http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPKUUH7ytUo&feature=youtu.be
Police in Midway, Georgia shut down a lemonade stand run by three girls trying to make money for a trip to a water park in Savannah because the youngsters didn't have the license and permits required for their fledgling enterprise. City ordinances require a business license, a peddler's permit, and a food permit for the vending of food or beverages, even on residential property in the small city (pop. approximately 1,100) just south of Savannah. The license and permits cost $50 a day or $180 a year, according to Coastal Source, a website of Savannah TV stations WJCL and WTGS.
So the girls shut down their stand and are doing yard work and other chores to make money.
"They told us to shut it down," 10-year-old Skylar Roberts reported. "It's kind of crazy that we couldn't sell lemonade," said Casity Dixon, 14. "It was fun, but we had to listen to the cops and shut it down."
The stand had been operating just one day when the city's police chief and a deputy drove by and spotted it. Police Chief Kelly Morningstar said it was simply a matter of enforcing the law.
"We were not aware of how the lemonade was made, who made the lemonade, of what the lemonade was made with, so we acted accordingly by city ordinance," Morningstar said. "We had told them, we understand you guys are young, but still, you're breaking the law, and we can't let you do it anymore. The law is the law, and we have to be consistent with how we enforce the laws," Morningstar said.
The Freedom Center of Missouri has published on its website a long list of actions taken in recent years by police or other local officials against children selling cookies, cupcakes, or lemonade. Last August Bruce Walker wrote in The New American that health inspectors in Mutlnomah Country, Oregon, warned a seven-year-old of a potential $500 fine if she continued to sell lemonade without a license. Earlier this year Girl Scouts in Savannah, Georgia, were prohibited from continuing their decades-old practice of selling cookies in front of the childhood home of the organization's founder, Juliet Gordon Low. After receiving a complaint, Randolph Scott, the city's zoning administrator, investigated and discovered the Scouts were setting up a table on the city sidewalk in violation of a city ordinance.
"I know it doesn't look good," Scott told the Savannah Morning News. "However, other businesses won't care if it's the Girl Scouts or March of Dimes. They're going to say, 'Why can't I sit out front and solicit business?'"
Last month parents of children selling lemonade near the US Open at the Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland, were fined $500 after their children ignored Montgomery County officials' orders to stop.
Police in Midway, Georgia shut down a lemonade stand run by three girls trying to make money for a trip to a water park in Savannah because the youngsters didn't have the license and permits required for their fledgling enterprise. City ordinances require a business license, a peddler's permit, and a food permit for the vending of food or beverages, even on residential property in the small city (pop. approximately 1,100) just south of Savannah. The license and permits cost $50 a day or $180 a year, according to Coastal Source, a website of Savannah TV stations WJCL and WTGS.
So the girls shut down their stand and are doing yard work and other chores to make money.
"They told us to shut it down," 10-year-old Skylar Roberts reported. "It's kind of crazy that we couldn't sell lemonade," said Casity Dixon, 14. "It was fun, but we had to listen to the cops and shut it down."
The stand had been operating just one day when the city's police chief and a deputy drove by and spotted it. Police Chief Kelly Morningstar said it was simply a matter of enforcing the law.
"We were not aware of how the lemonade was made, who made the lemonade, of what the lemonade was made with, so we acted accordingly by city ordinance," Morningstar said. "We had told them, we understand you guys are young, but still, you're breaking the law, and we can't let you do it anymore. The law is the law, and we have to be consistent with how we enforce the laws," Morningstar said.
The Freedom Center of Missouri has published on its website a long list of actions taken in recent years by police or other local officials against children selling cookies, cupcakes, or lemonade. Last August Bruce Walker wrote in The New American that health inspectors in Mutlnomah Country, Oregon, warned a seven-year-old of a potential $500 fine if she continued to sell lemonade without a license. Earlier this year Girl Scouts in Savannah, Georgia, were prohibited from continuing their decades-old practice of selling cookies in front of the childhood home of the organization's founder, Juliet Gordon Low. After receiving a complaint, Randolph Scott, the city's zoning administrator, investigated and discovered the Scouts were setting up a table on the city sidewalk in violation of a city ordinance.
"I know it doesn't look good," Scott told the Savannah Morning News. "However, other businesses won't care if it's the Girl Scouts or March of Dimes. They're going to say, 'Why can't I sit out front and solicit business?'"
Last month parents of children selling lemonade near the US Open at the Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland, were fined $500 after their children ignored Montgomery County officials' orders to stop.
