Lead mayor proposes free permitting process for short-term rentals | Local News

LEAD — A city permit process for short-term rental owners would give officials a good idea of ​​how many there are in town and where they’re at, Mayor Ron Everett said Tuesday.

Everett proposed the idea of ​​a free and simple permitting process that would have short-term rental owners giving their names, property addresses, and points of contacts, to allow the city to monitor those lodging facilities. The proposal comes after more than a month of public comment at city commission and planning and zoning meetings, about whether officials should regulate the practice and how.

“We need a permit process,” he said. “There are a lot of them in town that we know about and that we don’t’ know about. We don’t know where they are. The permit process solves that problem.”

By initiating the permit process, Everett said the city will get information about the properties and how they are being used for vacation rentals. Additionally, the city can disseminate information about how to register with the South Dakota Department of Health and the Department of Revenue, as well as helpful city ordinances, policies and guidance.

“Then we can also have a conversation with them when they are in town and say ‘where is your house?’ If it’s in the Hearst, we can say trailers aren’t really an issue up there. Parking is not an issue. However, if you’re downtown Lead or someplace where the neighborhood is congested, maybe the conversation needs to be only have three cars on the street, and you can’t bring a trailer and we can help you out. Those conversations can happen right then. At that time, it is also a good idea to talk about city ordinances for noise, parking, all of these things that seem to be an issue for a lot of people. I think that will solve a lot of our questions. If one particular house is bringing in trailer loads of snowmobilers we can have a conversation and say ‘hey, this is not working out.’”

While city officials have been discussing the possibility of capping the number of short term rentals allowed within city limits, Everett said it’s not possible to even consider a cap right now because the city does not know how many short term rentals are currently operating. Additionally, he said efforts to find studies and guidance from other communities about effectively instituting short-term rental regulations have not produced results.

“If we do this simple process it will give us answers to move forward with in the future,” Everett said, adding that he wants the city permit to be free for short-term rental owners.

While Commissioner Steve Stewart agreed to the permit process, he said there should be a fee attached to it. “We need to have some sort of fee that would be reasonable,” he said. “I can’t support free.”

But Commissioner Colin Greenfield said as long as the permit process does not bring additional cost to the city or add more work to employees, he can support the free permit. The idea, he said, is to identify where short-term rentals are in town and to establish good relationships with owners.

“Initially all we need to do is just know who we have here and what we’re dealing with,” he said. “I like the idea of ​​having a permit and having a packet of ordinances, etc. that we can hand them.”

In the beginning, Everett said he expects that there could be some extra cost associated with the city assembling packets of information and administering the permit process, as existing short-term rental owners comply with the new requirement. But once existing owners have registered, Everett said he does not expect city staff to have to spend much time at all on the permits.

“At least this way we will know how much it’s increasing by having these applications,” Commissioner Kayla Klein said. “No one has the information to know how much of the short term rentals or vacation rentals are increasing from one year to the next.”

While short term rental owners at the meeting seemed to all agree with the permit process, Daniel Ward, who has been very outspoken against any kind of regulations, asked the city to keep the permit process free.

“It’s a great way for homeowners and the council and the city to collaborate together to get best practices for everybody,” he said. “I do like $0 because my fear is that you could increase it exorbitantly.”

But Greenfield reminded Ward that short-term rentals allow the property owners to earn an income, and as a result, charging a reasonable fee to cover administrative costs should be expected, since most businesses have fees that allow them to do business within the city.

“I’m not against not charging a fee,” Greenfield said. “But by taking a residential home and turning it into a vacation rental, you re now using your property in a way to make a profit. I’m not saying we’re going to a fee. But any business that operates to make a profit does have a little bit of a fee or obligation to pay to make a profit. We’re not trying to make it huge, but a small $25 fee doesn’t in my mind seem like a fee that would put somebody out of business, or be unheard of to be able to cover in a year.”

Sherri Meidinger, who said that she has been working with short-term rental owners to keep them approved of the city’s position about the issue of regulations, asked about when the permit process would go into effect. Everett said after the city has drafted an ordinance there will be at least two meetings and a public hearing to discuss it before commissioners give final approval for the code. Once the second reading of the ordinance is approved, the city has to publish the new law in the legal newspaper, the Black Hills Pioneer, and 20 days later it becomes law.

“So we’re looking at being at least a couple of months out,” he said. “Let me recap … the suggestion is that we have a simple permit process to have a person come in, give statistics and then share information. It creates a nice conversation and could solve a lot of problems. I understand that there will be a rush of people who come in to do that, but I don’t believe over the long term that process will cost us anything extra. I want to make it simple. I don’t want to make it complicated.”

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