Complaints prompt town to close home business loophole

Saukville town officials are working to fix a loophole in the municipality’s work-from-home ordinance that allows almost any business to operate on residential lots without  permits.

The change will correct a pandemic-inspired ordinance that was meant to allow residents to do remote work from home without Plan Commission approval but was worded so broadly as to allow almost any business to do so.

The problem with the ordinance, which states that businesses operating on residential lots do not require a permit “if no clients or customers are served on site,” came to light at last month’s commission meeting.

While commission members were discussing a contractor permit request that included limitations negotiated by town officials on hours of operation, equipment usage and truck tonnage, Commission member Marcia Nosko brought up that a permit was technically unnecessary according to the work from home provision.

Discussion was tabled at that meeting, and last week the commission agreed to clean up the language to eliminate the loophole.

Town staff members will present a revised ordinance at next month’s meeting, which will add to the work-from-home exemption prohibitions against storing work equipment and having employees on-site, Town Chairman Kevin Kimmes said.

Kimmes had hoped to make more extensive changes to the permit process for landscaping and construction companies, but the Plan Commission was cool to the idea.

He had proposed creating a “more robust” ordinance allowing for landscaping and construction companies to operate without permits on residential lots if they met certain restrictions on the property’s size, distance to a county road or the businesses number of employees or types of equipment.

The ordinance could delineate different levels of contractors with more or less restrictive rules according to property size, he said.

“You can get very, very proscriptive,” he said.

Without the loophole, Kimmes said, the ordinances are Byzantine, requiring most landscaping and construction companies to get a permit.

“That seems a little off,” he said.

He added that the heavy restrictions are obviously not being obeyed. Since the commission meeting last week, he’s received two new complaints about obstructive, non-permitted landscaping and construction companies.

“(The laws are) very restrictive and we know people aren’t abiding by it,” he said.

Kimmes had proposed creating a committee to explore the issue, possibly with an even number of landscaping and construction contractors and residents who have had issues with disruptive operations.

Kimmes has said the town will be more proactive in shutting down or requiring permits for disruptive town businesses in the future.

The discussion was sparked by complaints about construction contractor Jason Gahan’s business, which came before the Plan Commission in December. Several of his neighbors complained of frequent loud noises from the large trucks, the damage they were causing to the road, as well as the simple fact Gahan was running a construction company from a residential lot less than 1.5 acres in size.

Kimmes said at the time that even landscaping and construction companies operating on larger lots need town approval.

“Five acres is not a lot of area for the amount of noise construction businesses can generate,” Kimmes said. “There is a place for that called industrial parks.

“I look at permits like a double-edged sword. You have to state exactly what you are doing and then you get the right to do that. But then you’re stuck to only doing that.”