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September 15, 2004
Roadside vendors a concern in Beatty
By RICHARD STEPHENS Jolene Brown, proprietor of the Amargosa Toad gift shop, had requested that the matter be put on the agenda. Brown said she felt Beatty needed a town ordinance to require a vendor permit and a fee of $35 a day. She said the money collected could be used to fund local economic development. Commenting on how good Beatty is looking with the current beautification effort, Ann Marchand, of Ann's Past and Present, argued that unfair competition from roadside vendors puts local businesses in jeopardy. "They're going to close; they'll get boarded up, and Beatty will start looking crappy again," she warned. "I've had people come into the store and ask me if I was going to charge them (sales) tax," said Marchand, "and I tell them I have to by law. 'Why,' they ask. 'These other people didn't' and they walk out the door." Valley Video owners Glenn and Trish Simmons said when they go as vendors to places like Kingman, Ariz., they have to pay vendor fees and set up in designated vendor's areas. Keith Himmelrick, who sells ammo cans from property he rents beside the highway, said he would be quite willing to comply with whatever requirements the town laid out, but that he was not going to pay a $35 a day fee on top of his monthly rent. Marchand and others agreed that he should not have to, but that he should have to have the required state business license and collect sales tax. Himmelrick contended the vendors were good for the local economy because they caused people to stop and look and vendors also spend their own money in town. He said most of them were gamblers and that they also had to eat. Suzie McCoy said she had called the district attorney's office, asking about something called Green River Law, and that they had promised to research it and get back to her. J. R. Shultz said that he hated ordinances, and board member Bert Bertram said it was probably something that would have to be dealt with by the county, since the Beatty board is only an advisory board. In the past, the main action has been to try to get Nevada tax law enforced. "The sheriff's office, rightly so, is unwilling to be a tax collector," said Bertram. Board member John Bass said he would research the applicable Nevada law and report back at the next board meeting. Both Bertram and Bass said that any ordinance, if there were one, would have to have some teeth in it and would have to have a chance of being enforced. The only action taken by the board was approval of paying the cost of portable restrooms for the Young Eagles fly-in at the Beatty Airport, Sept. 11. Town secretary Mary Ball reported that a technician would be coming to investigate the outage of two town radio translators. |
