Seeking compromise over short-term vacation rentals in the beach community where they\u2019re most prevalent, Mission Beach Town Council\u2019s membership voted overwhelmingly on June 12 for a new committee plan.
\nThe room vote was 94-34, with at least one critic arguing it was a largely pro-rental partisan crowd, not the sentiment of long-term residents.
\nThe majority vote, however, perhaps signaled a new willingness to explore some middle ground in the highly polarized \u2014 and charged \u2014 issue of short-term rentals.\u00a0
\nAmong the MBTC committee\u2019s recommendations: Non-transferable rental permits; annual per-unit $950 permit fee; primary rental occupant must be age 25-plus with three-night minimum; two-person per bedroom occupancy; required “good neighbor policy” posting; prompt nuisance complaint response; complaint log required showing responses; escalating fines from $1,000 to $4,500 with permit revocation, and an appeals process, for repeat offenders; and an ultimate goal of limiting short-term rentals in MB to 30 percent of total units.
\nOpposing sides however remain divided. Opponents insist short-term rentals don\u2019t belong at all in residential areas. Proponents counter that they\u2019re a property owner\u2019s right and integral to the local economy.
\nUpwards of half of Mission Beach\u2019s total number of rental units are acknowledged to be short-term. MBTC recently formed a broad-based, short-term rental committee to try and achieve agreement between the opposing sides.
\nThe MBTC committee consists of real estate agent Kimberly Wise, Greg Knight, 710 Beach Rentals owner Blaine Smith, Larry Webb, Scott Morrison, Bob Semonsen and environmentalist Cathy Ives.
\nCurrent MTBC president Matt Gardner hailed the June 12 vote as “heartwarming watching people come together finally on an issue that has previously been contentious.”
\nGarner added it could serve as a new model for other communities. “\u2026 It is a prime example of local efforts working towards change that is best fitting for the specific neighborhood,” he said. “We hope for, and will work towards, inclusion in future City regulations.”
\nCharacterizing short-term rentals in MB currently as a “nightmare,” Knight noted the rental committee was formed with all parties represented because they realized they could accomplish more together than apart. “There was a lot of fighting and bickering going on,” he said. “We realized we had some of the same issues with noisy parties, etc. Though we are on totally different sides of the aisle, we realized we were tying to do some of the same things. So we said, \u2018Let\u2019s do it.\u2019 ”
\nKnight said the 30 percent figure the committee came up with as a target for reducing short-term units down to seemed like a reasonable compromise.
\n“We thought we could get people together from both sides to come up with something we could present to the City,” said Blaine Smith, an MB vacation-rental operator. Smith reiterated the rental industry\u2019s stance that restricting short-term rentals to primary owners only was a “de facto ban.” He added, “It woke us up that we need to be active on this issue.”
\nClaiming the City has “kicked this can down the road for way too long,” Wise added, “It\u2019s festering. It\u2019s a big problem.”
\nAudience members on both sides spoke out during a Q&A period with committee members. Some argued the 30-percent target was too high. Others contended it was too low. One critic of the committee\u2019s compromise proposal labeled the proposed $950 annual permit fee as “extortion.”
\n“One of our challenges is, how do we get these (short-term rental) numbers down?,” responded Wise. “How do we create attrition?”
\nOf what comes next, MBTC president Gardner said, “Best-case scenario, this resolution can be adopted as a neighborhood framework for other communities by giving each community the empowerment for local solutions that are adoptable into the City\u2019s municipal code.”\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Seeking compromise over short-term vacation rentals in the beach community where they\u2019re most prevalent, Mission Beach Town Council\u2019s membership voted overwhelmingly on June 12 for a new committee plan. The room vote was 94-34, with at least one critic arguing it was a largely pro-rental partisan crowd, not the sentiment of long-term residents. The majority […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":256103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11561","_seopress_titles_title":"Mission Beach Town Council approves compromise plan for regulating short-term rentals","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[12360,11551,11561],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-280470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-duplicate","category-news","category-peninsula-beacon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}