What’s the 422?

A proposed non-solicitation ordinance in Trappe Borough has been temporarily shelved amid concerns that organizations such as the Girl Scouts and school-based charity groups could inadvertently run afoul of its provisions.

The ordinance would have allowed borough residents to place their homes on a “Do Not Knock” registry. Prospective solicitors would have been required to honor the registry as a condition of receiving a borough solicitation permit, while violators would have been subject to fines as high as $300 per incident.

Borough Council Member Catherine Johnson said she liked the idea but believed it could have unintended consequences.

“I’d hate to put a Girl Scout or a high school kid who’s selling something in that position [of being fined],” Johnson said at the May 5 borough council meeting.

“It’s only $300 a house,” joked Council Member Nevin Scholl. Scholl suggested that the Girl Scouts and similar groups could be placed in a category of solicitor that didn’t require a permit, such as religious groups or political organizations, or, alternatively, exempting minors from the ordinance entirely.

Borough Solicitor Dave Onorato said such an ordinance could place the borough on shaky First Amendment grounds.

“You can regulate manner of speech, but you can’t regulate the content of speech. When you start selecting groups that are ‘okay’ groups, in a sense you’d be regulating the speech itself,” Onorato said.

Onorato indicated that if the regulation allowed trick-or-treaters or the Girl Scouts to solicit homes on the “Do Not Knock” registry but prohibited for-profit solicitors from doing so, any businesses affected by the ordinance could claim that the borough was attempting to regulate the content of their speech.

Onorato pointed out that individual property owners remain free to post “no solicitation” or “no trespassing” signs, but that attempts to limit solicitation at a borough-wide level would need to be broadly written.

Borough Manager Tommy Ryan described the proposed ordinance as an attempt to help property owners avoid unwanted solicitation. He said he’d received “about a dozen” solicitation-related complaints from residents since assuming his position in March 2008.

“There are several communities in New Jersey, there’s a community in California, and there’s a community in Ohio that do this,” Ryan said, referring to the “Do Not Knock” registry.

Ryan said that he would conduct a survey of residents through the borough’s newsletter and Web site in an attempt to gauge how many would sign up for a “Do Not Knock” registry.