Chester Massage Ordinance A Touchy Subject

If you want a massage in Chester Borough, you aren't getting one on Main Street.

At Tuesday night's meeting of the Chester Borough Mayor and Council, an ordinance was introduced to amend the borough's massage requirements due to state licensing.

"The state that is now licensing massage therapists, so this ordinance will just be a cleanup of that," said Council President Tim Iversen. "We had a couple of issues arise in committee about relaxing restrictions, and the majority of the committee has decided to introduce the ordinance as is."

The restrictions the Ordinance and Policy committee considered relaxing were two-fold: removing the massage establishment license and the land use ordinance, which would allow massage parlors to open anywhere in the borough and that would include Main Street.

"So the establishment license provision pertains to the actual regulation of the establishment," Iversen said. "And the other issue that was discussed was whether or not we would look further into the land use ordinance, which provides that the establishment would be located on the state highway or within a 250-foot frontage.

According to Iversen, he and Mayor Bob Davis wanted to introduce the ordinance as is, in that it conforms to the state regulation.

"The reason being on my end is we've experienced, in this borough, massage parlors that went into some form of prostitution. It's in the news now in Denville, I think on three different occasions they've had that," Iversen said. "So my ultimate goal would be to, rather than reduce restrictions on these establishments, maintain the protections that we've put in place to deal with those occurrences. I think that my own impression is that the people who run these establishments in the not-so-legal way look for towns that have a weak ordinance to establish themselves."

Cooper-Napolitano said that she saw the current restrictions as overly punitive.

"I don't think they should be penalized because of the type of business that they have," Cooper-Napolitano said. "I think that you could find businesses that are in town that do massage as part of physical therapy or part of chiropractors [and] it's perfectly appropriate, and I don't see why they should be penalized. They should have the same standards as all the other businesses, not more. The police are here for a reason, if something goes wrong then take care of it."

The council is expected to take action on the ordinance at their April 2 meeting.