Chester planners send ordinance regulating short-term rentals to Select Board

By Shawn Cunningham
© 2022 Telegraph Publishing LLC

At a special meeting held on Monday, Aug. 22, the Chester Planning Commission put the final touches on an ordinance to register and regulate short-term rentals (such as those offered via Airbnb and VRBO) and voted to send it to the Select Board for review and adoption.

The purpose of the ordinance – as stated in the document – is to “promote the public health, safety, welfare and convenience of the town, to preserve the residents’ rights to quiet enjoyment of their homes and properties and to ensure the safety of occupants of short-term rentals.”

The ordinance defines short-term rentals as dwelling units that are rented for less than 30 days at a time and more than 14 days in any year. It also differentiates between rentals that are “hosted” and “unhosted,” with the difference being whether the rental takes place at the owner’s primary residence or an accessory dwelling on that property and one that isn’t.

The ordinance provides for a registration fee of $150 for hosted units and $300 for unhosted. A portion of the registration fee would go toward paying a company that monitors the short-term rental market and identifies properties that are not registered or are advertising more guests than allowed based on the number of bedrooms and the septic capacity. Such companies also send out notices of violation to the owners of rental units.

The ordinance also includes a schedule of penalties for violations and another schedule of lower waiver fees for owners who do not contest the violation. Penalties are based on the number of days an owner is in violation and start at $200/day for the first offense and can go up to $800/day for a fourth offense. A fourth offense can also result in a revocation of the short-term rental permit.

One requirement of the registration process is that the owner must provide information like date of birth, drivers license information and military status. These are required for writing a municipal ordinance violation ticket that would be heard at the Judicial Bureau, which has jurisdiction over such civil violation.

“We don’t normally have that option for something like a junk ordinance,” said Zoning Administrator Preston Bristow. “But here where (owners) have to actively apply, you can say give us the information so we can write a ticket if we have to. So I think this will be a bit easier to enforce.”

Limits needed

Stone Village resident Kathy Giurtino advocated for a more aggressive regulation that would limit the number of short-term rentals immediately. Pointing to the 80 properties currently listed for short-term rental, she referred to the idea of capping the number allowed at 10 percent, which was brought up in the commission’s meeting on Aug. 15. Bristow says those 80 properties represent 8 percent of the town’s housing stock.

“If some limits aren’t put up in the beginning, we may have legal fights down the road,” said Giurtino, noting that at the previous meeting it was said that the number of short-term rentals went up 50 percent to eighty. “What if it goes up another 50 percent this year and another 50 percent next year?”

“Do we want more than 10 percent of the houses empty?” asked Giurtino adding, “because that’s what they are, empty houses.”

Along with the ordinance and a cover letter, the commission is sending the Select Board a list of options for further and stricter regulations, what their purposes would be and the pluses and minuses of each.

Select Board chair Arne Jonynas attended the meeting and praised the commission for its work.

“It’s a lot of work that you did and it’s great that it’s here because I’m hearing from a lot of people that the town is changing fast and a lot of that is because of housing,” said Jonynas noting that the housing problems include availability and affordability, which are affected by the market for short-term rental properties.

According to Town Manager Julie Hance, the Select Board will take up the ordinance in early October. If the Select Board adopts it, the ordinance will go into force 60 days after adoption unless residents who disagree with it petition for a town-wide vote to reject it.