors
To that end, our Town Clerk, Martha McMahon-Dickson, has written a simple summary that should help residents learn a bit more about how the process works, as well as preparing them to help us help them if they experience any trouble with a peddler or solicitor. It’s attached.
This sheet certainly won’t solve the problems we currently have (only requiring real background checks at the applicant’s expense, raising the application fee, and finding a way to reign in non-profits who are exempt from the law would help solve the issues), but having the residents know what the law allows and encouraging them to call immediately if there are problems should help us address the existing problems a little better.