Panel refers tax title bylaw, revises licensing rules

Other Committee · Meeting of August 27, 2026

Southbridge's Town Council By-law Review Committee referred a new tax title payment bylaw to town counsel and pushed through a string of Chapter 6 licensing fixes. Chair Stephen Kelly's panel voted 3-0 to approve July 30 minutes, then unanimously sent proposed Section 5-103A, allowing the treasurer to set up multi-year payment plans for delinquent taxpayers, to legal review. The police chief told members the town's dog-violation fines, unchanged at $25 to $100, lag the state's $50-to-$500 scale, and he and the animal control officer will return November 5 with written recommendations on kennels, tethering and record retention.

Members voted unanimously to require criminal background checks for peddler and solicitor applicants and to replace vague "morals" language in license-revocation rules with the legal standard "moral turpitude." Councilor Steeves, who called himself "a lawyer looking at this," argued the old language was "too limiting." A 4-0 vote, with one member absent from the room, added "possessing" to property-nuisance responsibility language. The committee set October 22 for a Department of Public Works bylaw session.

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Source: the Other Committee meeting of August 27, 2026, reported from the official video recording and transcript.