Moratorium ends on Sept. 15. Staff must report to council 10 days before that date
Short term rentals returned to the City Council this week.
The council approved a 45-day moratorium on issuing new transient rental licenses on the first day of August. The moratorium expires on Sept. 14, according to the staff report by City Manager David Maistros.
Avalon staff came up with a schedule for stakeholder/community meetings that look at short term rentals from different perspectives.
According to the Maistros report, staff proposed:
A meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 22, at 5 p.m., on noise, trash, and other issues.
A Wednesday, Aug. 30, at 5 p.m., on financial benefits and impacts, sustainability and housing.
And a third meeting at a time to be determined to summarize what the findings of the meetings and discuss short term rental regulation.
The city is looking at negative impacts to people living near short term rentals allowed by either conditional use permits or transient rental licenses, according to the Maistros report.
“Specifically, the City has received numerous complaints in the form of public comment about noise impacts, traffic impacts and safety impacts to residents relating to issuance of CUPs and TRLs,” Maistros wrote.
Maistros told the council the meetings would be run by city staff, not the council or the Planning Commission.
“In addition to the proposed stakeholder/community meetings, City Staff are developing a community survey,” Maistros said.
According to Maistros, this would be a separate survey from the income survey the city is going to send out. He told the council that the city did not want to do two surveys at the same time.
Mayor Anni Marshall asked if that matter could be held off until October. Marshall argued that the city has plenty of time.
City Attorney Scott Campbell said the city has 45 days.
Marshall argued that the moratorium could be extended
Campbell said the moratorium would have to be extended 10 days before Sept. 12. He said the city would have to produce a report on the city’s efforts as of that day. Then, on Sept. 12, the council has the option of extending the moratorium.
Marshall asked who the report goes to.
Campbell said the report goes to the City Council.
Marshall was concerned that the surveys were being taken so close together in time.
“I don’t know what the hurry is,” Marshall said.
Councilmember Lisa Lavelle said the survey could be done later. Maistros agreed.
Marshall said that the Aug. 22 meeting was really rushing. “Plus, I’m a little concerned about 5 o’clock because people don’t get of work ’til 5 o’clock,” she said.
Ponce said the council wanted to play by the rules. “I don’t want to rush it, but it gets us stared moving towards that goal of fixing it,” Ponce said.
Ponce raised the issue that the city could be sued.
“There’s nobody opposing the moratorium, number one, and number two, I think everybody would like us to have at least a year.”
Maistros said that if the city held the first two stakeholder meetings, staff would be in the position of reporting to council in the beginning of September that five people showed up or eight people showed up.
Then, Maistros said, staff could come back with specific recommendations that the city might need more time.
He also said he was willing to adjust the time of the proposed meetings.
Councilmember Mary Schickling said they had all received tons of ideas from the community. She asked if those ideas would come outside of the stakeholder meetings.
Schickling said the city has been doing something. “There’s been a lot of work by community members on this,” Schickling said.
“I’m just hoping that doesn’t just get pushed under the rug,” Schickling said.
“We do have that to show,” Schickling said.
Campbell said the council has to have a report that says you have undertaken studying the issue and a rationale for why the council needs additional time.
According to Campbell, the moratorium could be extended another 10-and-a-half months and after that the moratorium could be extended another year.
Councilmember Yesenia De La Rosa suggested putting a pop up notice on the city website asking out of town property owners if they would be willing to take the online version of the transient rental survey.
“The whole purpose of the statute is to compel progress to be made and to justify that you’re actually doing it rather than doing nothing,” Campbell said.
“So there’s no watchdog looking over our shoulders on this thing at all,” Schickling said.
Campbell said the city had been sued over a moratorium and it took years.
Ponce said the city won that suit.
Marshall asked about business owners who don’t live on the Island. Maistros said the city was taking as much information as it could on this subject.
He said the goal was to target business owners on the Island.
Lavelle suggested a review of available staff time and volunteer time, if people would be willing to do volunteer shifts in front of Vons or the Post Office.
Leslie Warner said that according to the June 2019 Planning Commission, there were 329 short term rentals at that time.
Warner said that 363 short term rentals had been approved since Finance Department Director’s Matt Baker’s report and four more are on the Planning Commission agenda.
According to Warner, assuming the Planning Commission approves the four transient rentals, the new short term rentals would be 24.3% of Avalon’s residential units.
She said if the number included those who had “banked” their short term rental conditional use permits, Avalon is at 27.5% in town. “I think our community needs to be very aware of that number,” Warner said.
She encouraged the council to take its time with the subject and do the research.
Avalon Library Manager Paul Birchall suggested bringing hard copies of the survey to the Library.
“I can push them,” he said.
