Bath Township Trustees Agree to Authorize Summit County to License Vendors, Solicitors and Peddlers

In an effort to ease resident concerns, the Trustees agreed to authorize the Summit County Office of Consumer Affairs to oversee the licensing of solicitors, vendors and canvassers.

"Not one incident lead to this," said Township Administrator Bill Snow, who recommended Resolution 2011-53 at the trustees 's Nov. 21 meeting.

In this wooded community, where sidewalks are not a part of the landscape, vendors have been known to cut across residents' lots, sometimes as deep as 100 to 200 feet.

"This causes heartburn for a lot of people," Snow said. Residents don't know right away who is walking across their property, and this causes some fear.

Summit County now requires vendors to walk on driveways only. And the county has a tougher application process than the township. At the moment, to apply for a license in Bath Township, vendors have a three-day waiting period and must pay a $25 fee.

Summit County requires that vendors submit to a background check with the Sheriff's Department, wait 10 days and pay a $35 fee. And, something that is different from times past, the county will inform the township if a particular vendor is licensed.

And if vendors are caught without a license, they are subject to a fine of $100 to $500 each day the violation occurs, according to the Summit County Office of Consumer Affairs website.

For now, vendors can either be licensed through the township or the county. "I just want to see how the process works first," Snow said. However, he expects to recommend that Summit County eventually takes over the process.