By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
YACHATS – Steven La-Sky bought his ocean-view cabin in Overleaf Village four years ago, intending to use it as a second home and vacation rental until he moved here full time.
The wildland firefighter from Las Vegas argued against vacation rental license limits when the city council renewed the two-year-old restrictions in 2019. When the council kept the 125-license cap but decided to conduct a lottery for when licenses became available and create a waiting list, La-Sky signed up.
By last November he was fifth in line.
Now, six months after 13 licenses became available the city has not contacted people on the waiting list.
La-Sky has given up and expects to complete the sale of his house this month.
“I waited years to get to this point,” La-Sky said of getting a vacation rental license. “They made these rules, created a lottery and a waiting list … and then didn’t follow their own rules.”
La-Sky has been the most upset and vocal publicly about the city not issuing the licenses, but others contacted by YachatsNews expressed surprise and dismay that they may be eligible for a license but not informed about the situation.
Yachats has had a limit of 125 vacation rental licenses since October 2017. The ordinance prevents a license’s transfer, so the number of active licenses gradually shrinks when a property changes hands. The city held a lottery in November 2020 to establish the order of the initial waiting list and then to issue licenses to the first five people in line.
And that was it.
The turnover in city managers and staff departures in 2021 meant no one realized until the budget process this spring that the number of vacation rental licenses dropped to 112 by the end of 2021 when current license holders had to renew them.
La-Sky told YachatsNews that he was in town last November, went into city hall to check on the list, was told he was fifth on the list, eligible for a license – but to wait until after the holidays to apply.
La-Sky began calling in January, and getting no response drove up from Las Vegas in February. La-Sky said he was told then he was sixth – not fifth — on the list and not eligible for a license because the city wanted to issue them five at a time. That led to a confrontation in city hall and he was asked to not come back.
In March, La-Sky attended an online Yachats council meeting to complain about the license confusion. City manager Heide Lambert promptly jumped in to say she would follow up with him to get the paperwork started.
But the process stopped.
There are now 30 people on the waiting list for 13 available licenses, according to a list provided to YachatsNews.
Lambert told YachatsNews that the city is not currently staffed well enough to process applications, go over license regulations and requirements with homeowners, and conduct property inspections.
Michelle Stout, who was working on a city employment contract to coordinate events and serve as the city’s code enforcement officer, left for another job in June. No one has been hired to replace her.
“It’s just been a struggle,” Lambert said. “We’re just trying to clean up the past two years. I just need a code enforcer to get the right licenses to the right people.”
Lambert says she’s also talking with council members to see if they want to make some changes in the current license regulations.
One issue, Lambert said, is people holding licenses but not using them – a question the council discussed in 2019 but decided to leave alone. The other is a requirement of having a rental manager being able to respond to complaints or issues within 10 minutes, a rule that’s not being universally enforced.
“I’m trying to get a better system in place before we issue any more licenses,” she said. “It’s a priority. It is on our top five list of priorities.”
City runs on lodging taxes
The issue is important to the city because it relies on lodging taxes from motels and vacation rentals for the majority of its operating budget. It’s also important to license holders who often rely on the rental income to pay mortgages, property taxes and other costs.
Through the first three quarters of fiscal 2021-22, the city had received $1.16 million in lodging taxes – about 25 percent from vacation rentals.
La-Sky estimates he could have rented his home for at least $300 a night. That’s serious money for the retired Las Vegas firefighter who now works for federal agencies battling wildfires across the West.
“I’m on incident management teams fighting 300,000-acre fires,” he said during a break from fighting a months-long blaze in New Mexico. “I work in a super-efficient world, so this is really frustrating.
“I’m not some rich speculator,” La-Sky said. “It’s a big deal for me that could have been avoided if someone would have done their job.”
No doubt the city of Yachats is not operating at a desired pace for quite a while, so why not provide the gentleman with a letter from the city giving him provisional approval to proceed with rentals while the city struggles to nail down remaining details. Maybe the authorities have tried this, but complete paralysis may not be the only option. Remember, “For the want of a nail the kingdom was lost.”