Purge of some city licenses would affect Wichita clairvoyants, auctioneers, others
The city of Wichita is expected to move forward with a purge of unused and outdated licensing requirements.
Fortune-tellers, auctioneers and airport limousine operators are among those who may soon be free of the legal requirement to obtain a license from the city. The City Council will vote Tuesday on a proposal to strike 15 such licensing requirements from the books.
“There are a lot of changes that we want to do, but we thought we’d pick basically the low-hanging fruit first and go for the easy ones that we don’t use very often,” Assistant City Attorney Jan Jarman told City Council members at a recent workshop where she outlined the licenses identified as obsolete by the law department.
License requirements should only exist if they protect the public or otherwise promote a healthy community, she said. Those that don’t aren’t needed.
Wichita issued only one clairvoyant/fortune teller license in 2023, records show.
“I’m not sure it promotes a healthy public to have this license,” Jarman said. “There have been no clairvoyant busts by the police department. It’s just something where somebody pays a fee and we have it.”
Others, such as the cabaret and dance hall licenses, haven’t been enforced since the creation of the city’s entertainment establishment license. Similarly, the airport limousine license has been rendered obsolete by the city’s charter limousine ordinance, which has its own safety provisions.
Six theaters and shows licenses have been issued this year, but Jarman said the requirement is the product of a very old ordinance with strange origins.
“Long ago, movies weren’t allowed on Sundays. It looks like Wichita probably started to allow movies on Sundays, but they put some restrictions on movies,” she said. “Really, we’re just concerned about the building and if it’s a safe place to be.”
With or without such a license, venues are required to be up to code with proper fire safety protocols.
The city also plans to eliminate license requirements for public domino tables — two have been issued in 2023 — penny arcades and other coin-operated amusement.
“Probably the most controversial would be coin-operated amusement,” Jarman said. “That is an ordinance that says you have to have a license to deal in coin-operated machines. So, if you have a pool table that takes coins . . . you have to have a license to put those in the bar. The bar also has to have a license to have them, and they have to have a sticker that costs about a dollar [on every coin-operated machine in the establishment].”
Fifty coin-operated amusement licenses have been issued this year, generating $11,400 in revenue for the city. The other 14 license requirements slated for elimination generated a combined approximately $3,000 in 2023, according to a staff report.
The law department recommends eliminating the coin-operated amusement license because the city has no process for inspecting machines, as is the case for the vehicular advertising license meant to regulate LED advertising on trucks.
“All you have to do is come in and pay the fee and you get your license, and that’s really what we’re trying to eliminate,” Jarman said. “We’re trying to get to a point where if you have a license, there’s a reason — because we’re going to look at what you’re doing.”
The proposal also calls for eliminating the city’s business termination and liquidation license.
“If you are going out of business and you put the big yellow signs up and you’re going to have a going out of business sale, we actually have an ordinance that says you have to have a license to have one,” Jarman said. “I would assume so you don’t have one every week and pretend like you’re constantly going out of business.”
But she called the regulation “sort of a slippery slope.”
“We don’t manage prices in other types of businesses, and since none are issued, we’re not sure we see it as necessary to protect the public.”
The auctions and auctioneers license is also slated for elimination.
“It was probably created to decrease or to keep an eye on theft and fencing items through an auctioneer,” Jarman said. “But we haven’t had a big auction bust as long as I’ve been here, almost 30 years.”
She said the law department sought input from Wichita police, who said they don’t view the auctioneer license, the laundromat license, or any of the other licensing requirements on the chopping block as necessary enforcement tools.
If the City Council moves forward with eliminating the recommended requirements, Jarman said, the law department will contact people who obtained one of the 15 licenses in the last year to let them know they don’t need to renew. Otherwise, people will be informed if they come in to request a defunct license.
Here’s a full list of the licensing requirements the City Council will consider dropping:
Cabaret
Clairvoyant/fortune tellers
Directories
Domino tables
Itinerant Photographer
Penny Arcade
Theaters and shows
Coin-operated amusement
Dance halls
Business termination and liquidation
Auctions and auctioneers
Advertising signs/bills/posters
Airport limousines
Cultural market
Laundromat
