An ordinance passed at Monday's council meeting was just the beginning of the borough's attempt to control any adult business entree into the community.

The almost 30-page regulation restricts access to a license which any adult business would need to break into the borough.

"We can't keep adult businesses out of here, because it's their God-given right, so to speak, to be in any community," said Councilman George Shaffer, head of the zoning committee. "The best we can do is try to make it difficult for them."

That's a lesson the borough learned after watching an adult business open up in neighboring Pulaski Township last February.

"That was closer to home than I ever expected one to appear," Shaffer said. "It wasn't long after the Pulaski situation that we began to look into adult business zoning."

Shaffer met with Tom Graney, a zoning consultant with Graney, Grossman, and Ray & Associates of Harrisville, between February and March to discuss drawing up strict licensing regulations for adult businesses in the borough.

Some of the restrictions include harsh punishments, such as fines in the hundreds of dollars, and license revocation for violations; unannounced inspections by borough officials during any hours of operation; and background checks on applicants, and denied licensure to those convicted of crimes relating to sexual deviancy.

The council has yet to set a license application fee, but Shaffer guessed that it would come to about $500, and will be addressed at the Nov. 6 meeting.

"We want to protect the town from adult businesses but we can't stop them," said Shaffer, who is spearheading the council's action on adult use ordinances.

"When the Pulaski deal did happen, I expected to get a lot of calls about where we stand as a borough, but not a lot of calls came in," Shaffer said. "I pursued it anyway, because I sure would get a lot of phone calls if an adult business moved in."

Shaffer also approached the local planning and zoning commission last spring about designating an adult business zone. The commission is still looking into it.

"We need to look at the licensing ordinance to see what has to be written into the zoning ordinance because the two have to go together," said Gail Miller, chair of the borough's planning and zoning commission. "Once we do that, we'll consider additional restrictions of where the locale will be for an adult business, which should take a few months."

In the meantime, the retail zone of the borough is where an adult business could locate, if it could get a license, until an area is designated.

According to Miller, designating an area is not going to be easy. "It has to be a certain amount of feet away from a church or school."

Shaffer concurred. "That's going to be hard, because where would an adult business go? That's going to be a tough one to do in this town."