The city of Springfield, Massachusetts appears poised to again extend a moratorium on new pawn shops.
The Springfield City Council voted unanimously for first-step approval of an ordinance extending for three more years a moratorium on licensing new pawn brokers and secondhand dealers that was first put in place in 2014 and extended twice for three-year periods.
City Councilor Mike Fenton said the ban on new pawn shops in Springfield is still needed.
“Springfield continues to have a disproportionate share of pawn shops and secondhand dealers when compared with other Gateway Cities across the Commonwealth,” Fenton said.
Springfield has six pawn shops and roughly 30 secondhand dealers, according to a report prepared by the City Council staff. The report said the city of Worcester – with about 30,000 more residents than Springfield – has four pawn shops and about 20 secondhand stores. New Bedford, which like Springfield has a high poverty rate, has three pawn shops.
In addition to banning new pawn broker licenses in 2014, the City Council voted to require pawn shops to maintain electronic records including photographs of jewelry. Stores are required to hold used goods for 30 days before being put up for sale.
“That program has been extremely successful in terms of mitigating crime and reducing the secondary market for stolen items,” Fenton said.
Detective Luis Adames of the Springfield Police Department’s burglary-larceny unit told Councilors the current number of pawn shops and secondhand stores is manageable.
“I would concur with the assessment that at least for the time being the prudent step is to maintain the moratorium as is,” he said.
The impetus for the pawn shop moratorium in 2014 was the licensing of a casino for Springfield and concern that it could attract to the city businesses where people could readily turn possessions into cash.
The MGM casino opened in August 2018. It was closed for several months during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and just this month reopened all of its amenities.
“I anticipated a higher uptick (in pawn shop transactions) with the arrival of the casino,” said Adames, who added the business disruptions due to the pandemic have skewed the data.
“We haven’t really had a case study,” he said.
City Councilor Justin Hurst said Springfield is over-saturated with pawn shops.
“I love the idea of seeing what another three years will reveal in the data,” Hurst said.
A second vote by the Council is required to officially extend the moratorium beyond the current expiration date this June 30th.
