Trustees OK rules for sales

New regulations for yard, garage, estate sales go into effect on Aug. 26

Yard, garage and estate sales in Perry Township soon will have to be conducted in compliance with some new rules.

Those requirements stem from a zoning amendment that township trustees approved at their July 27 meeting.

Trustees voted unanimously in favor of adding regulations to the community’s zoning code to regulate such sales.

The following new rules will appear in a section of the zoning code dealing with special provisions applicable to residential districts:

• Garage, yard and estate sales will be permitted up to a maximum of four events per calendar year on any single lot.

• The maximum duration of any garage, yard or estate sale will be three consecutive days, during daylight hours only.

• A zoning certificate will not be required for a garage, yard or estate sale.

• All displayed merchandise, tables, tents, signs and other paraphernalia associated with these sales must be removed immediately upon the completion of the event.

Perry Township Trustee Rick Amos said the intent of the new requirements is to prevent residents from having “a perpetual (garage, yard or estate) sale that never shuts down.”

“So this is the way to control the people that have stuff that they’re selling out of their yards all the time and the problems that that creates,” Amos said.

The mandate allowing up to four specified sales per year on a residential property seemed “generous” to Amos.

“Most people don’t have anywhere near that many (garage, yard or estate) sales (in a given year),” he said.

Required public hearings on the proposed rules were held on June 9 by the township Zoning Commission and July 13 by township trustees. No formal comments from the general public were received at either session.

However, Amos said at the July 27 trustees meeting that a neighbor recently approached him about the suggested zoning-code amendment and they casually discussed the topic for about an hour.

“She mentioned a lot of things that are in place in (the township’s) zoning and agreed those are probably all necessary, but she wanted to make clear to me that she wasn’t in favor of this one,” Amos said.

“I told her she might be one of the very, very few who felt that way, but I would certainly share her thoughts.”