Politics & Government

City of Plymouth Seeks to Limit Garage Sales Per Household

A new ordinance would limit the number of garage sales to three a year.

The City of Plymouth is taking steps to limit the number of garage sales in residential neighborhoods after receiving complaints of multiple sales at a single house on weekends.

The point is to avoid having a garage sale-type business in a residential area, according to City Manager Paul Sincock. 

Plymouth does not currently have any guidelines on garage sales. The proposed ordinance would limit the number of garage sales per house to three per calendar year. Sincock said there would also be some kind of registration process. 

"We will work on that a little bit because we'd like to make that as simple as possible for the residents," Sincock said. "We'll have online registration and maybe a phone registration, I'm not sure about that."

There will be no fee associated registering to hold a garage sale. 

Mayor Dan Dwyer said the issue was brought up about a specific person within a neighborhood because of the high amount of traffic being pulled into the area.  

"My sense is that 99 percent of the people who live in this town will never care that this ordinance exists," Dwyer said. "It's like so many other things, a couple of bad apples causing inconvenience for a lot of people. Having to come down to City Hall and register to have a garage sale is inconvenient, but I think on the whole, I'll live with that inconvenience if an entire neighborhood gets relief."

Commissioner Ron Loiselle disagreed.

"My point of contention is that we're trying to do something for one person abusing the garage sale thing, so we're going to inconvenience every other person who has a garage sale in the city," he said. "You're inconveniencing hundreds of other people for one person." 

"I look at it as I'm providing relief for an entire neighborhood," Dwyer said.

The ordinance would also make it so that no sale can last longer than three consecutive days, limit the hours of operation from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. and ban excessive noise. 

Violators will be charged with a civil infraction, which comes with a $100 fine under the new ordinance. 

Sincock said the garage sale issue comes up from time to time, but is not a huge problem for the city. 

The ordinance will come back before the City Commission for a second reading at its next meeting, July 1.


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