A portion of the discussion, at the Tuesday, August 3, Town Council meeting about vacation rentals, touched on the ethics of participation by Council members who themselves own vacation rentals. This includes Council member Mat deGraaf (who was absent from this meeting), Rory Burnett (who submitted his resignation at the conclusion of the meeting) and Nicole Pitcher (with whom I personally found myself in substantial agreement, for whatever that is worth.)
Government ethics are often a gray area, but ideally (in my humble opinion) a government official will recuse from a debate and a vote if there is even an appearance of ‘conflict of interest.’ That’s the ideal. The reality is that government officials all too often create the appearance of ‘conflict of interest’ by engaging in discussions where they might be balancing a personal interest with their duty of loyalty to the overall ‘community good’.
Mayor Don Volger addressed this issue in his inimically personal manner.
“I believe it’s up to Council members primarily, if they want to recuse or not.
“And if they don’t recuse, I have full confidence in our Council members, to be able to make an objective decision, regardless of whether they own, or do not own, a short-term rental. And they could be negatively affected by the STRs in their neighborhood too. So there’s two sides to that coin.
“As far as a discussion about conflict of interest, as far as that goes, if Council members want to weigh in on that subject, I will accept that.
“But other than that, I want to move on to the other items about short-term rentals, so we can give staff some more guidance.”
Neither Ms. Pitcher nor Mr. Burnett recused from the discussion.
We might assume staff was indeed eager to get guidance from the Council on this sticky issue. “Staff” in this particular instance being Town Planning Director James Dickhoff, who had attended the meeting in-person and who was taking notes during the debate; and Town Attorney Clay Buchner and Town Manager Andrea Phillips, both attending via Zoom. (Town Clerk April Hessman was also present in-person, managing the Zoom link, but didn’t participate on the discussion. I believe Ms. Hessman also owns a vacation rental.)
Typically, local government decisions are initiated by the paid staff, who bring forward recommendations. Typically, the Town Council may have studied the recommendations thoroughly — but probably not. In many cases, the Town Council rubber stamps the staff recommendations without much discussion. This is what happened earlier in the same August 3 meeting, when the Council approved a $15.6 million plan to create a new ‘South Yamaguchi Park’ on the 27-acre site of the Town’s abandoned sewer treatment facilities. The staff and hired consultants had guided the extensive Park planning process, with very modest input from the Town Council, and the Council had rubber stamped the proposal without any noticeable debate.
But the vacation rental situation was… unusual.
In this case, the recommendations — to make four significant changes to Town policies, regarding vacation rentals and housing — had come from an appointed, volunteer board, the Town Planning Commission. As we’ve mentioned before in this editorial series, those recommendations were approved unanimously on July 13.
1. Require a 2-year ownership prior to applying for a short-term rental.
2. Increase the STR license fee by at least a factor of 12 for non-owner-occupied units, with the revenues 100% dedicated to workforce housing.
3. Allow only one STR license per property.
4. Reallocate the Town’s 4.9% Lodgers’ Tax “to the maximum extent possible” to workforce housing.
The fourth item in this list does not directly effect vacation rentals, although we can certainly assume that the vacation rental industry has benefited from the $8.9 million spent jointly by the Town and County governments, since 2007, on tourism promotion.
As far as I can tell, the paid Town staff played no part in developing these recommendations. They appear to have arisen entirely from the imaginations of the six volunteer Planning Commissioners.
A somewhat unusual situation, in terms of the way our local governments typically operate.
But the volunteer Planning Commissioners have no authority to put legislation in place. They are, in almost all cases, limited to making recommendations and to approving development projects according to existing regulations.
I will note that, as far as I can tell, the paid Town staff did nothing to subvert the recommendations coming from the Planning Commission. The recommendations were presented as reasonable choices, worthy of consideration by the Council. And the Council did consider them, and discussed them for about 90 minutes, which was a rather lengthy debate. Most certainly, the recommendations were not rubber stamped. In fact, they were pretty much unrecognizable by the conclusion of the debate.
The Council appeared mostly supportive of Recommendation 1: requiring a 2-year ownership prior to applying for a vacation rental license.
The Council appeared generally unsupportive of a 12-fold increase of the STR fees for non-owner-occupied units, but perhaps supportive of a future excise tax on STRs, with the revenues to be dedicated to workforce housing efforts. Such a tax would require approval by the voters living within the Town limits. (Sorry, PLPOA and the rest of you folks in the unincorporated county. You will not vote on this question, if it comes to a vote.)
The Council appeared confused about allowing only one STR license per property.
The Council expressed an interest in reducing the density of STRs by requiring a certain distance between licensed homes within the residential zoned neighborhoods (an idea, about which the Planning Commission had not made a recommendation) or perhaps by establishing a cap on the number of allowed licenses.
The Council had mixed opinions about reallocating some of the Lodgers Tax revenues for housing, but generally felt that any change should be approved by the Town’s voters. Or so it seemed.
No final decisions were made. The can was kicked down the road, for at least a certain distance, until the paid Town staff can bring back some resolutions… or ordinances… upon which the Council can vote ‘yea’ or ‘nay’.
Stay tuned. Something might happen, at some point. But we’re not sure.