After taking another swing at an ordinance regulating home-based businesses, Lewes City Council sends the proposal back to the drawing board for more tweaks and language changes.
A first attempt at a draft ordinance passed narrowly in December, before council members rescinded it just a few weeks later before it took effect. A second try at the process began with a small working group of city council and planning commission members, who sought to draft a compromise measure that could garner widespread support on the council.
That compromise measure was the focus of a lengthy public hearing on Monday, but discussion about the proposal brought out the same sharp divisions among council members that marked the initial debate in December.
Under the latest public draft, home-based businesses would fall into one of two categories based on their projected impact on the surrounding neighborhood. Low impact businesses would have significant restrictions on their operations.
“Probably the most important provision is that no persons other than the residents of the principal dwelling or any ADU [Accessory Dwelling Unit] on the property could be employees of the home-based business,” City Solicitor Alex Burns explained.
The other category, high-impact businesses, would be allowed to have employees who live offsite provided that no more than three are there at the same time, and that there is enough off-street parking for them. Those businesses would also be required to see visitors, like clients or patients, by appointment only and only from 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on weekdays.
Most importantly, while low-impact businesses can obtain a business license automatically, high-impact businesses would have to go through the conditional use process, involving a public hearing, a recommendation from the city’s Planning Commission, and a vote from the city council.
While council members initially seemed optimistic about the draft proposal, a dive into the details provoked disagreements on several of its provisions.
Debate over deliveries
One early point of contention was a clause that limited low-impact businesses to just one delivery per day. Some council members, like Mayor Amy Marasco, pointed out that in the age of Amazon, UPS, and FedEx, that seemed overly burdensome.
“You can be a low impact and get office supplies, even if you ask Amazon to package them together, they don't always,” she said. “So I think the intent was to not have lots of deliveries impacting traffic, but it feels super restrictive to me to say one delivery.”
High-impact businesses would also face delivery and pickup restrictions under the proposal, including a ban on tractor trailer trucks making deliveries. That prompted a longer discussion about how best to achieve that intent through regulation.
Fire inspection requirement spark argument
Council members also sparred over a requirement that all home-based businesses, regardless of their impact, undergo an inspection from the state Fire Marshal’s office.
“Many people have, I'm going to say, accounting, consulting [businesses],” she said. “Why would we want to burden the fire marshal?”
Throughout the debate over fire inspections, Council Joseph Elder, who was on the subcommittee preparing the draft ordinance, stressed that the fire inspection was required under state law, if the business has employees or customers on site.
Marasco noted that many home-based businesses don’t have additional employees or customers visiting their premises.
“I think we should have an asterisk here that says if you have no employees, if you have no clients that visit, you do not have to go through this step,” she said.
Questions about whether the proposal discourages people to apply for business licenses
The discussion over fire inspection requirements seemed to expose deeper concerns from some council members about whether the proposal is simply too restrictive.
That opinion was forcefully expressed by Deputy Mayor Khalil Saliba.
“This compromise, now that I dig into it, almost seems like you're discouraging people from launching a home-based business in the city of Lewes. It's exactly what it looks like,” he said. “You can shake your head and you can do all you want out there, but this is very, very restrictive.”
Marasco suggested that if the ordinance places too many restrictions and too much red tape on home business owners, they simply would not apply for a business license and instead operate under the radar.
“We're going to get to a point here if we're too restricted, nobody's going to talk to us at all, and that isn't what we were after,” she said. “The purpose of this was to allow people to come out from the shadows, but to feel confident that they had a business that the city respected.”
Saliba suggested that the current draft would do nothing to encourage business owners operating without a license to get legal.
“You do not stop it, in my opinion, by making a very restrictive ordinance that is going to take people who want to start a business say, ‘shoot, I’ve got to go through all that. You know, I've been doing this for a while anyway in my house, and they haven't picked it up yet,” he said.
Marasco argued that, rather than creating an extensive list of restrictions, the city should let the conditional use process do the heavy lifting. During that process, council could make granting a business license dependent on whatever conditions they choose to impose, depending on the unique nature of the business up for consideration.
“The purpose of conditional use is to approve with conditions,” she said. “So I think that we should not make our ordinance so restrictive. We should allow the conditional use process.”
Faced with an impasse, council members tasked City Solicitor Alex Burns with updating the draft based on their comments and concerns. An updated draft is expected in the next few days, with more discussion and a possible vote on Monday.
