SNOW HILL – Though it received the support of just one of the Worcester County Commissioners, a text amendment that would adjust the county’s body piercing regulations will move forward.
Commissioner Joe Mitrecic was the only one to add his name to proposed legislation that would make changes to the county’s body piercing regulations.
“All you need is one,” Commissioner Jim Bunting said.
Thanks to Mitrecic’s support, the text amendment will be considered during one of the commissioners’ coming legislative sessions and will be the subject of a public hearing.
According to Ed Tudor, the county’s director of development review and permitting, attorney Pete Cosby submitted the text amendment on behalf of Dan Troiano, the owner of Dimensions. Cosby seeks to add subsections to county code that would prohibit body piercers from soliciting business off the premises of a body piercing establishment and would also prohibit the payment of referral fees. The text amendment also proposes to modify what’s required before a minor can get a piercing.
“Specifically, it would delete the requirement for notarization of the written parental authority and proof of parental status,” Tudor wrote in a report to the commissioners.
He said Debbie Goeller, the county’s health officer, was not in favor of the altering those requirements. In a memo to Tudor, she said that by eliminating the proof of parental status — usually a birth certificate or legal guardianship papers — there would be no way to verify the person who was authorizing the piercing of the minor was in fact a parent.
“Due to the number of minors that were pierced under the signature of a ‘guardian’ prior to the 2001 adoption of the current section of the code and the subsequent parental complaints that followed, our office would urge caution in relaxing this section,” Goeller wrote.
She said that while it was true many visitors to Ocean City didn’t bring their birth certificates on vacation with them, it was the county’s responsibility to ensure that only a minor’s true guardians were able to authorize a procedure that had the potential for pain, bleeding and infection.
Mitrecic wasn’t comfortable with that portion of the amendment but said he understood the reasoning for the other changes proposed. He said there were stores in Ocean City advertising body piercing even though they didn’t offer it.
“These shops aren’t set up to do body piercing,” he said. “There’s a lot of requirements that you have to have in order to do it there in the store and they don’t. They advertise on the Boardwalk and send them off to other places.”
