Woodbury residents tormented by home-based logging business

When you think of a home-based business, what comes to mind is typically a solo person, drinking coffee, and working from their laptop in the kitchen. The footprint and noise created by the home-based business is typically minimal. But according to David Clark and Flair Banke, residents of Evans Drive in Highland Mills, the home business next door to them is none of those things.

Clark described the home-based business operating at 58 Quaker Road as noisy and messy. In an official complaint filed with Village of Woodbury Building Inspector Michael Panella, he stated, “The son of the owner of the property is operating a logging business seven days per week. He has blocked the road to offload, with a crane truck, large bundles of tree trunks. It appears that his logs have been releasing vermin into our area of living, i.e., rats, mice, and snakes.”

The neighbors have documented the business’s actions, taking photos of the many logs and sawdust that litter the roadside, some with pedestrians nearby, and the large crane that’s been used to haul the logs near residential streets. (A selection of photos documenting the business can be found in the slideshow above.)

Clark added in a second complaint, “Having a home occupation is one thing, but a man wielding a 3’ chainsaw on the street where children are playing... a crane dangling 10 plus feet logs over the street where children are playing and blocking access to ambulances and fire trucks, is no ‘home occupation.’” Panella declined to comment when The Photo News reached out to him for this story. Panella, according to Clark, dismissed concerns about the business and ruled that the logging operation at 58 Quaker Road was well within its rights as a home-based business in the village of Woodbury.

The logging business has reportedly been in operation for over two years, and numerous attempts, according to Clark, to discuss their concerns with the owners have been ignored. When we asked what impacts the neighboring business has had on their quality of life, Clark stated, “The impact to Flair’s suffering of migraines with regard to a seven-day-a-week chainsaw operation is clearly a health and safety hazard.” Clark also noted that, because the logging operator wears protective ear muffs, he can’t hear bystanders along the roadway as the chainsaw’s buzzing.

Calls to the number listed for the logging operation at 58 Quaker Road have not yet been returned.

After being reached by The Photo News with questions about the operation at 58 Quaker Road, Panella reportedly told Clark that he would investigate the matter. However, many questions remain unanswered about this kind of home business and the rules governing it. For example, use of a chainsaw is allowed, but only between the hours of 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on weekdays, or 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekends and holidays (Banke had told The Photo News that the business owner even ran his chainsaw throughout Thanksgiving Day). But does this ordinance cover the routine use of a chainsaw by a logging operation in a residential area, or just a resident using a chainsaw for a couple of hours to remove a tree? Are permits needed for such a home-based operation within the village when large machinery, such as a crane, are involved? And perhaps most confusing, there are several distinct noise ordinances that limit the kind of sounds that can be made within a residential area. Does the routine use of a chainsaw, while allowed by one part of Village Code, contradict the other parts that limit noise? Someone working off their laptop and someone operating a logging business will produce very different kinds of neighborhood noise.

Until those questions are cleared up, Clark and Banke, and the other residents in and around Quaker Road, may have to continue to endure the daily grinding of metal teeth cutting through wood.