Growth of home-based businesses in Sidney causes concern

An increase in the number of home-based businesses in Sidney has caused some difficulty for the city in deciding how it should apply regulations.

The city frequently deals with neighbors concerned about businesses operated out of homes, city manager Gary Person explained at last week’s planning commission meeting.

“The whole idea behind planning and zoning is that your businesses that have commercial activities operate out of commercial zoned areas and clusters as part of a business community and not in the middle of residential areas,” Person said. “However, with the new home-based business thing, it’s hard to gauge at times what’s a business, what’s not, what’s just normal residential activity.”

The city decided in 2012 that all home-based businesses should be required to obtain a conditional use permit in order to operate. A conditional use permit can only be granted by the planning commission. In this way, the city would know where and what types of businesses are operated out of homes in Sidney.

It will be difficult to persuade all home-based business owners to apply for conditional use permits, Person said.

Formerly, the city only cared about home-based businesses that created a large amount of traffic coming to and from the home. Recently, however, the city has had issues with home-based businesses that deal in noxious chemicals such as weed spraying firms. These perform work outside the home but clean and park trucks at private residences.

“We had a situation where we actually had to shut one business down because they were actually manufacturing ammunition out of their garage,” Person said. “I mean, it was explosive stuff.”

Those at the meeting agreed that many home-based businesses probably didn’t require a conditional use permit, although some definitely did.

Those who sell products like Avon and Mary Kay should likely be exempted, some on the planning commission agreed.

The commission decided to formulate some ideas ahead of next month’s meeting to modify the city’s current law so that not every home-based business in Sidney would be required to obtain a conditional use permit.

Tom Sonntag, acting as city attorney, suggested a continued conditional use permit requirement for any business that caused potential danger to neighbors or the water supply.

“Probably one of the things that should not be exempted out is home day care,” Person said. “Because all of the sudden you get three or four in one neighborhood, then you’ve got all kinds of issues going on.”

The commission plans to re-visit this issue at next month’s meeting.