The first revisions to the Highlands Comprehensive Plan were up for public assessment on Tuesday night during a specially called meeting of the town planning board.
Jake Petrosky, Planning Manager with Stewart Inc., presented the first revisions to the draft plan following recent public forums in Highlands. He noted that some of the most discussed topics during the public meetings were environmental/land preservation, short term rental policies, future pedestrian improvements and parking.
Highlands resident Tom Coley represented the Dog Mountain Property Owners Association and asked the planning board to take action restricting short term rentals, also known as vacation rentals by owner.
“On Dog Mountain we had a homeowners association that had covenants and actual teeth in the forms of fines and things, but those covenants reached their sunset,” Coley said. “So 10 years ago or so we voted unanimously to be annexed and become part of the town. We still have a property owners’ group, but it is strictly voluntary and there are no fines or things like that. It’s a wonderful neighborhood, but recently we have been losing that sense of community.”
Coley explained that in the past few years multiple houses on Dog Mountain have been purchased to be used exclusively as short-term vacation rentals. He has noticed an uptick in traffic, speeding, loud parties and littering since the VRBO’s began operating.
“Beyond those obvious problems, we have started to lose our sense of togetherness and community,” Coley said. “It’s impossible to know your neighbors when your neighbors change every four or five days. Being a small close-knit town is one of the things that many of us love about Highlands and we don’t want to lose that.”
Petrosky noted that 62 percent of the more than 1,000 respondents to the initial comprehensive plan survey marked that they were concerned about the increase in VRBO’s in Highlands. On the flip side, 60 percent of business owners indicated that more VRBO’s and short-term rental properties would be good for their business.
“There has to be some sort of balance,” Petrosky said. “We don’t want Highlands to become Charleston, where the entire town is now essentially short-term rentals and nobody lives there full time. But at the same time, there is a reason VRBO’s are so popular, they make money for the property owner and they bring in tourism dollars across several business sectors.”
Petrosky added that the state of North Carolina, via legislation, has been clear that towns can not force short-term rental property owners to register, pay any kind of additional tax above and beyond what other businesses pay, or cap the number of short-term rentals in a location.
He did offer a few possible solutions to curb the influx of short-term rentals in the future.
“Some of these are low hanging fruit, like enforcing the town’s current noise ordinance, speed limits and sanitation ordinances,” Petrosky said. “Short-term rentals must abide by town rules just like everyone else. Secondly, there is the possibility of putting a minimum stay requirement in place and mandating that short-term rentals can’t be rented for less than three days, five days, a week, whatever the town board decides.”
Petrosky added that there is potential for conditional zoning within the R-1 residential zones to exclude VRBO’s, but conditional zoning is complicated and often requires unanimous consent from a large group of adjacent property owners to accomplish.
“HOAs still have the power to make their own covenants to govern their own neighborhoods, so they can vote to not allow short-term rentals,” Petrosky said. “But once short-term rentals are in place and operating there aren’t really any outlets to stop them.”
Petrosky informed the planning board that the conversation surrounding short-term rentals is ongoing and the comprehensive plan can be amended prior to adoption if the town decides to put any restrictions in place.
Highlands town planner Michael Mathis proposed a second specially-called meeting of the planning board in August in order to review any potential revisions to the draft plan. A date and time for that meeting was not set, but the planning board members agreed to check their availability and let Mathis know a day and time that worked for the majority.
“At that August meeting we are hoping to have our revisions written and a second draft of the plan available for you all to review,” Petrosky said. “As the planning process moves forward toward adoption of the plan we are still taking the input we are receiving from town staff, elected officials and the general public into account.”
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62 percent of the more than 1,000 respondents to the initial comprehensive plan survey marked that they were concerned about the increase in VRBO’s in Highlands.