Missouri Town Bans Girl Scout Cookie Sales

Seriously, what kind of a bureaucratic fool do you have to be to ban the Girl Scouts:

The city of Hazelwood says they do support the Girl Scouts but not when they are violating the home occupancy code.

They’d been warned, but the city says the Girl Scouts Abigail and Caitlin Mills continued to sell Girl Scout cookies from a stand in front of their home. A neighbor complained anonymously because of all the people and the traffic and the dogs barking at all the people and the traffic.

“Based on this complaint, the city of Hazelwood had to take action,” says spokesman Tim Davidson. He says it is also against city code to sell products from home.

And while he has heard some complaints from residents that Hazelwood is being too harsh on the teens, Davidson says others have pointed out that one tenet of the Girl Scouts is good citizenship.

“The fact that we did have this code in place, it’s the responsibility of every good citizen to respect the laws that we have,” said Davidson.

But the girls’ mother, Carolyn Mills, is vowing to let them keep selling their cookies, until they reach their goal of 2,000 purchases.

Fortunately, the great cookie battle ended peacefully:

HAZELWOOD, Mo. — The battle of the cookies is over in Hazelwood. Carolyn Mills received a letter this month from the city warning her that selling Girl Scout cookies on her driveway violated city code. Mills, though, said she and her two daughters would keep selling until all of the remaining 2,000 boxes were sold.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that on Wednesday, the Rev. George Hutchings — who is known as “The Shoeman” for collecting shoes to benefit Kenya — bought the last 36 boxes.

Hutchings took some boxes and told the mother and daughters to give the rest to neighbors.

So all’s well that ends well. Seriously, though, whatever happened to letting kids be kids. Between nit-picking neighbors and self-important city officials it seems like even small town America isn’t what it used to be anymore.

H/T: Libertarian Republican

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Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. michael reynolds says:

    Letting kids be kids? Hah!

    Our daughter did the Girl Scout thing this year and my wife was a Cookie Mom. This isn’t little kids selling cookies, this is a monstrously big operation involving piles of paperwork and hours of meetings and endless sill regulations. Not to mention the tightly-defined cookie territories and times. And I’m not talking about government, I’m talking about the Scouts.

    Girl Scouts appears to me to exist for the sole purpose of selling cookies. What a pain in the ass. And the kids could care less. They’re bored after ten minutes so it ends up being yet another supposed “kid” activity — like 90% of the homework projects — that is dumped off on parents.

  2. Beth Donovan says:

    Hazelwood is not a small town – it is a suburb of St. Louis. I’m not at all surprised that any of the suburban cities in that area would forbid kids from selling cookies or even having lemonade stands. Not Surprised At All.

    I grew up in St. Louis County, in a suburban city not far from Hazelwood. Things have changed there – property values are perceived to decrease if children are seen at all, selling things like Girl Scout Cookies is just evil to many suburbanites.

    I grew up and moved to a real small town – well to a farm on the outskirts of a small town.

  3. CJ Robinson says:

    I would love to see the same level of outrage every time an inner city kid gets hassled by the cops for selling candy on the subway. After all, they’re just “kids being kids,” except for the fact that, unlike the Girl Scouts, they’re actually doing something for themselves and not being used as innocent pawns in a large scale business plan.

  4. Neil Hudelson says:

    Michael,

    Here here! My sister and I were both in scouts. She quit in about 2 years, I made it to Eagle. Despite having one of the better scout troops around, it always seemed like the scouting experience was always second to what the girls could do to benefit GSA.

    I would say the same is somewhat true for Boy Scouts Popcorn, but there is a hell of a lot less restrictions on independent fundraisers Boy Scouts can do. And there is a lot better structure that actually gets the scouts to go, you know, do something.

    That said, I have seen some girl scout troops that are simply fantastic. I just don’t see that as the norm.

  5. michael reynolds — That is insight that I thank you for sharing. I mean I just had a daughter of my own so it’ll be a couple years before I have to worry about all this but everything you said kinda echoes what I’ve been hearing over the years from young girls’ mothers. However, I’m still in complete awe that the local government is acting this way.

    Honestly, is that what we have come to — when kids can’t even stand outside and sell lemonade or girl scout cookies. And BTW, when the article (posted here: http://tinyurl.com/49zt6qx) says that the neighbor didn’t care for the “unusually high traffic” and people.. I mean how many people are we talking about?… this isn’t a damn Taco Bell or McDonalds for Christs sake. It’s a garage selling cookies.

    Another thing that I’ve noticed is that people are becoming more shut off; more isolated. We stay confined in our homes and if our power goes out, then we actually venture out to meet our neighbors. These are the people in this article.

  6. Ernieyeball says:

    I was in the Boy Scouts too. Back in the 50’s.
    Used to go to Massawepie Boy Scout Camps in the Adirondack Mountains in the summer.
    Learned all about leeches and how they will attach themselves to yer body parts when yer swimmin’ in the lake.
    We had a motto.
    “On my Honor I will do my best,
    To help a Girl Scout get undressed!”