TOWN OF KINGSTON, N.Y. – Town Board members have set an Aug. 19 public hearing on a Peddlers Law requiring door-to-door salespersons to get a permit.
The session is scheduled for 7 p.m. in Town Board on Sawkill Road, with officials also planning to have the session available for viewing video conference.
“We’ve had a few people … that have come in without notifying the town whatever it was they were doing,” Supervisor Paul Landi said.
“We have had some who came in and ask if they could do it,” he said. “So we knew what they were doing.”
Among problems is having residential in remote areas that do not ordinarily get commercial traffic.
“We don’t want people knocking on their doors for different things without knowing what’s going on,” Landi said. “Then we get the calls asking ‘what is that?’”
Under the proposed law to register and license home-to-home vending, soliciting and peddling a license would be required for anyone who “takes orders and sells merchandise on a house to house” basis.
“The term ‘peddler’ shall be broadly construed to mean anyone who goes from residence to residence by appointment or otherwise,” officials wrote.
The law would not apply to any person who is soliciting at the express invitation of the person being solicited, a wholesaler that has an established business in the town, or the sale of produce from a farm in the town.
The law would prohibit sales from someone who has been attempting to make sales while along a roadside in one location for more than 10 minutes.
Sales would also be prohibited from a location that is within 200 feet of a church or a school or within 500 feet of a business that sells substantially similar merchandise.
Peddlers would also be limited to making sales calls from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Peddlers would also be prohibited from calling attention to themselves by blowing a horn, shouting, or making a loud noise.
