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Monday night, the council voted 4-3 to defeat proposed rules requiring tattoo and body-piercing shops to register with the city, undergo background checks and have regular inspections.
Tom Blake, inaugurated earlier Monday as mayor, voted against the regulations, along with Councilor Jim Hughes and new Councilors Tom Coward and Patti Smith. Blake had argued the new rules were redundant, because the state already regulates the businesses.
Councilor Jim Soule, who just finished his term as mayor, voted for the proposal, along with Councilors Linda Boudreau and Maxine Beecher.
The City Council was giving the new regulations a second reading Monday night. Had they passed, the rules would have become effective immediately.
Although there are no tattoo shops in South Portland, the city had enacted a six-month moratorium after a business proposed opening on Broadway.
The business owner opted to move to Standish, but the City Council had been divided ever since on whether regulations were needed.
Councilors also tabled a proposal to regulate where tattoo parlors can operate in the city until it can review zoning ideas in a workshop.
Monday nights vote was an early indication of shifts on the seven-member council. Councilors Claude Morgan and Kay Loring just left office. Both had supported the moratorium. But Loring opposed regulations while Morgan endorsed them.
Coward, who replaced Morgan in District 1, has a different view.
'I look at this as potentially people not liking tattoo parlors and wanting to keep them somewhere else, said Coward, an attorney and real estate broker. 'We're making it difficult for someone to start a small business. That's not good for the city and not good for business.
Soule said the proposed regulations were a public health necessity. 'One of the primary functions we do is to oversee the health and flash tattoo magazine welfare of the community,' he said.
Soule pointed out that the state Health and tattoo practice skin Human Services office, which regulates tattoo and body-piercing establishments, is about to undergo drastic cuts. He said that because of those cuts, it's likely the state will have difficulty performing inspections, which means the city needs to do it.
'Do we really think the state is going to give accurate oversight, given these cuts?' he asked.
Coward and Blake both disagreed, saying it isn't the city's place to step in and do the states job.
'It doesn't mean we should automatically pick up that responsibility,' Blake said, explaining that it would require the city's health inspectors to undergo training and hannya tattoo take on new work, a costly endeavor.
The tabled proposal for limiting where tattoo parlors can operate in the city seemed to have more support than the ideas for regulating the businesses themselves. Both Blake and Coward spoke in favor of requiring tattoobody-piercing businesses to locate in specific zones.
The tattoo parlor that originally sparked the debate may still open a branch in South Portland.
'I get calls from that business,' said Planning Director Tex Heuser. 'They keep asking me when we're going to be done with (discussing the proposed regulations).'
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