GUILDERLAND — Four months ago, Mark Grimm was surprised to hear that he needed a permit to run his consulting business from his Remmington Road home.  Now that he has a permit, the councilman wants to change the rules in town.

In July, the town’s zoning enforcement officer, Rodger Stone, got an anonymous complaint that Grimm was running a business from his home without the proper permit.  (See www.altamontenterprise.com under archives for Guilderland on July 24 for full coverage.)

“I didn’t know I needed one,” Grimm said last week.  Following the complaint, Grimm applied for a special-use permit and said of the process, “I got breezed through it.”

He estimates that there are 1,600 home businesses in Guilderland and doesn’t think that the owners should have to go through this process.  At the next board meeting with a light agenda, Grimm plans to broach the issue, he said.

“I’m going to borrow, I think, from Bethlehem,” he said of the nearby town, which has laws he considers hospitable to home-based businesses.