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Rural businesses strain country calm

Weak planning laws leave more neighbors feuding as home-based businesses head to the hills

Winston Ross
Spokesman Review Staff writer

EASTPORT, Idaho _ Dennis and Marijo Swenson live six miles down a snow-packed Boundary County road where the most frequent forms of advertising are "No Trespassing" signs.

County Road 34 runs along the placid, gurgling Moyie River — just about as rural as rural gets.

It is so quiet that a solitary voice bounces off the mountainsides as sharp and clear as a train whistle.

Or the blast of an air horn.

The horn in question belongs to the Swensons’ neighbors, Marcia Cosette and Fred Seton. They’re making radiant heating and cooling systems, which they boast are the most energy-efficient way to warm or cool a building. When Seton gets a telephone call and he’s out of earshot, Cosette summons him with the air horn.

Then there’s the forklift, rumbling back and forth. The trucks hauling equipment. Garbage spilling onto the road as it is being carried away, say the Swensons. Burning piles of pallets and stumps.

Rohor Industries, the Swensons are certain, has no place on County Road 34. But county officials say the company meets their definition of a "home-based" business.

As the number of home businesses increases, cities and counties in the Panhandle have found themselves without laws specific enough to resolve such disputes. Some local governments, including Boundary County, are scrambling to catch up.

"Planning and zoning has always been a very controversial issue up here," says county Commissioner Ron Smith. "You might have some people who don’t want to follow it, who don’t want to be bothered. But if one has to follow the rules, everyone has to follow the rules."

Home-based businesses, from junkyards to jam-makers, have been on the upswing for at least two decades all over the United States. Each year since 1984, those businesses have grown by 10 percent to 12 percent, from 2 million to 22 million, according to the National Association of Home-Based Businesses.

Some of them are hailed as innovative entrepreneurship. But in places such as North Idaho, where property owners fight fiercely to protect their rights, home innovation and neighborhood calm can clash.

"I believe people have a right to do with their property as they see fit under the laws of the state and the county," said Murreleen Skeen, who just left office as a Boundary County commissioner. "Especially in a small community like ours, entrepreneurs that can make a living out of their home, more power to them."

It’s not just Boundary County where home-based businesses have cause a stir. It’s all over North Idaho.

"We struggle with home-based businesses all the time," says Rand Wichman, Kootenai County’s planning director. "Home businesses are problematic throughout the United States. They’re a good thing, in that they keep people working at home — wouldn’t we all like to be working at home? And it saves a burden on the infrastructure.

"But making sure those uses are compatible with what the neighbors think ought to occur, and keeping it so you’re not interfering with the peaceful enjoyment the neighbors’ property is the tricky part."

Sometimes the law, complain neighbors like the Swensons, doesn’t go far enough, however.

"The neighbors make jokes," sighs Marijo Swenson, "about how you live out by the factory."

Seton and Cosette argue that they try to minimize impacts on their neighbors. Beyond that, they’re providing jobs to an employment-hungry community.

"The community is supposed to be trying to employ more people in the area," Seton says. "I usually employ seven or eight people."

Some feel persecuted

For months, Ron and Sherry Husk searched the back roads of Boundary County for a place to live and start a towing company.

It wasn’t easy. They had to find a house less than 30 minutes away from anywhere else in the county, to qualify for the county and state towing rotation.

Finally, the Husks found a perfect spot, at the end of County Road 33 — the "dome home," which they describe to would-be visitors as "three bubbles in a field." It’s made by blowing up a rubber balloon, spraying the inside with Styrofoam and then filling it with concrete and rebar.

The place looks like a hobbit hole, but the Husks adore it. Since the property is at the end of the road, they can keep a few cars on the property — the children like to race in demolition derbies.

The neighbors weren’t as excited about the Husks’ newfound paradise. Complaints started rolling into county planners about the dozens of cars in the yard, and at least a perception of extra traffic.

First, the Husks applied for a special use permit, to operate a wrecking yard, and were denied. But the towing company is legitimate as a home-based business, the county found. The cars on the property were licensed and working, which met the county code.

The Husks, nevertheless, feel persecuted.

"This is a problem we have," says Ron Husk. "Especially in this county. They don’t want you to have a small business in the county. If you do, they want you to put it in the city, so they can tax you."

By "they," he means residents who don’t have to worry about money.

"The theory in Boundary County is, `I have a job. We don’t need no more jobs."’

Law fundamentally flawed

The Swensons moved to North Idaho from Seattle in 1991, on a quest for quiet. At first, relations with their new neighbors went fine, both sides agree.

"They cut our grass," Marcia Cosette said. "We had dinner together; exchanged recipes, gardening tips.

"Before, we were good neighbors."

Seton has rheumatoid arthritis, which sometimes restricts him to a wheelchair. He wanted to start a business from home because his ability to move is limited, he said.

Seton claims he has tried to minimize the impacts of that business on the Swensons. But the bottom line, he says, is that he’s operating within the law.

Mike Weland, the county’s planning administrator, has the unenviable task of trying to make both sides happy.

A key element of the county’s ordinances, Weland said, is "to try to preserve property rights, allowing people to do what they want without government intrusion."

Still, Boundary County’s regulations of home-based businesses is vague. They don’t set limits on the number of employees a business has, for example. Mostly, the ordinance requires that the business be "incidental" to the home; i.e., that the home is the primary structure on the property.

"It’s not a very good ordinance," Weland says. "We’re working to change that."

The changes won’t make it tougher to have a home-based business in Boundary County, but they will clarify the rules, Weland hopes.

Businesses wouldn’t create extra traffic, noise, dust or other nuisances; there’ll be no outdoor signage, displays of merchandise or materials, and owners will have to submit a site plan and an application for a zoning certificate.

Rudy Lewis is president of the National Association of Home-Based Businesses, near Baltimore, Md. He remembers a time when it wasn’t so fashionable to be working from one’s home, when people would manufacture background noises, just to sound like they worked in an office.

Now, with Internet companies and telecommuters, working from home has become an ideal. And with America’s shift from an industrial economy to a service-based economy, it’s important to encourage entrepreneurship of all kinds, Lewis says.

"You have to allow them to do that, or you will kill your community," Lewis said. "Where are you going to get your entrepreneurs? Are you going to import them? The new world says you’ve got to grow your own.

"You’re not going to be able to go out and find a factory to bring you jobs. "

Dennis and Marijo Swenson realize that the economy in Boundary County is in bad shape, with unemployment numbers firmly in the double digits. They agree that business should be encouraged; but in the right place.

"We need appropriate growth in appropriate locations," Dennis Swenson said. "It takes us 45 minutes to drive into town, so we don’t have to live next to a business. Then someone comes in and puts a business next to you.

"Why live 45 minutes from town?"

Winston Ross can be reached at (208) 765-7132, or by e-mail at [email protected].

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=012003&ID=s1290992&cat=section.idaho

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