BERLIN – The town will once again try to work with Worcester County to create a way for tattoo establishments to operate within Berlin.
The town council on Monday voted unanimously to send the Worcester County Commissioners a letter seeking a meeting with county and health department officials to discuss tattoo establishments. The request comes about two years after the town last tried to work with county officials to establish regulations for tattoo shops in town. Mayor Zack Tyndall told the council the Berlin Tattoo Advisory Committee was ready to renew its efforts.
“We met last month,” he said.
Initially, the town approved a moratorium on tattoo establishments in 2017 when officials realized there were no regulations in place for the businesses. An advisory committee was created to study the issue and the moratorium was extended in 2020.
While little has happened since then, the advisory committee met last month and agreed to continue efforts to come up with reasonable regulations for the town.
The letter the council agreed to send to Worcester County requests a meeting with the commissioners and Worcester County Health Department officials to talk about the advisory committee’s research and draft regulations for tattoo shops in Berlin.
“Over the past several years, the Town of Berlin has taken meaningful steps through a tattoo advisory committee to create a safe and equitable path forward for tattoo establishments within town limits…,” the letter reads. “Through many meetings and a great deal of research and discussion, the committee has developed a comprehensive set of regulations and specific zoning requirements for tattoo establishments.”
The town wants to work with the Worcester County Health Department to set up health and safety inspections similar to those already done by the department for body piercing studios.
“The committee modeled their health and safety inspections based on the current standards within the state of Delaware since no guidelines currently existing within the State of Maryland,” the letter reads.
When the town extended the moratorium on tattoo shops in 2020, attorney David Gaskill told officials at the time that the health department was not interested in taking on inspections for the town.
“They would have to amend their ordinance to allow or authorize the county health department to perform inspections of tattoo parlors in the Town of Berlin,” he said at the time. “They were not interested.”
