The Brown County Area Plan Commission is going to go back to the drawing board with the idea of make its “home occupation” ordinance a little easier to understand for residents wanting to run businesses out of their homes.

The commission had spent several meetings this fall reviewing the current ordinance and flagging places where it was repetitive or contradicted itself. At the December meeting, a new draft was presented, but commission members still had questions.

This was Andy Voils’ first meeting to attend as a member of the APC. He said he’d planned to just listen, but as a person who runs a business partially out of his home, he had questions about how this ordinance applies to him and other people he knows in the county.

Right now, some businesses that operate in residential neighborhoods need $15 “home occupation” permits, some don’t, and some need a “special exception” instead.

For instance, if you sell firewood by splitting it and stacking it and putting a sign at your driveway, that’s not a “home occupation.” And because that would be considered a “farm stand,” you wouldn’t need a permit anyway.

But if you run a tree-cutting business, and you have multiple pieces of equipment that come and go from your residential property, and you process trees into firewood there and stack it for sale, you might be exceeding the intent of a “home occupation,” said Planning Director Chris Ritzmann during discussion at the Dec. 17 meeting.

The “home occupation” ordinance wasn’t intended to address all those types of uses, because they’re covered in other parts of the county’s zoning rules. But in the wider discussion about which businesses are allowed where and what the process is to operate them legally, questions about all types of businesses that could be based on residential property have come up in recent APC meetings.

After talking for more than an hour about proposed changes to the home occupation rules, the commission decided to postpone further discussion until the January meeting.

What’s the point?

The intent of the home occupation ordinance is to allow a person to operate a business out of his or her home that doesn’t change the residential nature of the neighborhood.

“This is to protect the integrity of areas that are zoned residential,” explained commission member Randy Jones. “Residential areas shouldn’t have to deal with businesses. There are areas in the county already zoned for business industry, commericial, light, heavy. … The home occupation does allow you to have somewhat of a benign business in a residential area. It still has to maintain the residential integrity.”

The proposed new definition for “home occupation” was “an accessory use of a dwelling unit for a business, profession, trade or vocation conducted within an enclosed dwelling, which is clearly incidental and secondary to residential occupancy and does not change the residential character thereof.” The rules also allow a home occupation to be operated “in an accessory building thereto which is normally associated with a residential use.”

Currently, home occupations are not allowed in “LR” (lake residence) districts, but they are in any other zoning district.

The current rules stipulate that “except for articles produced on the premises, no stock in trade shall be displayed or sold on the premises.” In other words, if your business is selling knitted items, you can sell those items, but you can’t sell yarn, Ritzmann explained.

The current rules also prohibit the “outdoor display of goods or outside storage of equipment or materials used in or associated with the home occupation,” and prohibit any use that “shall create noise, dust, vibration, smell, and smoke glare, electrical interference, fire hazard, or any other hazard or nuisance to any greater or more frequent extent than that usually experienced in an average residential occupancy in the district in question under normal circumstances wherein no home occupation exists,” such as traffic.

The draft and the current ordinance both include a list of business types that would need a “special exception” from the Brown County Board of Zoning Appeals to operate in a residential district: owner-operated beauty parlors; auto repair or painting; instruction of two or more students at a time; photo developing or studios; antique shops; private schools with organized classes; and any home occupation to be conducted in a two- or multi-family dwelling.

Some commission members talked about just including a list of conditions that a home-based business had to meet to qualify for home occupation, instead of listing business categories which could become “antiquated” over time. Those factors could include, for instance, “if it’s in a residential subdivision, or if it’s in an area where the residential density is so much, if it’s on a one-lane road … things where you might have to have people come in and prove that their proposed use not going to be a detriment to the neighborhood,” said commission attorney David Schilling.

How big is too big?

Many questions at the December meeting centered around what the rules are for contractors. Some may just drive their company trucks home or run their business from a desk in their home; some may move large equipment back and forth from their home base to a job site or store materials for jobs at their homes; some may be using an outbuilding on their property to run a business that employs people besides themselves.

Ritzmann said that historically, her office had not considered building contractors to be conducting a “home occupation.”

Commission member Kara Hammes said she thought the rules could be read that way, because a contractor could be using a home office to do things like pay bills and schedule jobs.

Schilling said that other communities make a distinction between a contractor who just takes a truck home for the night and one who keeps multiple vehicles at his or her home for employees to pick up. Sometimes, contractors who only have one vehicle are not treated as “home occupations,” he said.

Voils said that according to his taxes, his home is a business, because that’s the address he uses. “I’m not trying to be disagreeable at all; I just think it’s something that it’s important to realize. There are a lot of self-employed people in the county, even part-time self-employed,” he said.

He also said he sometimes has small pieces of excavating equipment at his home for business use, and stores materials outside. He wondered if he would be in violation of the rules because no outside storage of business-related equipment or materials was permitted with a home occupation.

Ritzmann said that other parts of the county’s zoning ordinances do allow the types of businesses that Voils was talking about. “There are other ways to be allowed to do some of these things without it being a home occupation,” she said.

For instance, the property could get a special exception to allow “light industrial” use, “something that is allowed by ordinance already. So, a person who has three dump trucks and skid steers … it gets to a point where a pickup is OK, but if he’s got an excavator and a dump truck, maybe that should be light industrial,” Ritzmann said. “It’s not a zoning district; it’s a special exception.”

Jim Schultz — the only person in the audience besides the newspaper — ran an electrical contracting business with two employees out of his home on Greasy Creek Road for 42 years. He said he was concerned about the economic impact of making changes to rules for home-based businesses, and that the rules for contractors weren’t spelled out in a way he thought was clear.

He had been advocating for the county to make it easier for businesses to come into compliance and be visibly legal, not only to encourage what some local economic leaders believe to be the wave of the future — working from home — but also to allow the county to capture business tax revenue. Businesses that are operating without local permits are likely not being taxed as businesses.

“I could write a book on the number of people that are out of compliance right now, and by making something that sounds stricter. … I see a whole bunch of things coming up that you guys don’t want to deal with,” Schultz said, mentioning possible litigation. He said he’d like to see a different approach to rethinking these rules, but he didn’t know what that would be.

Ritzmann said that the new draft actually has fewer restrictions on home occupations than what’s written currently.

Commission members said they don’t want to discourage businesses from operating out in the county, but they also didn’t want to make rules that would allow businesses to encroach on their neighbors in residential districts.

On the question of a person having multiple large pieces of construction equipment on his property for his business, commission member Randy Jones said he thinks that’s “incongruous” with a residential neighborhood.

Jones said that all they were really looking at that evening was rewriting some of the rules for home occupations, which, by definition, are businesses “conducted within an enclosed dwelling” or an accessory building, so a lot of the discussion wasn’t really on topic. He moved for a vote to accept the rule changes, which failed 4-3.

“I think we would be doing a county a great disservice if we were to allow anything other than that. I don’t think there’s anyone in this county who wants to go to bed some night living in a residential area and they wake up the next morning and there’s been a substantial change off their back step that no longer comes under compliance with the requirements of a residential zoning area,” Jones said.

“We recognize the fact that there are a lot of people in Brown County who already are practicing a home occupation, and probably a number of them probably are not in compliance. But the question is, do we want to maintain that level of integrity that’s under that definition? … I feel like it’s imperative that we do,” he said. “I think you can still do that and allow for a lot of the artisans and artists and tradespeople in the community to carry on and do what they would like to do in their homes as long as they stay within the confines of this definition.”

Schultz encouraged them to keep talking while thinking about the effect their decisions could have on people’s ability to work and live here.

“One thing that needs to happen in Brown County is that we need an economy, and it can’t just be tourism,” Schultz said. “We need more than that. And it’s incredibly important the decision that you guys are making.”

The next work session on home occupations has been tentatively set for Tuesday, Jan. 28 at 6 p.m. at the County Office Building.

“It seems like there’s always this struggle between people who retire here and the people who live and work here, you know what I mean?” said Voils, who’s lived here almost 40 years. “We want the tourism, we want this to be a certain draw, but like Jim said, there still has to be something for people, a way to make a living while you’re here.”

On making rules about what types of businesses can operate where in the county, “it’s a question of individual liberty vs. accountability to your neighbor,” Voils added. “And I think there’s a line there; it’s just when you define it, it gives a way for someone with a chip on their shoulder, or you upset your neighbor, for them to go after you and say, ‘Hey, you’re in violation for this or that.’”

“Welcome to the world of planning,” Jones said.

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Do you know what the rules are for operating businesses in Brown County? Do you think they are clear as written, or do you think they need changes?

The rules can be found at browncounty-in.gov/Departments/PlanningCommission.aspx. Click on “Brown County Zoning Ordinance.”

The rules specifically for “home occupations” start on page 62.

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