13-Year-Old Girl And Mother Fined $400 For Selling Cookies On Family Member’s Driveway?

A 13-year-old Girl Scout and her mother received $400 in fines for selling cookies from a driveway owned by the teenager’s grandparents.

Erica Fairbanks McCarroll and her daughter Emma set up a stand on Erica’s parents property, which sits adjacent to the main thoroughfare of Pinedale, Wyoming.

However, that didn’t stop a municipal code officer from giving the mother and daughter hundreds of dollars in fines.

Your reminder that most zoning and code enforcement is busy bodies doing nonsensical things, like fining Girl Scouts for selling cookies in their own grandparents’ driveway. https://t.co/ToCrGIAXGu

— Dan King (@Kinger_DC) April 29, 2024

Cowboy State Daily reports:

Emma McCarroll, 13, almost didn’t meet her sales goal because the code enforcement officer was an expert on the rules of where a Girl Scout in Pinedale can stand — and where her mom could park their car while selling them.

The spat between the city and the Girl Scout and her mom began when the code enforcement officer asked the mom, Erica Fairbanks McCarroll, if she had the landowner’s permission to sell from the city’s Pine Avenue spot and park a vehicle in a driveway there.

Puzzled, Fairbanks McCarroll didn’t answer the officer’s question because the spot where she parked was in the driveway of her parents.

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The officer never made the connection on who owned the driveway and the people using the driveway to sell Girl Scout Cookies.

“I personally don’t think she ever understood that I was related to the Fairbanks, my parents who own the driveway,” Fairbanks McCarroll said.

Nonetheless, the officer snapped photographs of their sales activity between March 13 and 15 to prove that Emma McCarroll had set up the stand, and mom had parked illegally in the driveway, which straddled the public sidewalk on Pine Avenue.

A 13-year-old Girl Scout from Pinedale was surprised when a local by-the-book municipal code officer slapped her with more than $400 in fines for selling Girl Scout Cookies.https://t.co/5Tiyt5GQYq

— Cowboy State Daily (@daily_cowboy) April 23, 2024

According to Cowboy State Daily, the Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT) essentially controls the small town’s main thoroughfare and claims ownership of the property.

Activities such as selling cookies allegedly infringed on WYDOT’s right of way of the street.

“You can’t sell within the WYDOT right of way,” Pinedale Mayor Matt Murdock told the outlet.

“We sold for about 1 hour and 30 minutes when she showed up and handed me 3 parking tickets totaling $400,” Fairbanks McCarroll said on Facebook, according to Daily Mail.

A 13-year-old Girl Scout in Wyoming was fined $400 for selling cookies from her family driveway with her mother https://t.co/RmCZHorjB6

— ABC 10News San Diego (@10News) April 26, 2024

Per Daily Mail:

‘I responded that I had complied with what she had asked and had moved off the sidewalk. She said the tickets aren’t just for being on the sidewalk and that this is for your daughter’s safety.’

Fairbanks McCarroll was given a $100 fine for parking on the sidewalk, a $150 fine for unlawful obstruction and another $150 fine for a municipal code that said there needs to be at least five feet of unobstructed passage on the sidewalk.

‘Sometimes I just think that government can be unreasonable. It wasn’t reasonable to be fined $400 for selling cookies in front on my grandparent’s property,’ Emma told Cowboy State Daily, who photographed the mother daughter duo.

Emma, who has been a Girl Scout since she was six years old, was aiming to sell 1,200 boxes of cookies so she could receive a $350 credit for summer camp.

Fairbanks McCarroll said, ‘She did not identify herself as Code Enforcement, she did not say what I was doing was illegal, she didn’t say she would or even could write me a ticket, she didn’t even say I couldn’t sell there anymore. All she said really was you shouldn’t block the sidewalk.’

When the code enforcement officer told her the Fairbanks probably would not like her blocking their property, Fairbanks McCarroll said: ‘I responded with ‘the Fairbanks are my parents and they don’t care.’ She then said ‘okay well I just recommend you don’t block the sidewalk’ and left.’

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at 100 Percent Fed Up.

View the original article here.