The Peabody City Council convened on September 11, 2025, starting with the Legal Affairs Subcommittee and Finance Committee in the early evening, followed by the regular City Council meeting at 7:30 PM. Key topics included updates to civil fingerprinting and quarry requirements for licenses, a special permit for a cat boarding facility, an earth removal permit for landfill expansion, a license transfer, and multiple financial transfers.
4A: Special Permit for Cat-Only Boarding Facility
Applicant Sharon Ramos requested to operate a kennel in BR zone at 6 Bourbon Street. Health department recommendations applied as conditions. Public hearing closed; approved 10-0.
4B: Earth Removal Permit for ReWorld Peabody Inc.
Request to remove 91,700 cubic yards of earthen material from 0 Forest Street for landfill Phase 4. Council continued the hearing to September 25, 2025, due to lack of departmental responses from Fire Department and DPS, and to obtain a blasting schedule. Motion to continue with requests for responses passed.
4C: Transfer of Class 2 Motor Vehicle License
From Auto Choice to Cardeva Inc. at 249 Andover Street. Conditions: maximum 30 unregistered cars on site, no loading/unloading on public way. Approved 11-0.
Meeting adjourned at approximately 9:30 PM.
Good evening, and welcome to the legal affairs subcommittee. Attending the legal affairs subcommittee, our councillor Higgins, Councillor Melville, Councillor Peach, Councillor Turko, Councillor Gould, Councillor Gamash, Councillor McGinn, and myself as chair. We have one item on the agenda, and that is civil fingerprints and quarries regarding section 16-5, where this deals with the city clerk's office as well as the police department. Just to let us know where we are and the direction that her office wants to move in, and then I'll have um Chief Griffin come before us and let us know where we stand as far as fingerprints go through the police department and what he's looking for. I now turn it over to Clerk Danforth. Thank you, Counselor. So the reason this is coming before you tonight is uh twofold. Our um licenses are expiring at the end of the year. We'll be sending out the renewals in about a month and a half, and so I'm looking for some guidance from the council and from um the chief who I've spoken with uh briefly. Um this is regarding uh our use of quarries for licenses, and also the civil fingerprinting ordinance that was adopted back in 2017, which we've never used. And so we'd like to start using it. And I have a number of licenses. Uh went through them with the chief. Um I have them. I would entertain a motion to receive late five. Thank you very much. So moved. You heard the motion by Councillor Turko. Any discussions seeing none, all in favor, and all opposed any opposed, it's a vote. Cliff Damport. Council, can I make that four and five? So moved. Seeing no rejections, all in favor. Any opposed, it's a vote. So the chief could probably give you a better um a clearer understanding than I can of the differences between a quarry and the fingerprinting and how in-depth each of those are. Um and so if you want to start doing that, Chief, and then we can go through the licenses and he could give a recommendation on how we should move forward. Sure, the the fingerprints just confirms the information on the um on the printouts. Uh definitively beyond just um someone's name and date of birth, because there could be a number of people that have similar names and data births, and and this would just cut right through that and um provide an uh definitive uh result. Clerk Danforth. Thank you. So, like I said, this is to um cut back on the workload of the clerk's office with regard to the quarries. I found out recently last year that the licensing board does a quarry on their initial um application and they don't do another quarry. In the clerk's office, we've been doing a quarry on applicants for renewals every year. And we have quite a few, and so to cut back on our workload and cut back on the uh police department's workload as well. The fingerprinting does come with a price, uh, where the quarries did not, and I think the chief has uh more knowledge on the price right now in the ordinance. It's it says it's a hundred dollars, and uh right. That's for um there is a fee from the state, and then we added that just to have some administrative uh to help out on our end of it uh and have that go into a rev. I think at the time it went into a revolving account that we have already established. Clerk Danforth and so that's going to stay at $100? Um, I mean that uh we can I know that we had talked about maybe bringing that down to the 30 uh because of the with the economy and everything the way it is, it's kind of challenging for some of these license holders if there's an interest in that. I thought maybe we're gonna go to 50. Oh 50. Right. So that would be up to the council because that's in the ordinance. So that's the difference. We don't pay uh charge um applicants right now for the quarries, but we do for we will for the fingerprinting, which we have not begun to do. And um, like I said, that ordinance was passed in 2017. So I have a list of um licenses in late five, and the chief and I briefly went through them and he gave me his recommendation on which ones should require a fingerprinting and which ones require a quarry and how often. So if you want me to go through the list and stop me, um if you have any questions. So an auctioneer license, I haven't done one of those, and so uh the chief has recommended that we do a quarry when we get one of those.