For some Mainers, yard sales are as instrumental to their summer fun as the sun and the waves.

“Yard sales go with Maine like Bean boots,” Jonathan Farley said at a Scarborough Town Council meeting last week.

But when a yard sale becomes more like a business than a chance to clean out the garage, it can be more trouble than it’s worth. At least that’s what Farley and his neighbors on Ridgeway Road in Scarborough found out last summer.

In response to a written complaint from neighbors about a string of yard sales held at 1 Ridgeway Road, councilors will vote on an ordinance to limit the number of yearly yard sales each Scarborough residence can hold at a council meeting on Wednesday, March 7.

When Ginn Bellino held yard sales at her 1 Ridgeway Road home every weekend for nine weeks last summer, neighbors say it became less of a Maine tradition and more of a nuisance.

Neighbors say the increase in traffic made it unsafe for their children to play in the street. They said the cars that parked along the road were blocking the view of oncoming traffic as they tried to turn out onto Gorham Road. When nothing changed after they complained to her, the residents called the police – but nothing could be done.

The ordinance was proposed in response to a letter sent to Town Manager Ron Owens, written by Farley and his wife, Luann, and signed by 20 of their neighbors. “It wasn’t a personal issue,” Farley said in an interview, “It showed a loophole.”

About five years ago, a similar complaint was brought to the council, but the ordinance was voted down, for fear of town government being too “heavy-handed,” Owens said. According to Owens, the issue was revisited because the complaint came from a whole neighborhood and was concerned with more than the sale being “a nuisance” but also with it creating significant traffic and safety problems.

The new ordinance proposed is based on the one currently in place in South Portland. Households would be required to obtain a permit before holding a yard sale and would be allowed two, three-day sales within a six-month period. For example, if a Scarborough resident holds a yard sale in May, he will be able to have only one more sale before September.

Last week, Bellino called the ordinance the “stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” She hadn’t heard about the letter or the public hearing, but wasn’t surprised her neighbors had complained.

“They’re such stuck-up snobs,” she said.

In the Farleys’ letter, they said their neighbors seemed to be “buying merchandise specifically for the yard sales.” The letter cited the fact that their neighbors “have even gone to the extent of displaying merchandise on retail grade display racks.”

However, Bellino said everything she sold came from out of her garage, which was so filled up with “junk,” she hadn’t been able to park there for two years. She said she hung a bar across two shepherd’s hooks to display her items. “I thought they’d go better,” she said.

Bellino admitted that some items were unused, but only because she had bought them for relatives before and had forgotten about them. Bellino said she “absolutely” did not buy anything to sell at the yard sale. She estimated she collected about $30 per day from her sales. Farley said in the interview that one of his neighbors saw her unloading trucks.

At the public hearing on Feb. 21, Farley thanked the council for considering the ordinance. But another member of the public was skeptical.

“Who’s going to enforce this?” Dave Green asked. He was concerned that police officers had more important things to do on Saturday afternoons than “hassle” everyone who was having a yard sale. Owens explained that the police would be enforcing the ordinance, but their involvement would be limited to dealing with “chronic problems.”

Regardless of whether the ordinance passes, Bellino said she planned on having fewer yard sales this year.