The solicitation of tourists on the public sidewalks of downtown Branson by vacation clubs and time share sales personnel may lead to a change in the Branson Municipal code (BMC) to help control the problem. In introducing the item for discussion at the work session meeting of the Branson Board of Alderman held on May 6, Paul D. Link, Branson’s City Attorney, said, “There has been some downtown businesses that have issued some complaints recently about some vacation club sales and time shares, that kind of business, getting a lot of locations in downtown Branson and soliciting people on the sidewalk.”
Link said that it’s not necessarily selling product on the sidewalk. He pointed out that some sales people approach people when they get out of their cars and saying, “Hey have you got your tickets yet for this weekend or I’ve got free tickets for you and enticing people to come back into the four corners of their store to sell them stuff.”
Link stressed that the complaints were not necessarily from citizens or tourists shopping in the downtown area but were from business owners saying it’s creating an environment of a lot of solicitations out on the sidewalk. Branson Police Sergeant Sean Barnwell indicated that the issue has been a concern since the fall of 2006 and pointed out that investigative efforts thus far have revealed no substantive violations of current BMC ordinances relating to solicitation.
Alderwoman Chris Bohinc asked if the people being solicited actually got free tickets without having to go to a vacation club or time share presentation or open house. Sergeant Barnwell stated, “There is only one show that I am aware of that they give actually free tickets to and that’s the Owens Theatre downtown. I haven’t been to it but it’s my understanding that there’s a sales gimmick involved in the show so you’ll either hear the speal going somewhere else or during the show.”
Bohinc said that she and her husband routinely walk through the downtown and are solicited about 100 percent of the time. She said she believed that they are solicited so often is because the people doing the solicitation work primarily for commission and that there is such a large turnover that the solicitors don’t know that they have been solicited before. Alderwoman Sandra Williams said that a lot of the complaints that she has received have come from those businesses in the downtown area not involved with vacation club or time share sales. Those businesses reported complaints from people coming into their businesses complaining about being solicited on the public sidewalks by vacation club or time share sales personnel.
Link said that in an effort to provide a solution for the problem it was proposed that a new definition for the term “Solicit” be added to the BMC. If the definition is adopted as proposed it would read, “Means to initiate contact with a member of the public by the offer of any free or discounted goods or services in exchange for any action on the part of that member of the general public.”
Subsection 26-67 of the Branson Municipal Code (BMC) makes it unlawful “to solicit when either the solicitor or the person being solicited is located on public property.” In addition it makes it unlawful to solicit when either the solicitor or the person being solicited is located within ten feet of the doorway to any business, 20 feet of a public toilet; 20 feet of an automated teller machine, or 20 feet of a pay telephone.
There was no discussion about the fact that the new definition actually applies to all of Branson, not just the downtown, and substantially reduces the scope of the term “solicit” as it is normally defined. It was suggested that the proposed ordinance be circulated for input from the businesses in the downtown area.
Furnished Courtesy of the Branson Daily Independent.
