ST. PETE BEACH \u2014 City commissioners have set aside a proposal to register the island\u2019s short-term rentals, saying the added layer of regulation could cost the city the grandfathered status that lets St. Pete Beach enforce tighter rental rules than most Florida communities.<\/p>\n
Instead, commissioners agreed to concentrate on enforcing the ordinance already on the books, possibly with software that flags violators.<\/p>\n
The idea came from Vice Mayor Lisa Robinson, who asked staff to look at whether a registration requirement could be folded into the city\u2019s existing rules.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have concerns in the community with us becoming an Airbnb short-term rental community, and there are a lot of residents concerned with that,\u201d she told fellow commissioners.<\/p>\n
Mayor Scott Tate [\u00a0Photo SUBMITTED\u00a0]<\/p>\n
Assistant City Manager Adam Poirier said a previous legal team had warned the city off registration entirely, worried that new rules would undercut the ones already in place.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are a little better, a little more fortunate than some communities, because we had some regulations in place prior to the state coming down and basically restricting what you could do with short-term rentals,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s new legal team takes a different view, Poirier said. Registration is possible, but only if the city treads carefully.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t do anything that kind of crosses the line into our current restrictions on short-term rentals,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we go into that category, then we run the risk of losing our grandfathered status that we gained, because we had those regulations in place before the state basically capped those.\u201d<\/p>\n
The workload would be substantial, he said. Drafting an ordinance would take a decent amount of staff time, and administering the program would take considerably more.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to have a program where you register each short-term rental, and then it triggers a bunch of other things such as building inspections, fire inspections, and you have to basically keep that up on a regular basis,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Registration fees could be spent only on running the program, Poirier added, and the city might need two or three more employees to handle it.<\/p>\n
Robinson said the city could tailor the program to its own needs, and that the effort would carry a message beyond the paperwork.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want them to fit in, but within our guidelines for that,\u201d she said. Requirements \u201ccould be as simple as providing emergency numbers and requiring turtle lighting, or it can go to extremes. It depends on how we want to organize that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Poirier cautioned that starting a program shifts responsibility onto the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce as a city we start a registration program, then the onus is on us to make sure we\u2019re managing that program, managing the short-term rentals,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a responsibility on us to make sure the buildings are safe, so that triggers that building inspection, fire inspection.\u201d<\/p>\n
Registration would most likely capture the good actors already following the rules, he said, not the operators the city is trying to reach.<\/p>\n
Robinson said the current approach leaves residents paying the bill.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we\u2019re not covering the costs on it. Taxpayers are paying for that, while others are making money off their Airbnbs,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not fair to the residents that don\u2019t want it, that aren\u2019t renting their homes. We\u2019re paying for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said the city could hire data mining companies to bring enforcement costs down.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, I\u2019ve heard from every district about the concerns on short-term rentals,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Poirier said the city already pursues bad actors.<\/p>\n
Commissioner Jon Maldonado said he would support registration only if the city could absorb it with current staff. Raising fees to cover the added work could punish responsible owners, he said, while the rest look for ways to \u201chack the system, exploit the vulnerabilities and not be held accountable.\u201d He said he would rather see the city improve its enforcement software.<\/p>\n
Commissioner Al Causey said he had not heard concerns about short-term rentals in his district. Poirier said the most common complaints involve rentals operating outside an allowable area or turning over more often than the ordinance permits.<\/p>\n
Mayor Scott Tate said staff time is best spent on problems the city hasn\u2019t already solved.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s usually about what\u2019s broken and what\u2019s not covered by policies and procedures. I think we\u2019ve got policies in place,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve heard we\u2019re very lucky compared to Treasure Island and some of the others.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, I\u2019m a little leery of anything that might jeopardize our current grandfathered-in pieces, because my understanding is if we lose that grandfather, we are subject to daily short-term rentals.\u201d<\/p>\n
Poirier agreed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is my biggest fear that we inadvertently do something in a new ordinance that would cause complications for our grandfathered ordinance,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re in a much better situation than most communities.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETE BEACH \u2014 City commissioners have set aside a proposal to register the island\u2019s short-term rentals, saying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-383673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}