Clarksville, TN – On Thursday, June 6th, 2019, the Clarksville City Council gave final approval to an ordinance that increases peddlers permit fees and updates provisions relative to peddlers that had been in the City Code since 1963.
The old code had called for a $2.00 fee to obtain a peddler’s permit, which was way out of date and fell far short of the actual costs in 2019 to process a permit application.
The new code would establish a $40.00 non-refundable application fee, and an updated application process. The applicant would pay $100.00 for the actual permit. If the application is not approved, the $100.00 permit fee would be refunded to the applicant.
According to the Clarksville Finance and Revenue Department, the $40.00 application fee is based on the actual cost of time and administration associated with reviewing and investigating the application. The $100.00 permit fee would cover additional issuance costs and enforcement of the permit. The fee is consistent with other business permits and processes in the City Code.
The new code shifts issuance of the peddler’s permit from the City Clerk to the Clarksville Finance and Revenue Department.
The definition of a peddler is updated in the new code, but it still includes door-to-door salespersons or solicitors, “itinerant merchants,” and mobile operations such as food trucks.
According to the ordinance approved June 6th, the code is not applicable “to persons selling at wholesale to dealers, nor to newsboys, nor to bona fide merchants who merely deliver goods in a regular course of business, nor to bona fide charitable, religious, patriotic or philanthropic organizations.”
In other words, the code does not ban door-to-door sales of Girl Scout cookies or other door-to-door non-profit fundraising sales operations.
