Faced with a barrage of criticism and unable to explain how the money might be spent, the Yachats City Council has backed off a proposed doubling of fees for 2020 vacation rental licenses.
Instead, it will discuss them again – and other vacation rental details it could not resolve Wednesday, Oct. 16 — at its Thursday, Nov. 7 meeting.
The decision to put off the vote came at the end of a raucous 4-hour council meeting during which two audience members were asked to leave for being disruptive.
The council earlier this month voted unanimously to keep a 125-limit on vacation rental licenses. On Wednesday it was to vote on a more than doubling of yearly fees, based on the number of bedrooms, ranging from $400 to $900.
It was also supposed to tick through a list of smaller changes to the city’s vacation rental ordinances, but delayed discussion of several of those.
The fee increase was proposed by Mayor John Moore in early September, who calculated the increase could raise about $72,000 if all 141 license holders renewed. But there was little discussion then. The few council comments in September concerned using the money to pay for code enforcement and to possibly discourage 22 families not using their houses as rentals to drop their licenses.
But the proposal ran into a buzzsaw of opposition Wednesday as speaker after speaker called the increase excessive, arbitrary, impulsive and greedy.
“If you got a tax bill and it went up $900 you’d want a justification as to why it went up,” said Mike Ruffner, who has an electrical contracting company and a rental license. “We don’t get a justification. There’s nothing on paper to show those expenses … we’re just expected to pay.”
“As a business owner I couldn’t do that,” he told the council. “I’d have no customers.”
They got support from Councilor James Kerti, who contended the council lacked any kind of data to justify the increase.
Kerti reminded the council that it had already budgeted $80,000 for part-time code enforcement before the higher fees were proposed. He said the city lacks year-to-year data on vacation rental complaints, has not developed staffing costs associated with administering licenses or code enforcement, should first develop confidence in a complaint tracking system, but foremost should assess its overall code enforcement needs before asking vacation rental owners to foot the bill.
Kerti drew support from Councilor James Tooke, who argued the city could afford to spend more time discussing the increased fees and what they would be used for. Both asked to put off any fee increase until 2020.
That was opposed by Moore and councilors Max Glenn and Leslie Vaaler, so it was agreed to discuss it again at the council’s Nov. 7 meeting.
When it came to other discussions on vacation rental ordinances, the council decided to:
- Reaffirm its desire, despite some misgivings from the city attorney, to require any new vacation rental licenses to go through a conditional use hearing before the Planning Commission.
- Discuss Nov. 7 how to implement a waiting list system, which the city attorney said should have been set up in 2017 when the 125-license limit was initiated.
- Discuss Nov. 7 the persistent requests by some vacation rental owners to exclude areas of the city zoned for commercial or motel use from the 125-license limit. The point was driven home again Wednesday when Drew Roslund, owner of the Overleaf Lodge and adjacent village, said vacation rentals in its complex of single-family homes were in a city-approved planned unit development zoned for motel use and should be treated differently. Moore asked city staff to develop a list of vacation rentals in commercial and areas zoned for motels. “… it’s a discussion we legitimately can have,” Moore said.
- Discuss Nov. 7 how to implement a 2-year cycle of rental inspections and review penalties for violations.
- Discuss Nov. 7 whether to proceed with an earlier consensus to require rental owners to provide a list of all complaints when they re-apply for a license.