Council approves amendments to business-licensing, secondhand-sales and solid-waste rules

The Surprise City Council on Feb. 18 approved an ordinance amending chapters 26 and 58 of the Surprise Municipal Code to update business-licensing provisions and certain solid-waste rules.

Andrea, a city staff member presenting the changes, described the ordinance as a set of clarifying and business-friendly code updates that improve readability and reduce administrative burden. "We're looking for just generally improve the clarity, consistency of the code," Andrea said.

Key changes the council approved include:

- Separating secondhand sales from pawnshops: Pawnshops will remain regulated under state statute and will keep a low reporting threshold; secondhand sales (for shops that sell used items such as instruments) will be treated separately. - Raising the reporting threshold for secondhand sales from $25 to $500 for the tickets that businesses must turn over to the police department; pawnshops remain at the $25 threshold for reporting. - Removing fingerprint requirements tied to an undefined "on-site manager" category and instead requiring fingerprints from the license applicant (bringing massage-establishment fingerprinting into alignment with other categories). - Eliminating a previously required solid-waste vehicle permit that carried a $1,000-per-truck fee; staff said the activity is covered elsewhere in city regulation and the additional permit was no longer necessary.

Councilman Melton praised the changes as reducing unnecessary bureaucracy and making rules more applicable to "the real world," saying, "Thank you for looking at it and, you know, revising these and be having these more applicable to the real world." The ordinance passed on a unanimous vote.

The city clerk read the ordinance as item 10 on the agenda; councilmembers moved and seconded approval and the clerk recorded a unanimous yes vote.