Tougher Home-Business Rules Offered : Thousand Oaks: Proposal would ban a dozen occupations and allow city to revoke permits for others creating unwanted noise or clutter.

Photographers, hair stylists and welders would be banned from working out of their houses, and other home-based businesses would be restricted under a proposed law up for discussion at tonight’s Thousand Oaks City Council meeting.

Seeking tighter control over the thousands of residents who run kitchen-table typing services or living-room massage parlors, city leaders have drafted an ordinance imposing tough restrictions on such businesses.

The proposed law, written in the form of revisions to an existing code, would ban outright a dozen in-home businesses, and would allow the city to revoke permits for any other occupation that generated unwanted traffic, noise, clutter or smells.

“The impacts on the neighborhood are our primary concern, rather than the freedom to do whatever you want to do,” said Planning Commissioner Forrest Frields, who helped draft the proposal.

Council members will not vote on the proposal tonight. Instead, they will consider referring the draft ordinance to the Planning Commission for a formal public hearing.

Opponents are already gearing up for that battle.

“The council keeps trying to make things more stringent when they’re already strict in the first place,” said Steve Rubenstein, president of the Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce. “This is just another opportunity to over-regulate.”

To keep residential neighborhoods quiet, the law would require that home-based businesses generate no more traffic than the average house on the block.

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Trips to and from a business--including both professional calls and personal errands--could total no more than 10 a day in a neighborhood of detached single-family residences, and no more than six a day in a high-density apartment complex.

City enforcement officers would make traffic counts and prosecute violators only after receiving complaints from neighbors.

But several entrepreneurs complained that the ordinance, if adopted, would put them in the uncomfortable position of knowingly violating city law by accepting several customers a day. They also questioned why their businesses were being singled out as the source of congestion, when their neighbors are allowed to hold big parties and invite guests over several times a day.

“They are so small-minded here,” said Hildegard Zentarra, a music teacher who trains up to seven students a day in her Thousand Oaks home.

Because each aspiring pianist travels both to and from her house, Zentarra would be over the legal car-trip limit simply by accepting her normal load of students--even if she never left the house for groceries.

“I’m not a little old lady who wants to earn a bit of extra money; I’m a professional musician,” Zentarra said. “It wouldn’t be fair to limit (car trips). It’s a right of my property.”

City leaders who drafted the measure respond that they must consider the property rights of all residents--including the right to enjoy a peaceful neighborhood, without clients traipsing in and out of a next-door studio.

“We want to encourage home businesses, but not at the expense of the neighbors,” Frields said.

The city issues roughly 3,000 permits a year for residents seeking to start businesses in their homes. Aside from the permit, which costs $15, entrepreneurs must obtain a business license, which carries an annual fee that varies depending on gross revenue.

In recent years, city officials have received just a smattering of complaints from residents concerned about neighborhood-based businesses. Aware that home-based offices are becoming more popular, however, a committee of planning commissioners and council members set out four years ago to draft new regulations.

“We played with this for a long time, going back and forth, trying to make it as reasonable as possible,” said Councilwoman Judy Lazar, who helped write the proposal.

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The five-page draft stipulates that all work must be conducted inside the home or office, except for gardening in the rear yard.

Prohibited uses include work with diesel engines or motor vehicles, personal services that require client visits, and any job requiring explosives or toxic materials.

To gain permission for other potentially noisy businesses--including animal breeding, carpentry, fix-it shops or furniture refinishing--residents must convince city staff members that the businesses will not affect neighbors.

While low-impact businesses such as typing are not mentioned in the ordinance, they would fall under the strict new traffic limits. In addition to the ceiling on car trips, the ordinance states that home-based businesses “shall not generate pedestrian traffic.”

The proposed law would also prohibit outdoor advertisements, banning free-standing signs and requiring all identifiably commercial vehicles to be parked in enclosed garages.