After more than an hour of sometimes-contentious debate, Lewes City Council narrowly passes new rules for home-based businesses.
The issue has been floating around council for around a year, and council members saw a draft ordinance prepared by the city’s Planning Commission. That ordinance itself saw several tweaks and edits before coming up for discussion Monday, and even more in the meeting itself.
Under the new ordinance, home-based businesses would fall into one of two categories, low impact and high impact. Low-impact businesses are those with no more than one employee who doesn’t live at the house, while high-impact businesses could have up to four. Low impact businesses would also be deemed by city staff not to have significant impacts on nearby neighbors.
Any home-based business would have to notify any neighbors within 200 feet. Those neighbors would then have a chance to express concerns to the city. High-impact businesses, or any eliciting concerns from neighbors would require an approval hearing with council.
Much of the discussion centered on legal concerns from Councilman Joseph Elder, who pushed to postpone a vote.
“I've gotten five drafts of this within a week, and I sat here and read along and tried to make decisions, and I didn't have any time to think and reflect on this," he said.
That led to a frustrated response from Vice-Mayor Khalil Saliba.
“I have reached out to everyone on this council multiple times on this issue, giving my views. I get no answers. You didn't send me anything about all this today," Saliba said to Elder.
Council members voted 3-2 to move ahead with the rules, but they won’t take effect until next month, allowing the city solicitor to address some of Elder’s legal concerns.
