EDITORIAL: The Agony of Owning a Vacation Rental, Part Three

Read Part One

Per Sec 3.2.7, “it is unlawful to rent or offer to rent any Dwelling Unit as a Vacation Rental unless and until a Vacation Rental Permit has been approved…

— from a notice sent to vacation rental owner Michael Devloo on September 10, 2021.

Following the decision by the Archuleta County Planning Commission, on October 27, to uphold the decision by Development Director Pamela Flowers to revoke the vacation rental permit for 40 Elk Ridge Place, owned by Karen and Dennis Poquiz, the Commission moved on to the next order of business.

Painful business.

This agenda item, like the previous item, was an appeal to the Commission to potentially overturn an enforcement decision by Ms. Flowers — in this case, the accumulated fines from operating a vacation rental illegally.

While Karen Poquiz, in her earlier testimony, has struck me as a competent, conscientious, and basically innocent, vacation rental owner caught in an unpleasant situation not of her own making — a non-conforming garage built by a previous owner without getting a building permit — the case brought by appellant Michael Devloo seemed, on its face, to concern a vacation rental owner who had been impudently ignoring the County Land Use Regulations.

And who had run up some fines, as a result.

The story was summarized this way, in the Commission agenda packet:

Michael Devloo (“the Appellant”), has appealed fines that have accumulated for operating an Un-Permitted Vacation Rental at property he owns at 17 Hunter Ct, Pagosa Springs. The short-term rental has been operating since at least August 24, 2019 without a Vacation Rental Permit (VRP). The Appellant received the first notice that Vacation Rental Permit Renewal Fees for a prior permit were overdue on March 20, 2020. As indicated in that notice, effective April 30, 2020 fines of $100 per day began accumulating on the property. Those fines were calculated at $50,000 as of the date that all advertisements for the Vacation Rental were taken down. Finally, a “Notice of Violation and Stop Use Order” for the illegally operating short-term rental was sent to the Appellant and posted on the property.

$50,000 in fines.

Ms. Flowers noted that Mr. Devloo had properly applied for a permit in 2018, and so presumably knew that he needed a permit to operate a vacation rental, but for some reason had not renewed his permit since August of 2019. He had been sent a notice in March of 2020, encouraging him to renew his permit, and 40 days later, upon his failure to renew that permit, fines began to accumulate. Mr. Devloo finally removed his illegal advertising from the internet on September 12, after a physical sign was posted on his property.

The Planning Commission invited Mr. Devloo to explain why the fines, which are specified in the County regulations, ought to be forgiven.

Mr. Devloo explained that the notice, reminding him that he had not renewed his vacation rental permit, had been sent via email, and he didn’t see it. He gets a lot of emails, he explained. Mr. Devloo did not offer an explanation as to why he never renewed his permit, however.

“I want to reiterate that Pam does have a really hard job, enforcing a bunch of rules that maybe were poorly planned.” He chuckled. “And it’s difficult to create a ‘balance’ by creating a lot of pain for people doing certain things one way, in order to encourage people to do long-term rentals.

“I’ll start by saying, the only email I actually saw was the most recent one, when I was sitting at work and it popped right in. That was September 10, I believe, this year, stating that I had been out of compliance and this, that, and the other.

“You know, I’m just going to kind of claim negligence here. I get a lot of emails. I’m a busy person. Like I said, I’m a professional engineer; I’m the court interpreter here in Pagosa Springs, for the municipal court; I own multiple properties; and I did not get the email during COVID times… to my eyes… ” He said he searched Ms. Flowers’ name and saw that he had, in fact, received the March 2020 email, but he hadn’t seen it, he said.

“You know, the whole thing… it’s a slap in the face. It’s a perfect example of — and I don’t mean you guys, but the Board of County Commissioners who we elected — trying to make this hard on us.

“My neighbor, who actually owned the Airbnb right next to me, he was here at a [Planning Commission] meeting in June, for a similar issue — he didn’t have a permitted addition to his house. and that created a big hiccup, and he lost his permit. He go so fed up with the system, he sold two houses. He said, ‘I’m just selling my stuff and leaving.’

“Now the house next to me, that was probably the most profitable Airbnb on our street — always full of good people, people spending money in our town, getting massages from my wife — now just sits vacant, owned by somebody from Dallas…

“So yes, I owe $400 for 2020 and $400 for 2021… but with all the stuff I’m reading in the paper, thought, in two months you could change the rules on us, and now it’s a $1000 a year thing we need to do. The lady across the street had to put in an egress window. I don’t know if my A-frame will accommodate that very easily… so there’s a little bit of fear involved, of anybody wanting to do this. My buddy Mike wants to build a cabin on his land, that he can eventually turn into an Airbnb and do what he wants. But Rosie — Pamela stuck a sign in her yard, too, saying you can’t do an Airbnb…”

And so on.

Mr. Devloo’s appeal, to have $50,000 in penalty fees waived, was rejected by the Planning Commission.

How much simpler — and painless — life in Pagosa could have been, if these mini-motels had simply been outlawed in residential zoning districts, from the very beginning.

But, now… here we are.

Bill Hudson

Bill Hudson

Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.