After coming up with a document on Dec. 13, that will be used as a recommendation on what the town should do about the short-term rental problems, the Town of Highlands Planning Board approved that the document summarizes all of the changes to the draft proposal given to them by the town’s attorney and the working group tasked with finding a solution to the STR situation the town is facing.
The document starts out with changes to definitions in the UDO, then gets into the changes made by the planning board on usage in the different zoning areas.
The changes made to the usage table were to limit the usage of tourist homes in R-1, R-3, and all commercial zones, limit whole house short term rentals in all zones and not allow transient dwelling lodging in R-1, but allow them in R-2 with a special use permit and zones R-3 and commercial district on a limited usage.
One topic that was brought up was after talking about the usages was the special permit the planning board recommended for a transient dwelling unit in R-2 zoning, which was ultimately tabled.
A new section was added to the draft proposal regarding the special use permit with transient dwelling lodging, which assistant planning and development director Michael Mathis said he took from the whole house short-term rental section.
“This section did not exist,” Mathis said. “I basically carbon copied it from the whole house short term rental section and made some changes to the criteria. I then sent it to this board to review and approve. The question on the table is, do we need to carry this as a special use permit where a resident has to come in before the zoning board and we have to advertise it and set up a hearing and then the next week four more come in then we have to set another hearing for the next week and advertise that. Or, to save a lot of time and staff power, if they meet all the criteria in this ordinance then it is approved, and we save a lot of time.”
Planning board member Wendall Willard said the board would be creating an administrative nightmare if they were to approve the new section.
“We are trying to bend to meet the needs of the wedding industry in our town,” Willard said. “We are bending to try to do something that is impossible to do. You set up a two-week minimum and then you try to set up ways for a three-day use; it is going to be hard to do.”
Another topic on the document was a suspension of rights after multiple violations, which there was no action taken on during the first meeting.
Willard made the motion Tuesday that after three violations in a 12-month period, the owner would be subjected to a suspension of their rental license for six months.
Planning board member Chris Wilkes said he agrees that going forward, things have to have some teeth.
“I think this will be a way to make people who aren’t paying attention to violations, start paying attention,” Wilkes said.
The motion passed unanimously.
The last thing the board discussed was that they recommend to the town board of commissioners that whatever they do with vesting, that they avoid having two classes of properties.
Wilkes said that the vested rights has been the biggest problem that people have come up and talked with him about.
“The thing of concern was that going forward, if the house that is a nightmare next to them, would not only continue to be able to do that, but that that property’s value would go up and theirs would go down because the buy-in base is no longer as wide,” Wilkes said. “I don’t know if there is anything that we can put, other than ask the town board, please for God’s sake let’s not create this ‘Golden Goose’ property. That was the biggest concern that came up in conversation with me. I realize that there may be a transition period, and that is important, but I would want to be pretty sure about what that transition period was. Are we talking about 10 years? Or can we write something in to make sure that there is a hold on these properties that are continuously renting. This is going to be a giant problem going forward if we go this way.”
Moving forward, the planning board will meet again and decide whether to approve the document to be sent to the town board of commissioners.
- By Christopher Lugo