LIVERMORE FALLS — Selectmen approved going through the process of changing two town ordinances to policies at the April 15 meeting held at the town office.

Currently the process for both the Special Amusement Permit and Mobile Food Vendor ordinances is the same, Code Enforcement Officer Rick Haas said.

“Right now, when somebody wants to do either of those they pull a permit for it and then the process gets convoluted,” Haas stated. “We’re looking at public hearings, we’re looking at everything has to come to you folks and have it signed off on.”

The recommendation Haas made is to do away with the ordinances and change them to policies. He said they can’t be changed to policy until the June elections, as voter approval would be needed to do away with the ordinances.

Once they become policies, selectmen can make changes to it as they see fit without it having to go through
public hearings and voter approval, Haas noted.

“Do you feel that would cover both of those,” Chair William Kenniston asked.

“It’s two separate ordinances but they both are requiring the same thing,” Haas responded. “If somebody wants to bring a food truck into town, they’re supposed to get a permit for it, do all the stuff. It goes to the code official, gets signed off, then it goes in for a public hearing, and then once everything passes then the board signs off on it.”

There hasn’t been a lot of people getting the permits or there’s been no one at public hearings, Haas said. “It seems like there’s just a lot of extra effort being put forth for what needs to be, in my opinion a pretty easy permit to issue, as long as they’re going to follow all the rules that we have for those,” he noted.

“You’re the one who checks to make sure they have all of those rules before it goes into place,” Selectman Bruce Peary asked Haas.

“That’s correct,” Haas answered.

“I didn’t realize that, I must have missed that part of the mobile food vendor,” Kenniston stated. “I realized the special permit one, that one.”

“I didn’t realize that they had to go to a public hearing either,” Peary said.

“Well, on the special amusement we have,” Kenniston noted. “Everybody usually comes in and talks. We haven’t had anybody ask for the other one since it was voted into place.”

Would a policy be set up if somebody wanted to appeal a decision, Kenniston asked.

“It would go to the Board of Appeals,” Haas answered. “If they comply with what the rules and regulations are, there should be no reason why they can’t get one. It just takes a lot of the loops out of it. There’s also time constraints – 15 days for a public hearing notice. Some people are slow getting to the program. Just forgot that the date crept up on them and they wanted to do something, an event, and they’ve lost their opportunity. With this they could do it the day of. ”

“I have no problem with that,” Peary said. “Rick will take care of the checks and balances to make sure it’s up to snuff and up to code.”

“You still have control, because it’ll be policy,” Haas noted. “It’s just not an ordinance.”

“We could probably do with a few less ordinances,” Kenniston said.

“If this is something you want to move forward with we would have to put it on the June or November elections or both to repeal those two ordinances,” Town Manager Carrie Castonguay said. “We would have to draft policies.”

When asked, Castonguay confirmed she would have input on drafting the policies.

“If it can streamline things and it doesn’t seem like we have a big need for it anyway, so I’m not opposed to it,” Kenniston said.

“I think we should move to move it for the June [election] because we’re going to have more likelihood of having special amusement and the possibility of a mobile food vendor in the summer months than we would in November,” Peary added.

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