A proposal by board members of the CountrySide homeowners association to regulate home-based businesses has encountered strong opposition from residents operating such businesses, and now threatens a revolt capable of turning over several board seats.
The controversy comes up as CountrySide, a community of about 2,300 households near Cascades on the north side of Route 7, is preparing to hold its annual elections.
Each of CountrySide's seven neighborhoods has a seat on the board and opponents of "draft Resolution 262," the subject of three recent "Town Hall meetings," now appear likely to split the association's seven board seats in the coming elections.
Bonnie Little, a former teacher and communications marketer who now works with her husband's business, Home Network Solutions, out of their home in the Oakridge neighborhood, learned last week that she is the only candidate from her neighborhood to meet the Oct. 15 deadline for submitting nomination signatures for a seat on the 2010 board. Current Oakridge director Don Brock chose not to seek re-election.
Likewise, Jennifer Cochran, from the Rokeby Ridge neighborhood, who has also shown concern with the home business issue, similarly was notified that she was the lone candidate filing nomination papers from that neighborhood. Carlos Guzman represented that neighborhood this year but also did not seek re-election. Little also reported that Rob Heckman, who represents the Morven neighborhood on CountrySide's board, is expected to oppose Resolution 262 when it comes to a vote.

LITTLE HOSTED an organizing meeting among home-based business owners soon after the association conducted its town meetings. The opponents produced an informational flyer that is being delivered to CountrySide's homes, and will urge the board at its Oct. 28 meeting to form an ad hoc committee, including residents who own home businesses and others who do not, to help the board develop a substitute resolution. Board meetings are conducted in the Parkway Meeting Room on Algonkian Parkway.
Board President David Barrie of the Oatlands neighborhood told residents at the town meetings that he did not expect a board vote until next year, so it appeared this week that the association's board will have three or more votes against Res. 262 when the vote comes.

THE ISSUE FIRST appeared when a prospective CountrySide resident asked for board approval of her home-based business, a daycare center, in advance of purchase. Association covenants written when CountrySide was founded in the 1970s, however, specifically disallowed home based businesses, except that one room in a home could be designated for "professional use."
Thus, the current board found itself confronted with a legal issue that had to be solved.
Resolution 262 was drafted in hopes of allowing home-based businesses that pose no distractions for residential neighbors, while maintaining the neighborhood's residential quality of life, board members said.
But home-based business owners saw restrictive language in Res. 262 more limiting than Loudoun County regulations on home-based business owners.