By Nate Jones

Staff Writer 

Nearly three months ago, Jeffrey Beaudoin, owner of the new Infinity Tattoo shop in Standish, began filing for permits to open a tattoo parlor on Broadway in South Portland. Although Beaudoin acquired a valid business license for the shop in South Portland, a moratorium drafted by South Portland City Planner Tex Hauser and narrowly approved by the city council in a 4-3 vote, caused him to open the shop in Standish instead, which has yet to adopt a specific ordinance for tattoo parlors. 

“It seemed possible that a tattoo parlor (with a big tattoo/body piercing sign) of the kind one associates with run-down areas could have a negative, blighting impact,” Hauser wrote in a May 8 letter to Town Manager Jim Gailey. 

It was the first moratorium the city had enacted since 2005, and at the time, several councilors said they felt the action could have been somewhat biased towards tattoo parlor establishments. Gailey addressed councilor’s concerns at their Monday workshop.

“If the question is, ‘are we treating tattoo establishments different than any other business,’ I would say no,” Gailey said at Monday’s council workshop. “We just have never had to address this type of establishment.”

Gailey said the proposed tattoo and body piercing ordinance drafted by the planning department – approved by the planning board in a 6 to 1 vote with member Steven Jocher in the minority – would allow shops in commercial and limited business districts as a “special exemption.” Similar to taxicab companies, used car lots and massage therapist businesses, any tattoo parlor or body piercing establishment would be required to go through site plan review by the planning board before opening its doors, he said. 

“The point is to allow these uses and have some standards and some guidelines,” Gailey said. “We aren’t charting new territory here.”

Hauser said he had developed a new appreciation for tattoo artists and their work, having visited the Infinity Tattoo shop in Standish and discussed the business with Beaudoin. 

“They were very friendly,” he said. “The quote that stuck with me was ‘We’re artists who have found a way to make money.’”

Councilor Tom Blake said he considered the ordinance a “waste of time.”

“I haven’t been able to understand what’s pushing this, we have other issues to deal with,” he said. “Let’s talk about bio-plants, windmills, geothermal. These are the issues we should really be dealing with, not this.”

 Councilor Kay Loring agreed with Blake and compared the proposed ordinance to the beekeeping ordinance adopted by the city several months ago. 

“This has been a whole waste of time,” she said. 

Councilor Linda Beaudreau said the proposed tattoo and body piercing ordinance – requiring special licensing, background checks for employees and researching any disturbances caused by other establishments by the same owner – was “exactly what the planning department went away with” after the council expressed their concerns about the moratorium in June.

“We got rid of massage therapists for the same reasons we need to get rid of bad tattoo parlors,” she said. “The bad ones move from town to town and if there are lots of motorcycles revving their engines and alcohol around, I want to know that.”

The council agreed to send the ordinance back to the planning board to add an industrial zone to the permitted locations for a tattoo parlor or body-piercing establishment to remain consistent with the “pyramid zoning” in the city, Hauser said.