Salisbury City Council considers plastic bag ban exemption, steps to control bird scooters
SALISBURY, Md – The Salisbury City Council is moving forward with a planned exemption the the City’s plastic bag ban that saw carry-out food vendors, restaurants, and others having to pay a fee for paper bags once available for free for customers.
Council President April Jackson tells 47ABC the council has moved forward with a measure to revise the language to differentiate between a restaurant or food vendor versus the intended focus of the measure of grocery and convenience stores.
Jackson believes the current language is only adding costs to purchases consumers make on a daily basis.
“What we wanted to do is to take that fee away for certain people with food carriers such as like restaurants, pharmacies, anything to basically transport it, cooked food and things. We wanted to take that fee away from that, basically, I would love to see the fee go, period,” she said.
Jackson says the state of Maryland is also looking to start a ban at which point they will have to comply but hopes this measure can offer some financial relief in the meantime.
It remains unclear what the final language of that exemption would look like.
Also on the Agenda was a need to streamline and reduce issues with the Bird Scooters adopted by the city in 2021.
During the session, council members pushed to have the manufacturer of the bird scooters provide storage options and to gather more information about how other municipalities have dealt with the scooters.
Jackson says she understands that once the fare is up the scooters stop and are too heavy to move but says there must be a better way.
“We are looking at one location in every area, because I know people have them all over the city of Salisbury and in the county, so we just want to localize places in each area where they can be put,” Jackson said.
She says no language has been drafted, but they hope to work with the manufacturer in ways to consider the interests of other motorists, pedestrians and scooter users.
