We have four filed candidates so far for Lake County Commission. If Ken Edick's monkey-wrenching works, he could provoke a dozen more.
Here's the story: Wednesday's print MDL headlines the 12 nuisance complaints that Edick filed against various Lake County landowners for allegedly conducting businesses in violation of zoming and conditinoal use permits. Zoning Officer Deb Reinicke is surely having whopper headaches mudding about the county checking out these properties, including Lee Yager's operation west of town, Todd Johnson's towing yard, and Doug Peters's used machinery sales yard east on Highway 34.
We all know Edick is just doing some "good for the goose, good for the gander" politicking for his Winfred friend Charlie Scholl, who's been catching hell from the county lately for his salvage operation. The barely-sub-text of Edick's complaint: if the county throw all these conditions and roadblocks in front of Charlie's effort to run a business on his property, why doesn't the county get after the numerous other folks with arguable nuisances on their property?
(By the way, Ken, thanks for not coming after my dad for the scrap metal pile he has next to his shed. Dad needs something to work on during his coming retirement!)
The county is thus busy looking into the dozen nuisances. Deb couldn't make it to one place, Eric and Lisa Lindholm's, due to muddy roads (if you have a nuisance, pray for more rain). She found some places, like Cox's repair shop west of town, are properly permitted and not a problem. Some others require further investigation.
Rules are rules, and if Deb finds violations, the county will have to enforce. I offer no opinion on whether Yagers or Johnsons or anyone else are violating the law, but I wonder if—no, actually, I hope these visits from county government will inspire a few more people to run for the County Commission.
We need to encourage small businesses and NOT create barriers.
ReplyDeleteThe state requires you to get a slaes tax license to be in business. The federal gov't requires you to report income and pay taxes. Both the state and federal requirements are easy to find and well known.
At the local county and city level, there is no easy way to find out that you might need a conditional use permit to run a small business out of your home.
Does the fault always lie with the business owner?
Cory, do you have a permit to run Madville Times out of your house? You too probably need a permit.