Earlier this month, the Steamboat Springs City Council finalized the ordinance on a new 9% tax on Short-Term Rental (STR) operations, in accordance with voter approval during the November election.
More than 62% of Steamboat Springs voters supported giving Council the authority to levy up to a 9% tax on stays in STRs like an Airbnb and VRBO. The City Council opted to impose the tax at the full 9%, though a future Council could lower it in the future.
Reservations for this season — made before January 1 — will not be subject to the tax, regardless of whether the stay has been paid for.
The revenues will be used to support affordable and attainable housing projects. The November ballot question stated that the tax could bring in as much as $14 million in the first year, but the total will likely be lower for 2023, due to the Council decision to exempt reservations made before January 1.
Yesterday, we shared a letter from local resident Hank Lydick, suggesting that an additional tax on Archuleta County STRs might help us address our housing crisis, but that money alone is unlikely to solve the problem… the problem being formerly-residential homes — about 1,400 of them, according to one government source — no longer available to residents because they’ve been converted into STRs.
The Root Policy Research study recently provided to the Town government suggests a 7.9% fee, within the town limits, would be ‘supportable’.
One unusual thing about Pagosa Springs — compared to many other mountain communities — is the fact that 85% or more of the community’s residential neighbors were never incorporated into the municipality, and as a result, about 85% of the STRs are located outside the town limits, and not subject to control by the Town government. While the Town has taken numerous steps to limit STRs and collect higher fees from them, the County government — which issues the lion’s share of STR licenses — has done almost nothing to control the proliferation of vacation rentals, prior to putting a moratorium in place this past summer.
Could the Board of County Commissioners’ attitude toward STRs change, in 2023?
Last summer, the Archuleta BOCC directed County Manager Derek Woodman to convene a citizen task force to recommend new County STR policies, while the moratorium is still in place. That task force has been meeting behind closed doors since September. The names of the people involved in the task force have been kept secret, and the task force members have been forbidden to discuss their work with anyone outside the task force.
Four days ago, Mr. Woodman posted the following information on Facebook:
December 8, 2022
Statement to the Public regarding STR Task Force
The Archuleta County STR Task Force has met every two weeks since early October to study and discuss Archuleta County’s short-term rental (STR) rules and regulations and how those regulations affect our community. Prior to the first task force meeting, the County Manager openly advertised for over a month in the local media to solicit participation from community stakeholders interested in serving on this task force. The task force comprises a cross-section of private volunteers from the local community, including one member from each of the following stakeholder groups: STR property management, affordable housing community, retired resident, tourism board, restaurant industry, condo association, school district, realtor, STR owner, STR neighbor, at large member, and retail industry.
The Task Force received initial input from representatives from PAWSD and the Pagosa Springs Medical Center…
Clarification: After PAWSD and the Pagosa Springs Medical Center learned that the process was being conducted in secret, they ceased participation in the task force.
Mr. Woodman’s letter continues:
The task force is working together to brainstorm policy ideas to make recommendations to the County Manager on possible adjustments to the current rules and regulations before the current STR moratorium ends. This work occurs privately as an informal work group dedicated to minimizing outside noise while studying a very complex and emotional local policy issue in Archuleta Country. As a work output, the STR Task Force will publish its recommendations once finalized to share with all community stakeholders as a baseline policy approach to moving forward with short-term rentals in Archuleta County.
Sincerely,
Short Term Rental Task Force and Derek Woodman, County Manager
I assume “minimizing outside noise” refers to preventing the local press from sharing information about how the process is being conducted. A free press, and government transparency, are quite obviously a hindrance to a good decision-making process, in the opinion of our County Manager and our Board of County Commissioners.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the San Juan River, a few blocks away from the County administration building, the Town Council has been very open in their Town Hall discussions about STR policies… most recently, by releasing — publicly — the Root Policy Research fee study prior to the Council’s December 6 meeting. At that meeting, the representatives from Root Policy attended via Zoom and answered — publicly — questions posed — publicly — by the Council about their research and calculations.
Voters and taxpayers may be wondering why the County leadership is so secretive about making policy recommendations?
Previous to County Manager Woodman taking over the policy-making process, Archuleta County Community Development Director Pamela Flowers conducted four well-attended public meetings, outlining possible STR regulations that the BOCC might consider. We discussed those meetings here in the Daily Post, and I believe those meetings were also covered by the Pagosa Springs SUN.
Did I mention, that those meetings were ‘public’ and open to everyone? What has happened to change the public nature of this policy process?
And did I mention that a recent survey, conducted on behalf of Archuleta County, revealed that only 4% of the respondents ‘strongly agree’ that the County government can be trusted to make good fiscal decisions?
And 63% believe the County cannot be trusted?
Why would a County government with that kind of unfavorable reputation choose to make decisions — about “a very complex and emotional local policy issue” — in secret meetings?
Meanwhile, we have a graph shared by Pagosa Springs realtor Lee Riley, in his real estate letter earlier this month.
The pending real estate sales for 2022.
According to Mr. Riley, ‘pending’ real estate sales are currently about one-third the number they were at this same time last year.
As far as I can tell, our community has not been tracking the percentage of residential dwellings converted into STRs over the past two years. Anecdotal reports suggest that a majority of the homes sold since 2019 went to STR investors. We could be tempted to assign the meager number of pending sales to the County government’s new STR moratorium.
Maybe people are waiting for a rather unpopular County government to come to a decision?
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.