Final Vote on Second Hand Ordinance This Tuesday
By Elisha Dorfsmith
Living up to their “business friendly” reputation, the Flagstaff City Council will be holding a final vote on their second hand ordinance this Tuesday, May 1st at the 12:00 noon Council meeting (a time when most of the business owners affected by the ordinance will find it hard to break away from work to protest).
What started as an attempt to crack down on out of town gold buyers turned into what some local business owners are calling an “absolute nightmare”. The ordinance will force all second hand businesses, including bookstores, to pay a fee to the City and report what they purchase to the police every time they buy an item from the public.
I recently had a conversation with the manager of a well known second hand store in Flagstaff. He told me that the City never contacted them to get their input on the ordinance.
He said his business found out about the ordinance in the Arizona Daily Sun. Then they received a call from Flagstaff PD telling them to prepare to comply. He said that the cost of complying with the ordinance will be passed on to their customers and everyone involved will be hurt.
“It’s funny how the City pretends to be so environmentally conscious and then they turn around and pass an ordinance that punishes recyclers.” He said.
Click HERE to contact the Flagstaff City Council and let them know how you feel about this ordinance.
The May 1st noon meeting will be held in the Council Chambers and there will be opportunity for public comment.
May 1, 2012 UPDATE: I attended the 12:00 noon council meeting today where the second hand ordinance passed unanimously. Woodson and Presler were absent. Evans defended this item being on the noon agenda saying that the public had been given plenty of time for input. Kevin Burke (city manager) said that they’ve been discussing this for 2 1/2 years and the public had lots of time to respond. What they didn’t say was that until a month or so ago this ordinance was ONLY supposed to affect out of town gold buyers. Then they broadened it to cover bookstores, antique stores and every other business who buys from the public.
This is truly unfortunate. This is unnecessary and unwanted!
RE: Second Hand Ordinance
Please stop trying to help us, we can’t afford it. Again you’ve created a broad solution to resolve a very narrow problem. The unintended consequence ultimately hurts locally owned small businesses in favor of larger corporations that have the scale and ability to comply.
Signed, another small business owner.
PS And by all means dismiss or laugh off my criticism since I’m part of that fiscal conservative crowd that seems to threaten so many these days.
but al white says that the city is business friendly.
This is *exactly* the sort of stupid law that the libertarian Institute for Justice so enjoys fighting (and defeating). I’ll bet that if you could find a local who wants to fight it, there’s
a really good chance that IJ would help. Then you can tell these clowns at city hall that
if it passes, they can looking forward to sitting in court for as long as it takes.
Thanks Eric! Great info. I will keep the IJ in mind when I talk to business owners who will be affect by this ordinance.