lawyers interpretations requested (armchair or actual)

I am fighting tooth and nail with my District regarding parking. I have an acre. I ran my small business from my home and parked two work vehicles in my yard. One is a little Chev HHR which the employee now keeps at his house, and the other is a box van with an 18 foot trailer. I moved my business to another town to make the District happy but they insist that as long as I have a work vehicle parked in the yard, it is still a business. Here is the wording they had a lawyer come up with:

“Storing commercial vehicles on property for daily pick up and use by employees is not ancillary or incidental to residential use, but instead is part of the business.”

They wrote that for me, but it seems that it should also apply to the District employees who drive their work vehicles home, as well as every other resident with a company vehicle. in their zeal to nail me to a cross, they have opened up a large can of worms.(not the first time).

So am I wrong in my interpretation?

You seem to have a reasonable idea about it but there's a difference in driving "your work vehicle" home daily and "having an employee show up to pick up a work vehicle" at your home daily. If what you're doing is the first and they have a problem with graphics, tell them to start fining every cop who drives their car home.

For a real answer, you need to post what your "district" is. Town, county, and state regulations all likely apply as does your zoning classification. For a real answer, someone's gonna have to read every law that applies for exact wording.

They would say that you're wrong, but i would read that as "no commercial vehicles on residential property, period."

Which would definitely result in a E36 M3storm.

If i was feeling vindictive, i'd let them proceed, take them to court, hire a lawyer, and berkeley their E36 M3 up.

If that is the only language, it seems you might be right.

Only place I see gray area is the 'pick up and use by employees'. Could 'pick up' imply that the vehicle is not stored at the employee's home, but in fact at someone else's residential property?

Your right but it does not change the fact that they are the ones that actually enforce the law.

They can use it against you and you can raise the biggest stink in the world, even in court, and they can just well ignore the double standard that you have brought to light. Government does it all the time. Worst case and they actually listen they make an exemption for themselves.

kylini wrote: You seem to have a reasonable idea about it but there's a difference in driving "your work vehicle" home daily and "having an employee show up to pick up a work vehicle" at your home daily.

This is the thing right there. Is there a difference as per that paragraph?

I am a Canadian so this is really a very subjective question I am asking.

Sounds like a pretty stupid lawyer wrote that.

We had a similar issue when I was in towing. If the owner kept all three trucks at his house and we picked them up there we were reporting to a work location and making it a commercial property, not allowed. If we each took one truck to our homes we were employees bringing home a truck, allowed.

Of course my town had a couple board members get into a fight with a one of my neighbors, a landscaper, and wanted to ban any work trucks at houses and their poorly worded law at first banned trucks with dual rear wheels. This meant anyone with a dually to tow their boat, camper ect was being ticketed while my neighbor bought an old Mack with super singles on the rear to replace his personal car, and would let it idle for long periods at night to build air pressure so he could make his beer run. It worked out good for me because I got some space ina friends warehouse for $100 a month so even in the dead of winter I could keep my chrome polished every night.

Figure out which neighbor you annoyed and appease? Landscaping or fence to hide truck & trailer or whatever it takes.

Know 2 other dudes near by with commercial jobs? Here's what I'd do. If I could get them on board, store the HHR at one guy's house and the box at the other's. Have them bring their respective, displaced vehicle over to your home. Now, its not being used by your business, its merely being parked there, free of charge.

Is this a poo wagon?

1- Are they actually commercial vehicles? In other words, are they registered commercially? (including the HHR). If they are owned privately, it doesn't really matter what is painted on the side.

2- Is it residentially zoned?

3- Is that the actual ordinance, or an interpretation? That sounds like an interpretation.

4- Are they enforcing parking regulations, or zoning regulations? Which vehicle is at issue and why? For example- trailers usually don't count. If the ordinance says "No parking commercial vehicles on residential property" it's different than "No parking trucks over 30,000 GVW".

It sounds like the issue is zoning, not parking. If so, then running the business from your home is at issue, in addition to the parking of a commercial vehicle. (But I would argue against this- it is discrimatory to tell a landscaper he can't run his business from his home, while allowing a lawyer or accountant to do so) I'd loose, but I'd still argue against it.

They never enforce this stuff evenly. The REAL issue is always that someone complained. It can usually be solved with a privacy fence (they can only cite you for stuff that can be seen from the public road. That should be easy to solve with an acre of land).

As far as the actual wording- you loose. But only if that is a precedent set in a court decision. If it is the opinion of a lawyer with a bug up his butt (which is likely), tell him to please cite the actual ordinance you are in violation of.

Does an employee pick up the van? Or are you taking the van from your place of residence to your place of business and back daily? If its the latter, are you performing after hours or call out work with the van?

The way it reads, its OK for an employee to take a work vehicle to their home, but not OK for them to pick up and drop off from a private residence that isn't their own. If its only you using the van and your not conducting after hours call out work from your premises you should be OK.

As others have suggested, one of your neighbours is a whinger... Seek further clarification from the district, but tread carefully so as not to further agitate the situation.

Not a E36 M3 wagon. Its just a box van

Interestingly it is not a result of neighbors complaining, its the District trying to rein in small business. I am caught in a crack down. They want me to rezone my rural acreage(I have no neighbors)from rural residential to commercial and I object to doing that to my home just for one berkeleying truck.

Anyway, I lost that battle. I am not prepared to lawyer up and take on the District, so I have found alternative parking arrangements. But the reason for the question was to help me write a very damning letter to the local paper to hopefully get the pitchfork brigade out.

is moving an option? seems they don't want the tax money you bring to their area, so maybe take it somewhere else..

That's crazy. The paper idea may make sense. Nobody in politics ever goes after small business. As a concept, "small business" falls in between "our children" and "the struggling middle class" on the spectrum of things politicians cannot be against. If people near you would widely find what is happening distasteful, publicity could be good.

Still, the paper is the nuclear option. No advice, but good luck. This kind of nosy, busybody crap is what made me swear to never buy a place under an HOA.

In reply to Mike:

He didn't say HOA, and I doubt he has one with an acre of property.

In reply to bearmtnmartin:

OK, for your damning letter, I'd still go back to my question.

Is that statement the ordinance, or a lawyer's verbiage?

If it is the ordinance, your letter would be, "This law is stupid because blah, blah, blah".

If it is the lawyer (and I strongly suspect it is), then your letter would be, "The municipality is using their lawyer to intimidate blah, blah, blah, without an actual judge's ruling". This letter is more likely, and will carry more weight with the paper.

You need to compare the actual ordinance with the verbiage of the letter, and avoid complaining just because you don't "like" it, or think it's "unfair".

The law will be reasonably clear. Interpretation of the law is not the lawyer's job- it is a judge's.

SVreX wrote: In reply to Mike: He didn't say HOA, and I doubt he has one with an acre of property.

Looking back at what I wrote, I can see how you got there, but I didn't say he had.

In reply to bearmtnmartin:

Here's what I don't like about the statement:

“Storing (you are not storing, you are parking) commercial vehicles (Are they commercial per their registration?) on property (What kind of property?- Obviously it's not illegal to store vehicles on property if it is commercial) for daily pick up (What if it's semi-weekly? Weekly?) and use by employees (What if you use it, not your employee? Is it still commercial? Still illegal?) is not ancillary or incidental to residential use (that depends on who uses lives there and how they use it), but instead is part of the business. (Are you in the parking business? Do you meet customers there? Conduct business?)”

If they are transportation used to get to business, it's not business.

It's terribly worded. It looks like a junior lawyer just trying to intimidate.

In reply to Mike:

No problem

Question:

If it was a farm implement in the yard, would they make you move it?

Isn't farming a business? It's not zoned agricultural.

(I really hate busy body bureaucrats).

Wally wrote (truncated): ...so even in the dead of winter I could keep my chrome polished every night.

Wally, that's not a euphemism for something, is it?

No, I would spend a sad amount of time keeping my truck clean enough to eat off of.

Our little town is a farming community with a lot of small business that provides services to the farms. I like to say that we operate on the four f principal: farms,fish,first nations and phuck everyone else. The council is greatly influenced by the recommendations of the paid staff who push their own agenda and right now the legacy project seems to be to eliminate small business startups on rural acreage and encourage startups in the industrial sector. That is not how small business works and most likely never will. How many of you would quit your job and go it alone if you had to buy or rent an industrial property and pay all the associated costs and taxes right off the bat? You start small and as your business matures and grows you go looking for larger premises.

The definition I am talking about is not written into law, it is the tame lawyers interpretation and I made that clear in my letter. At this point I just want to point out the damage the staff and council are doing. I can write a pretty dang good letter and this one will be my best effort.