On Tuesday the Maplewood City Council passed the preliminary readings for a bill that would allow residents to rent out a room in their home, short term. If it finally passes at the Oct. 13 council meeting residents would be able to use the Airbnb website to host guests. Before the bill passed, it was amended to make a potential Airbnb host go through the city’s conditional use process.
Ward 3 Councilman Barry Greenberg commented on an article about Tuesday’s meeting that Airbnb hosts are “innocent until proven guilty and should not be subjected to extraordinary measures,” to participate in Airbnb.
Greenberg’s comments:
“With regard to the amendment added to the AirBNB bill: My feeling is that there are sufficient safeguards in the original ordinance to prevent a public nuisance. By having to go through the conditional use process, you subject the host to an opinion determined by Planning and Zoning (in addition to the unnecessary costs). If a neighbor is against an AirBNB on the street, it is possible that they could convince enough neighbors to oppose it and sway P & Z, which would make it difficult to get an override of 5 votes from Council. I would like to think that Planning and Zoning make their decisions based on facts, not factoids. I believe that AirBNB hosts are innocent until proven guilty and should not be subjected to extraordinary measures to rent a room or two in their own home to supplement their income and make new friends and make Maplewood a destination for out of towners.”
Ward 3 Councilman Shawn Faulkingham commented in favor of the bill, and on the conditional use permit on a related article:
“If we don’t create an ordinance to manage Short Term Rentals like AirBnB, then folks will use it anyway and then we have to try and stop it. With an ordinance, we can manage it and make sure that life/safety issues have been taken care of. The Council also amended the ordinance to make the permitting process a Conditional Use. This allows for neighbors within 300 feet to voice any concerns or questions before the permit is granted. There are other reasons why we are creating this ordinance; I just wanted to clarify how the ordinance is currently crafted to allow for input from neighboring homes.”
Why would there be a fee for running the case through P&Z?
Getting a Conditional Use Permit through P&Z requires a $100 application fee along with a $300 public notice fee. This is on top of the usual $75 business license fee.
It should also be noted the ordinance already had a clause stipulating that all neighbors within a 300 ft. radius would be notified.
It would be interesting to see what the ordinance actually says.
Are there Is there a permit fee, inspections required , restrictions on the number of guests at one time. parking requirements. etc, etc?
There is a standard $75 dollar fee prior to the amendment. The conditional use permit will cost roughly $475 in addition to the $75 from my understanding. There are inspections required, parking is regulated by the ordinance, guests are restricted. As Barry Greenberg said, Marty Corcoran and his staff took a lot of time drawing up a well written ordinance that covers everything and even grants some discretionary ability to the city. The conditional use permit is just going to add costs and time to something that really doesn’t need it. I would like to point out that the P&Z unanimously voted to approve this ordinance and now the council with the exception of Barry Greenberg has sent it back for a case by case review. It seems very redundant.
It’s interesting to note that the P&Z is a citizen’s board–nobody draws a salary and all serve as the oversight for citizens and property owners in Maplewood. Councilmen Greenberg seems to suggest that the “extraordinary” step of listening to the voice of the citizenry is problematic; the Council knows best for what is good for Maplewood. The conditional use provision allows citizens a chance to weigh in through their P&Z Commission before the council would take up the matter for a vote. If the P&Z determines that a particular request is not in the public interest and votes to deny, Councilman Greenberg seems to chafe at the idea that the council would have to mount a higher standard of 5 votes to override what citizens have said they want in their city. Life is tough for our dear council, isn’t it?
If the fee for running these cases through P&Z is the issue, then reduce or alter it for Airbnb applications. But please don’t deprive existing homeowners of their right to have a say in what goes on in their own neighborhoods.
But I must admit that Councilman Greenberg’s idea of “innocent until proven guilty” is a novel idea… Perhaps he has something here. Let’s just do away with all enforcement in the city and trust citizens to do the right thing. Course that would be bad news for the boyz in code enforcement, wouldn’t it? I could just build my deck knowing the bureaucracy wouldn’t be involved at all unless there was a problem.
Q!
The question I was addressing was whether AirBNB should be a permitted use or a conditional use. The conditional use process costs money and takes time. I felt that this was an unnecessary step since safeguards were built into the hosting requirements and application process. Violations of the provisions would result in disciplinary action and if there were more than one violation, the license would be revoked.
We have already seen that the Council voted in a ratio of 4 to 3 in favor of allowing short term rentals. If every application came through City Council and required 5 votes we might not have any legal AirBNB listings in Maplewood. That said, I do have faith in our Planning and Zoning Commission to listen to citizen’s comments and make appropriate recommendations to Council. My only concern was to limit the amount of effort that the host, P&Z, city staff and the Council would have to go through to address issues that have already been addressed in a well written ordinance.
With regard to your second to last paragraph, it would not make sense to reduce the fees involved as I doubt that the current fees cover the hard costs and staff time required. The conditional use process is not a money maker for the City.
With regard to your last paragraph, you missed the point entirely. We avoid problems by having well written ordinances and enforcing them. By your reasoning, we would require a conditional use permit for current permitted uses under the zoning ordinance, but that would negate your argument for the abolition of rules and regulations.
Contrary to your extrapolation, not requiring a conditional use permit would take the Council out of granting any further approvals. I don’t have a problem with the process, I think it adds cost and time and is unnecessary.
The conditional use process is designed to give citizen’s the right to speak into changes that will affect their neighborhoods via the P&Z process. I will agree that is expensive, but, like food trucks, there is a sense of concern being expressed about what opening the door will mean for the average Joe who works hard to keep up his property and pay his taxes. The conditional use process allows the citizenry to directly participate in questions pertaining to occupancy, traffic, noise, safety, etc. In other words, they get a chance to get comfortable with something that have no experience in, rather than just taking the word of people who promise that everything will be fine but who really have less skin in the game than the guy that will be living right next door to the experiment…
The conditional use process is cumbersome, granted, but it preserves the maximum input by homeowners. Let folks get used to the idea with those protections in place and then, once a track record is established, move toward something more automatic. The basic rule should always be that those proposing a change to the status quo have the burden of proof. You say it’s going to be fine. Great! Prove it in a way that doesn’t leave the homeowner on the defensive. That’s a basic premise that undergirds Chapter 56 of the Maplewood ordinances (Planning and Zoning): “To promote and PROTECT the public health, safety, comfort and general welfare of the people of the city”
Your second paragraph highlights the main point I was trying to make. When given a choice, it seems to me that the city should do what the citizens want, not what a majority of seven really smart politicians think is appropriate or best. If, as you hypothesize, every conditional application for an Airbnb that is presented to the council required a 5 vote super majority, then clearly the citizens, speaking through their P&Z aren’t in favor. The fact that there is a higher hurdle rate for the council to override the citizen’s watchdog is an appropriate test in such cases, given that the council would be considering setting aside what homeowners and property owners are saying they want. Why is that a problem for you?
Q!
I agree with you completely regarding the purpose of the conditional use permit and agree that citizens should have a say. What works for a few isn’t always the best for the larger community. There have now been 2 sessions at the P&Z where many people showed up in support of the ordinance and also voiced concerns. The P&Z reviewed testimony and made the recommendations to the council and approved the ordinance unanimously (7-0), so the citizen group has already reviewed and approved this ordinance. In addition to the P&Z meetings, there have been at least three city council sessions in which I have attended where there has been support from the community for this. I think what Barry is getting at is that since this ordinance as is has already received unanimous support from the citizen group, there is an inefficient use of resources being used to evaluate a permit on a case by case basis.
I also would like to say that I still am not sure where the assumption that short term rentals will bring in a criminal element comes from. The Mayor has voiced this concern numerous times and has specifically mentioned sexual perverts and child molesters. For some reason, it feels like the Mayor thinks these types of criminals will only come here if they can stay the night. I am sure the criminal types will still come if they want to and make a “day trip” to do their criminal activities.
That said, I am happy that the council has passed this. It will be some additional work, time and cost for us, but in the end, I know that this will be a benefit to the community.
The conditional use process is really to help folks test the waters. It’s a way to say “we think we like the idea, but want to see some actual particulars on a case-by-case basis rather than try and guess at what might happen.” We’ve got conditional use requirements in most, if not all of Maplewood’s zoning districts. This isn’t some draconian requirement here. If the law turns out to cover all the bases and is as well written as it’s supports think, then it would be a simple matter to remove the conditional use sticker. When folks are in doubt (and this is one of those cases), it’s a way to provide some assurance that the unknown process isn’t going to run away.
I know the Mayor has/is taking flack for what some are calling his non-progressive stance in this (and other) matters. But instead of polarizing people, why wouldn’t we listen to his many years experience as a cop? He has first hand experience at the rule of unintended circumstances. Maybe he’s wrong, but his policeman’s “gut” should at least be heard. Progressives are prone to look at the brightest possible scenarios but tend to shrug when unanticipated things happen. I mean, who would have anticipated stories like this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/14/prostitutes-renting-airbnb-apartments_n_5147910.html.
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