Solicitors may soon go door-to-door

For more than 50 years, door-to-door salesmen haven’t been welcomed in Granville, where a local law banned such activities, with potential criminal charges for uninvited solicitors.

The ordinance didn’t stop the occasional magazine-subscription seller or

others pushing products and services from knocking on doors, including, in recent weeks, the residences of several Village Council members.

“I am not aware of it ever being enforced,” said attorney Michael King, the law director in the Licking County village 35 miles east of Columbus.

Still, the community is now considering rescinding the outright ban and adopting a system of permits and restrictions on hours for soliciting after a Utah-based pest control company threatened legal action. A public hearing is set for Aug. 16 to accept comments on a new ordinance to regulate peddlers and solicitors.

“The goal really is to set enough guidelines and rules so that people can be at ease,

but then the companies that need to do this still have their constitutional right to speech protected,” King said.

In May, Jeremy Fielding, an attorney in Dallas representing Aptive Environmental, sent a notice to the village, calling the peddling prohibitions unconstitutional and promising legal action if the language wasn’t changed.

Aptive, with offices in Columbus and elsewhere in Ohio and around the nation, is a pest-control company that secures its initial sales “almost exclusively through door-to-door solicitation,” generally between 10:30 a.m. and 9 p.m., Fielding wrote. He added in the letter, “In 2016 alone, Aptive made nearly $1.2 million in door-to-door sales in the Cincinnati metro area. Aptive is thus losing thousands of dollars every day it is prohibited from soliciting in Granville.”

Courts have struck down other municipal ordinances that prohibit door-to-door sales outright or place heavy restrictions on such tactics, generally citing First Amendment issues.

Fielding said he has filed suit against other cities on behalf of Aptive and another pestcontrol company, notably in Macedonia in the Cleveland area and Liberty Township in southwestern Ohio. Both of those communities, he said, subsequently rescinded their peddling ordinances.

Fielding said letters were sent to another 30 to 50 communities, requesting that they rescind bans on door-to-door sales.

Under the new ordinance proposed in Granville, peddlers would have to secure permits to solicit funds or distribute handbills for commercial business activities. The permits would cost $50, and solicitations would not be allowed before 9 a.m. on weekdays or 10 a.m. on weekends, or after dusk or 9 p.m., whichever is earlier.

Permits would not be required for charitable groups or for distribution of noncommercial handbills.

King, who considered comparable ordinances adopted by other communities, said he believes the proposed language would withstand legal challenges while balancing the interests of residents and businesses.

“The only people that would object to stuff like this would be the folks that have a less legitimate interest,” he said.

Village Councilman Dan Finkelman said, “It doesn’t prevent anything if you come and apply. All it’s really saying is you have to have a permit to solicit funds or (commercial business).”

Finkelman added that he and other council members dealt with door-to-door salesmen in the days before the discussion.

“Some of them were not all that pleasant an experience,” he said. “Some people had two people come to the door asking more intrusive questions than one would expect was appropriate from someone selling magazines.”

Though he hadn’t read the Granville language, Fielding said Aptive does not oppose reasonable regulations on solicitors.

“We’re not some fly-bynight, operated-out-of-a-van operation,” he said. “This is a sophisticated, complex, large, multi-million-dollar company that takes training and safety very seriously.

“We want to keep disreputable people that are up to no good off the doors.”