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Business licenses, ordinance to be drafted

While looking into how to revamp zoning in the city while incorporating medical marijuana and the roughly 100 properties annexed at the end of last year into the code, the Planning and Development Committee realized that Havre has little concrete idea of how many and what type of businesses are within its limits. Also, where those businesses are located is relatively unknown as well.

A way to identify businesses and the zones in which they are located would enable the committee to better determine if zoning codes need to be changed and where, Mayor Tim Solomon said during Monday's Havre City Council meeting.

"We kept coming back to the issue of we have no idea of folks having businesses in this town and where to start doing the zoning," committee member Allen "Woody" Woodwick said.

The way to do that is to create an annual business license, the committee decided and discussed with full council.

Council members voted unanimously to approve moving forward with the creation of a license and ordinance that would require businesses to register with the city. The committee is set to meet Tuesday, June 1, at 5:15 in City Hall to discuss the formation of the license.

Debbie Vandeberg, executive director of the Havre Area Chamber of Commerce, said that a similar idea failed several years ago. She offered the council the use of the Chamber's business directory, which she said has more than 400 listings.

The committee is recommending that a flat fee of $25 be charged annually to cover administrative costs, that the permit be renewed annually and that all businesses register.

A business has been defined as an entity providing services or products for a profit, including home-based businesses.

"It's not for the city to make money," Woodwick said. "It's just for the city to keep track of the businessEs."

Registering with the city would be a benefit to businesses, Solomon said, especially when people call the city asking if a business is legitimate.

"Right now, we get calls and have never heard of them," he said.

"One of the other advantages to the business permit would be: Any businesses coming into town, we would know about them before the fact instead of after the fact," Woodwick said.

"So if we have a business that comes in and wants to locate someplace and they may be out of zoning compliance we would know that ahead of time" The licenses would also apply to medical marijuana businesses.

Under an emergency ordinance, medical marijuana grow operations and dispensaries had until Friday to register with location and number of patients with the city.

Eight did so, Solomon said.

"I think it's a pretty close figure," he said, even though 19 are registered as caregivers in Hill County with the state.

"I'm feeling it gives us some good basis of where we need to work from and what we're working with," he added.

 

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