Street Performers Permitting is Needed

While street performers provide a great source of entertainment to visitors and Boston residents, they can also be a problem.

At times they are a public safety issue, extremely loud, interfere with business access, pedestrian access and problems vying for space.

Most of this, if not all of this, can be resolved by generating a permit program, which the City of Boston currently doesn’t have in place.

Some sort of control is needed to organize this form of entertainment to ensure public access is not interfered with and public safety is mandated. Permitting will go a long way toward resolving these and other related issues.

A City Council ordinance filed by Counselors Sal LaMattina and Bill Linehan, if enacted would help tackle most of the problems with regulations placed in a permitting system that will include spacing and locations.

Having street performers of all kinds is not the issue, they are welcome. However, the Regional Review fully believes that a permitting system that contains rules and regulations is needed to resolve some of these issues including pedestrian access and public safety.

The ordinance covers all the basics.