By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews
Lincoln County commissioners Wednesday approved a significant jump in yearly fees for vacation rental licenses, defending the increase as needed to cover costs of administering the county’s new regulations and oversight.
The proposed increase to renew a rental license from the current $125 a year to $500 received some pushback from license holders, and just as much support from people opposed to the rentals, who argued the fee should be even higher.
The fee to apply for a new vacation rental license would double from $350 to $750. But with a new limit on licenses, few new license applications are expected.
The increased charges – included in a package of much smaller increases for dozens of county-related fees – takes effect July 1.
Although the county routinely raises most of its other fees each year, it had not raised the vacation rental license fee since 2019. Current license holders only heard about the proposed fee increase via an email June 7 from the sheriff’s office, which administers the program. The public, including vacation rental opponents, learned about it through a YachatsNews story the next week.
In voting for the increase Wednesday, commission chair Kaety Jacobson said the county needed to do a better job monitoring fees and costs to avoid such large jumps in the future.
Commissioners Claire Hall and Casey Miller pointed to a workup of the costs by the sheriff’s office that showed a $500 renewal fee for 500 current license holders should cover the projected $247,000 yearly cost of administering the vacation rental program. Hall said commissioners had a longstanding, but unwritten policy, that fees should cover the cost of administrating programs.
“Basically what we’re looking at is a fee that covers the cost of this program,” she said, adding that the charge for one night’s lodging would often cover the new, higher fee.
The increase also brings Lincoln County’s yearly fee – one of the lowest on the coast – in line with most other counties or cities.
22 comments
The big increase comes as the county nears the possible end of a four-year battle over vacation rental regulations, including setting much lower limits on their number in unincorporated areas west of U.S. Highway 101. There are currently 507 vacation rental licenses. Using attrition only, the county wants to lower that number to 181 in unincorporated areas over the next decade.
No one showed up in person or online Wednesday to testify for or against the new fees, but 22 submitted written comments for and against the increase.
Six people who wrote opposing the increase tried to make the connection that commissioners were attempting to run them out of business or make up for the $250,000 the county has spent on legal fees defending its new regulations in courts.
But 15 people and a group that submitted a successful ballot measure last year wrote in to support the fee increase – or ask that it be raised even higher to hire more people to enforce codes.
“This substantial 300 percent fee hike feels like you are grabbing at our wallet while kicking us out the door,” wrote Chad Truemper, who did not give his hometown. “I would agree that the renewal fee of $125 feels low. But a 300 percent increase in a single year feels excessive. What about a more gradual year-over-year increase?”
Several others who submitted comments supported a proposal by the 15neighborhoods group, which opposes vacation rentals in single-family neighborhoods, to raise the yearly fee to $2,350 in order to raise $1.18 million to hire 12 community service deputies.
Traci Burks of Newport wrote that the proposed increase for new licenses and annual renewals was “completely reasonable.”
“The exorbitant cost associated with allowing what correlates to hotel-type businesses in residential homes must be a self-sustained program,” she wrote.
