Petoskey scraps fortune telling restrictions, but updated regulations still in question

Petoskey City Hall stands Monday, March 14, 2022, located at 101 East Lake Street.
Petoskey City Hall stands Monday, March 14, 2022, located at 101 East Lake Street.

PETOSKEY — Petoskey will remove an archaic and potentially unconstitutional anti-fortune telling ordinance from its books.

Now, officials are trying to determine how far they should go in regulating those ventures which previously would have been outlawed under the old language. That question poses a dilemma between the competing objectives of preserving citizens’ religious and personal liberties, and protecting them from would-be opportunists who could take advantage of a lax city policy.

They won’t be moving forward with the first draft of a regulatory policy, modeled after one in place in Warren, which would require commercial fortune tellers to acquire an annual $150 license from the city, with mandatory mug shots, fingerprints and a background check.

“For law-abiding citizens to be treated like a criminal in an application process, the fingerprinting, the mug shots, the background criminal checks, is offensive and deeply disturbing,” said Councilwoman Lindsey Walker.

More: Petoskey fortune-telling restriction to undergo a more thorough reading

More: Petoskey could repeal largely unenforced anti-fortune telling ordinance

Petoskey City Council members first attempted to tackle the issue in February, after receiving questions from a citizen who was looking to conduct fortune-telling sessions in the city.

The policy, which states “it shall be unlawful for any person to engage in fortunetelling or pretend to tell fortunes for hire, gain, or reward,” is filed under a section of city code that addresses “miscellaneous offenses and provisions,” and grouped alongside a handful of “offenses against persons.”

The existing ordinance had gone almost entirely unenforced in recent history, and there initially appeared to be no major hurdles to getting rid of it.

At that February meeting, however, former Petoskey Public Safety Director John Calabrese cautioned the officials against scrapping the policy entirely — at least, not without replacing it with something to enforce against bad actors.

In 2013, his department investigated the case of an illicit fortune-telling business operating within the city whose owner had ties to a “non-traditional organized crime” operation. Without some ordinance on the books discouraging the use of fortune telling as a cover for scam, Petoskey could risk more of such cases, he said.

Acting City Manager Al Terry and the city’s legal counsel spent the intervening months reviewing potential regulatory measures and drafting a possible ordinance before council members returned to the issue Monday. They came up with a five-page policy that sparked concerns for both citizens and council members, both on the grounds of the potential ambiguities it could create for religious activities, and in terms of the severity of licensing requirements.

The policy would have explicitly granted exceptions to the ordinance in cases of public entertainment, or in the context of religious ceremonies by “bona fide” churches or religious institutions.

Councilman Brian Wagner raised concerns, derived from comments he’d received from constituents, about how the city would be able to distinguish a “bona fide” religious organization from an illegitimate one.

“There is no cut and dried definition of what one is, unfortunately,” Terry replied. “It’s not like you're going to the state of Michigan and they give you a permit and say, ‘Here, you're a bona fide religious organization.'”

He said there would have to be judgements made, based on existing standards, to help make that determination.

Other council members said the issue seemed to have strayed too far from the original intentions of the officials. They had begun the conversation earlier this year simply intending to clarify and correct the city code for current law-abiding citizens hoping to start their own businesses. But they argued the current draft took too broad an approach in trying to mitigate a potentially minor issue of transient scammers taking advantage of the city’s code. They determined regulations were needed, but required a different approach.

Council members did unanimously agree on scrapping the existing prohibition.

“I don't think that, as written, is defensible,” said Matt Cross, legal counsel for the city. “If it was challenged, it's almost certainly going to get shot down. I think it's that blanket prohibition that’s blatantly unconstitutional. So that needs to go. The question is what to replace it with.”

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Petoskey continuing discussions on fortune telling businesses