Re: city ordinances

Tom Eldredge wrote:

> I agree, forget OSHA, and the garden club, they have no right to comment on
> your exciting endeavor, but please consider your neighbors' peace some.
> Disregard for neighbors can produce some serious problems for those who want
> to enjoy doing some industrial work at home.
>
> I ran for a local elected office years ago, and was elected to serve as a
> Township Supervisor for six years. I ran for this office which took a lot
> of time and work to get elected, and then a lot of thankless work over the
> years. My sole purpose in doing all of this was to get rid of the nasty
> ordinances that were going on the books to eliminate all little operations
> like the one you are trying to have at home. Most urban and suburban areas
> have ordinances which could give you and others like you and I a lot of real
> serious problems if we are not careful. I know one man who spent over a
> hundred thousand dollars on lawyers trying to fight a nasty local ordinance
> like the ones I am talking about, and he lost in the end. I was successful
> in eliminating ALL of the ordinances that regulated little businesses run
> from and in peoples homes and garages in our suburban neighborhood. It took
> a lot of "preaching and explaining" to get the attitudes of the other
> members of the board of supervisors to come around to my way of thinking. I
> made a lot of busybodies mad for doing this, but having the freedom to have
> little operations at home is very important to me.

I'm very impressed! Someday, you'll have to tell us the whole story.
(Maybe you could even write a book!) I suspect there are a lot of people who
have an interest in this area. There was a lady in the St. Louis metro area
who had to go to court to get permission to teach piano at her home. Her
neighbors complained that it increased traffic so much that it was an immediate
threat to the life of the neighbor's children! The city got an injunction to shut
her down, and she had to fight it in state court, which eventually struck the
injunction down. If a neighbor complained about my shop, I might not find
a court so supportive.

When we got our occupancy permit from Kirkwood, my wife asked the
city clerk about home businesses, and she was told that as long as there
wasn't a lot of trucks coming in and out, that the city didn't care. Several
of our neighbors have home businesses, of a sales-office type business.

Jon