MONTE VISTA - The City of Monte Vista received public input on short-term rentals during a meeting last month at City Hall.
City of Monte Vista Planner DJ Enderle said he thought it was a success.
“We had a good turnout,” he said.
Enderle explained that most of the people who provided their opinions on short-term rentals were the owners of the rentals.
“The opinions were from owners. I guess this is both good and bad,” he said. “We don’t have the input from people who actually live in them or have lived in them, but it could be because there is not a huge amount of concern, so they weren’t interested in being seen or heard or wanted to participate in the meeting.”
The Monte Vista Planning and Zoning Committee and the City of Monte Vista were seeking input on adding potential regulations to the current municipal code for short-term rentals for Monte Vista, such as Air B and Bs or other short-term rental alternative housing. There are currently no regulations in place for short-term rentals
Enderle said part of the meeting was to decide where short-term rentals should be placed.
“We wanted to know if the public thinks they should all be placed or moved to a specific location, or should they be allowed to be anywhere in town,” he said. “The meeting was about hearing what the public thought should be added to regulations for short-term rentals. We wanted to hear from the public about any changes we should add before we implemented anything.”
Enderle spoke about some of the input that was received from the people.
People said they did not feel there had to be a certain distance between the short-term rentals. However, they were all short-term rental owners, so they may not have the same perspective as people who do live in the neighborhoods with the rentals, he said.
There was a remark made that if there are too many short-term rentals, they are likely to self-correct, because they are not being kept full, he said.
“While I do agree with that as a short-term rental owner, if they are not being supported, from a long-term rental perspective, for the short-term rentals, even if we have too many for us to maintain a stable long term rental market, if long term rentals, are all being filling with short term renters, then it won’t correct. There is still a lot to be examined in the area of what is best for short-term rentals,” he said.
Enderle said they wanted to hear the input of the people and correct any problems that they may foresee having before they occur, through regulations.
They were appreciative of the input but hoped to also hear from people living near short-term rentals or from renters.
“We want to support a good healthy rental market with these regulations. We want to put things together that make sense for everyone. After hearing from the people, we wish could have heard from renters as well, but the owners did give us a lot of good perspective too,” he said.
Enderle said there was still work to be done on how they craft the regulations together.
“For everyone that was in attendance, including the planning and zoning committee, we all came to the same conclusion, even though we did not have regulations in place, we should have regulations in place,” he said. “No matter how we craft these regulations though, we are not going to be at the max capacity at this time. We are below where we believe we can support as far as short-term rentals, and still have suitable long-term rentals for people who live here.”
Enderle said that another thing that they have not figured out regulation-wise is how dense the regulations should be.
“This is going to take some thought. As we work together, we will figure this out. We believe there should be regulations in place though, and we have a general idea of what some of them should be. The next steps will be to finalize the draft, have a work session with city council, and then it will go to a public hearing. We will hold a public hearing prior to it being put into an ordinance, to be in the new land use regulations for short-term rentals. The public still has time for more input at the hearing,” he said.
For more information on short-term rental regulations, contact the City of Monte Vista.
