Typical home based-businesses such as contractors and landscaping services, and personal services like nail salons, music and dancing classes, and animal grooming, require a special occupation permit from the city of Auburn before they can open.
To get one, however, applicants have faced significant costly and time-consuming barriers.
Alexandria Teague, planning services manager in the city’s department of community development, reminded the Auburn City Council at its Sept. 22 study session that the city plans to amend the process to make opening a home-based businesses less of a problem at the council’s Oct. 3 meeting.
“The goal of this amendment is twofold: to update and simplify the home-occupation standards to enable a quicker decision,” Teague explained.
History
Home-based businesses were first included in Auburn’s zoning ordinance in 1953. In 1987, city leaders decided they warranted their own, separate chapter.
Today, they are subject to, and evaluated against, 13 requirements last updated in 2012, and then generally permitted as a business license.
These special home occupation permits, Teague explained, are a “Type III decision,” meaning they face a 170-day timeline. That doesn’t mean 170 days must pass before city staff can issue the permit; it is the total span of time the city has to issue the permit.
That means a lot of processing, including a public hearing before the city’s hearing examiner who must make his decision within 10 days of the hearing.
Over time, Teague said, city staff have learned which code section requirements tend to trip up applicants. To streamline the process, staff will establish a new “Type I” decision process for home-based businesses, alongside a Type III process, where applicable. These updates aim at procedural clarity while maintaining the city’sauthority over land use and development decisions.
City staff first presented the proposed amendments to the planning commission at its regular meeting on Aug. 5, and then held a public hearing on Sept. 16.
Among the proposed amendments are revisions to existing sections that will then reference Type I decisions, requirements, exemptions, the special permits and prohibited home occupation businesses.
Auburn’s code is not based on state law, but the city’s own practices.
• The first change would allow staff to issue a permit decision within a 65-day time frame. Public notice requirements and conditions of approval would not change. “In the years I’ve processed home occupation permits,” Teague said, the hearing examiner has almost always supported staff decisions without demur.
• The second revision would allow the businesses to increase the number of employees who do not live in the city from one to two, which, Teague said, could help a business hire enough staff to one day transition to a brick and mortar office.
• Where now the code says the business must limit itself to one-fourth of the floor space of any building, that restriction would change to a flat 500 square feet, aligning with international codes.
• Allow alignment of accessory structures to better suit the needs of certain businesses.
• Allow Auburn’s community director to elevate a decision to hearing examiner to hold a public hearing and issue a decision.
State law
Recently, state lawmakers passed House Bill 5290, which standardizes timelines for local government actions across various types of permit applications, and promotes timely, predictable procedures for determining application completeness and conformance with development regulations.
City officials say home-based businesses as permitted in the Auburn City Code are particularly well-suited to align with that bill in terms of administrative efficiency, given their streamlined approval process.
