Council votes no on regulating home businesses

Nevada Daily Mail

"I think this is over-government. Maybe we need to slap people's hand and say 'be a good neighbor,'" council member Jayne Novak said during the discussion of a proposed ordinance to provide some means to regulate customers at home businesses from blocking a shared driveway, during Tuesday night's city council meeting.

The proposed ordinance would allow police to issue a warning to the offending party and eventually go to the planning commission with the problem.

The city code does not currently address this issue and because many of these home businesses do not have city business licenses and the state law does not permit the city to issue licenses, the city lacks any method to address this, except to talk to the parties and try to work out some agreement. These businesses are things like day cares, offices and artists.

City manager JD Kehrman told the council that whenever businesses are allowed to set up in residential zoned areas there can be conflict and short of prohibiting home based businesses they need to have some regulations to address those conflicts.

The city has only had one issue come up concerning this and, when Kehrman told the council, they found the city did not have any mechanism to address. It was eventually solved by the city talking to both parties and working out an agreement.

Kehrman said the city would make every possible attempt to work out the problems first.

However, Novak said that although the current city manager, police chief and city council might follow this pattern, there would be nothing to prevent a future city manager of city council from acting in a more confrontational manner.

"This is not a big issue. I don't want to pass an ordinance for one business," council member Lance Christie said before he and Jayne Novak voted no, defeating the measure and Seth Barrett voted yes. Brian Leonard and Blake Hertzberg were excused, leaving the minimum number of council members to hold a meeting.

In other business the council:

* Voted, 3-0, to accept the bid of $14,800 from Crossroad's Sales and Service for a commercial grade ZTR trim mower for use at the Twin Lakes Sports Complex. Legacy Farm and Lawn submitted a lower bid, for a mower that did not meet all of the city's specifications.

* Voted 3-0 to pass on first reading a special ordinance declaring a special circumstance and allowing the city manager to hire an environmental engineer to provide the city assistance to modernize some of the city's ordinances related to wastewater limitations and monitoring related to city renewing its wastewater disposal permit.

Voted, 3-0, to pass on second reading a special ordinance approving an agreement with Rosetta Construction for improvements to the city's wastewater system at a cost of $1,996,850.00. Part of the cost will come from a loan from the State Revolving Fund from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.