By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
The Yachats City Council on Wednesday dramatically changed directions again on vacation rental regulations, going back to a citywide cap of 125 licenses and reversing a vote to allow unlimited short-term rentals in areas zoned for businesses and motels.
The unanimous vote came after the city’s attorney advised that treating vacation rentals differently in different zones and requiring a conditional use permit for any new licenses would open it up to a long, risky and possibly expensive land-use process.
The sudden about face caused consternation from at least one council member and some others following the contentious vacation rental licensing issue.
After the vote, Councilor James Kerti said the council and city has to do a better job fully fleshing out significant changes to its ordinances, especially when they could open up a whole new series of challenges.
“It might be appropriate for us to get advice of our attorney before going forward” with something as significant as this, Kerti said. “It’s unfortunate … there were a lot of people operating with incorrect information.”
In voting against the commercial and motel zone changes last month, Kerti and Councilor Leslie Vaaler argued unsuccessfully that the decision was too quick and that the city needed more information to determine the impact of such a potentially big change. During its seven-month process the council has had few or no staff reports, comparative data, best practices elsewhere, or studies on local or national vacation rental issues on which to base many of its decisions.
It was the second major vote change during the council’s seven-month discussion of vacation rental regulations.
On Oct. 2 the council voted to keep the city’s two-year-old limit of 125 vacation rental licenses. It was scheduled to vote Oct. 16 on a more than doubling of annual license fees proposed by Mayor John Moore but put off that decision after a barrage of criticism and acknowledging it already had enough money via licensing and in the city budget to pay for code enforcement.
On Nov. 7 it voted to keep the current fees for annual licenses.
But at the same meeting Moore brought up the idea of allowing unlimited vacation rentals in commercial and motel zones and dropping the cap in residential zones to 100. The idea behind that was to appease demand for more vacation rentals in the city in areas that already allow businesses or motels but to continue to protect the livability of residential neighborhoods. Also, anyone seeking a license in a residential zone would have to get a conditional use permit from the Planning Commission.
Two weeks later the council held a hearing on the ideas, then voted 3-2 to allow unlimited vacation rentals in commercial and motel-area (R-4) zones, voted 4-1 to lower the cap in residential (R-1, R-2 and R-3) zones to 100, and voted 5-0 to require a conditional use permit for new licenses in all residential zones.
The council was scheduled Wednesday to finish tweaking language in its vacation rental ordinance but got a letter Monday from city attorney Ross Williamson saying to go slow on the licensing changes.
Yachats’ current vacation rental licenses are regulated as a simple business license. Requiring a conditional use permit moves the licensing decision into the much more complicated land-use process, he said.
“The city does not want to subject its business license regulations to land use requirements and procedures,” Williamson advised. “The city’s existing business license regulations were not created to comply with land use procedures and to force such compliance would be a significant burden.”
For example, a decision to approve or deny a license could be first appealed to the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals and then even to the state’s appeals and supreme court.
Williamson said if the city wanted to go ahead with Moore’s idea, it would require much more coordination between the council and Planning Commission, re-writing of criteria by which to judge vacation rental applications, and amending the city’s land-use regulations.
“We’re opening up some land-use issues and it gets very complicated and opens the city to lawsuits,” Moore said in response to several comments, criticisms questions from the audience. “Our concern is minimizing risk.”
Moore left open the possibility of having a deeper discussion of the issue next year. Kerti said he hoped the council would gather more information to see if the idea eventually might work.
In other business related to vacation rentals, the council Wednesday:
- Denied a request by the Apostolic Churches of Oregon to waive vacation rental regulations for a two-story house it owns at 696 Pacific View Drive. The Silverton-based church wants to form a nonprofit to manage the little-used property for use by church members. The council voted unanimously to deny the request after saying it was no different than any other vacation rental group, was seeking donations of up to $500 to stay there, and was advertising the property to its national membership.
- Again postponed a discussion of if or how to form a waiting list for people seeking vacation rental licenses, waiting until February to discuss the issue when it knows how many licenses were renewed by the Jan. 31 deadline.
