Laramie County Scraps Controversial Permitting Plan After Food Freedom Outcry

More than 200 Laramie County residents converged on a meeting of the county’s governing board Tuesday to criticize proposed land use rule changes impacting home-based businesses.

The Laramie County Board of Commissioners adopted the controversial new land use regulations, but not until after a unanimous vote to remove a proposed permitting requirement for home-based businesses that had owners of home businesses in a rage.

The vote also followed nearly four hours of public testimony.

Detractors cast the land use rule change as government overreach – chiefly due to the permitting requirement that later failed.

“We don’t want the government telling us what we can and cannot do on our property,” said Laramie County resident Patricia McCoy

McCoy listed the many different taxes homeowners and small business owners pay each year.

“You’re taking more and more of our money, and we don’t like it, and you’re giving us more and more rules,” she added.

The money comment referenced a $100 permit fee for home businesses. Commissioners removed that in a unanimous vote. They made home occupations throughout Laramie County a use by right as well – a massive deregulation from the past two decades.

They created a simple site plan option for small businesses wanting to open a commercial operation in Laramie County. That will let business owners work with county staffers to map their sites rather than going through an engineering firm for the cost of about $20,000-$30,000, according to county officials.

Old Versus New

The old regulations were more onerous than the new land plan, multiple county officials and Laramie County Attorney Mark Voss said at the meeting. 

They too had an application provision for home businesses. 

But they weren’t enforced thoroughly, leading to the perception among some that the new regulations would be more onerous, Commission Chair Gunnar Malm told Cowboy State Daily in a Tuesday interview.

Commissioners voiced surprise at the chasm between the way the commissioners characterized the new rules and the way meeting attendees characterized them.

That was due in part to misinformation circulating online, Malm said in his interview.

 “No part of these regulations interferes or conflict with the (Wyoming) Food Freedom Act,” Malm told attendees. “Anyone baking at home, selling at farmer’s markets (you can still) go sell it in the county. We’re not shutting down lemonade stands, or these home occupations.”

Though not intended to oppress home-based businesses, the new regulations are “intended to protect neighborhoods from more highly utilized spaces like mechanic shops” and high-traffic businesses, Malm said in his interview.

The old regulations had split the county into various zoning designations, some of which had “use by right” allowances limiting the county from preventing potentially disturbing activities in a neighborhood, such as large-scale wedding venues, he said.

Under the new plan, “everyone will be LUR,” or under land-use-regulation zoning, Malm said.

That means that county officials would have more discretion to determine usage plans on a case-by-case basis, rather than having to allow a number of high-intensity uses in use-by-right situations.

Many critics voiced suspicion of that new discretion, saying it would convert the county into a homeowner’s association.

Malm countered, saying people should consider the other side of the argument – when their neighbors want to install a “concrete batch plant next to a $700,000 home someone’s bought with everything they ever made.”

Laramie County Planner Justin Arnold echoed that, saying he’s listened for years to residents with no recourse in situations like those, and the new regulations are meant to roll back some regulation while preserving a check on potentially troubling situations.

Under the new regulations as well, said Arnold, business owners can dodge the potentially $20,000 permitting process by going through a simple mapping plan with the county instead.

Behold, A Suggestion

Halfway through the hours of outcry, commissioners perked up when former state Rep. Sue Wilson, of Laramie County, offered a suggestion. 

She asked the commission to delete portions of the new rule requiring a pre-application meeting with the county planning staff, an application, and a simple plot plan provided to the planning department.

The board adopted her suggestion unanimously.

The Issue Was…

The proposed permit requirement was the chief issue among residents.

Denel Pugh, of home bakery Denel’s Delights, celebrated its deletion in a Wednesday letter to the editor of Cowboy State Daily.

“Our voices were heard, and positive change has come,” wrote Pugh, who was unable to attend the meeting in person because she was selling baked goods at the Cheyenne Farmer’s Market on Tuesday.

Pugh in an earlier, July 31 letter, said the permitting process would grant officials “extra access to private property” through their site plan requirement.

“This is redundant and invasive. It’s presented as ‘deregulation,’ but it’s just more red tape,” she wrote.

Now with the permitting requirement gone, she added Wednesday, “Wyoming remains a beacon for those escaping overregulation elsewhere.”

Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.