Commissioners Vote to Approve Ordinance After Marathon Meeting
By Trevor Phipps
The Teller County short term rental (STR) battle reached a finale earlier this month after igniting social media pages and public meetings with fierce debates for the past two years. When it finally came time for the public hearing to deal with the county’s Ordinance 23 regulating STR properties, people came out in groves.
During the Sept. 10 regularly scheduled county commissioner meeting, dozens of residents packed the room. The majority of the people present made an appearance to voice their issues (and even some outrage) with the ordinance the commissioners drafted to allow and regulate STRs within unincorporated parts of the county.
Due to the large amount of interest in speaking on the STR topic during the public comment section of the meeting, the event turned into a marathon that lasted over six hours. Whereas there were people who spoke on both sides of the ordinance, most of those who got passionate while on the podium were against either the entire ordinance or certain parts of it. And as the commissioners pointed out, the majority of the commenters that had issues with the ordinance were both residents and non-residents who owned STR properties within the county.
The commissioners made it a point to let everyone be heard during the public hearing, but in the end they stayed the course and unanimously passed the ordinance. They did make one minor change, but the commissioners passed the ordinance into a new law which will go into effect on Dec. 1.
Residents Point Out Several Issues with the Ordinance
During the public comment portion that lasted hours, there was probably someone that had an issue with every individual piece of the ordinance. Many had problems with the process of how the ordinance was written with one person even calling the commissioners’ lengthy process “Un-American.”
One resident pointed out that he felt the process didn’t really start until the ordinance was written and given its first reading in August. He said that most of the meetings over the past two years were just information sessions and nothing was actually figured out.
Some people pointed out potential issues with the fact that an STR license cannot be transferred to a new owner. Others also didn’t like the fact that someone had to own a property for a year before being eligible for an STR license.
Other negative comments dealt with the cost of obtaining a license and renewing it each year. A few people who called themselves senior citizens said that $750 per year to renew the license was too pricey. One resident even pointed out that the city of Manitou Springs only charges $25 a year to renew an STR license.
Some of the residents came to the meeting with a lot to say, but then kept their comments to a minimum to not repeat what others said. Kelly Koenke who is from Hayes, Kansas, but has owned an STR property in the county for the past two years pointed out how STRs can actually help neighborhood aesthetics.
“One thing I will say is that in the community where our short term rental is you drive through there and the houses that are dilapidated and the houses that need help, they are not the short term rentals,” Koenke said. “They are either long term rentals or they are permanent residents. So that’s one thing I think it (STRs) does help is it keeps house values up. Because as short term rentals, we can’t have them look bad.”
However, not all of the comments were against the proposed ordinance. Some commenters applauded the commissioners’ efforts. One even pointed out that there had been issues in the county with STRs and that’s why the ordinance came up in the first place.
County Commissioners Stick to Their Guns
Once public comment had ended, it was then the commissioners’ turn. All three commissioners made lengthy speeches justifying their process.
Commissioner Chairman Erik Stone made several remarks defending certain parts of the ordinance including the one year ownership rule. He pointed out that when STR properties are sold as operating businesses, the value is much higher than it would be if it were being sold as a residence.
“It kind of takes it out of the residential marketplace,” Stone said. “Because now its value as an STR far exceeds what any value as a residential would be. So that was part of the reason for that because we are concerned about the availability of residential housing within the county.”
The commissioners also pointed out that there were several residents who contacted them to urge them to make stricter STR regulations or sign an outright ban on them. “Today I think we listened to 40 or 41 people, well there are a hell of a lot more people in this list,” County Commissioner Bob Campbell said while holding up a thick stack of papers. And this is every e-mail every input and every comment that we got short of the computer surveys because I didn’t print 700 computer surveys. We’ve got lots and lots of input and I would be hesitant to stab an exact number, but there’s at least 200 people in here that say we should ban all STRs. And if we did that we wouldn’t be unique. There are multiple counties in this state that ban STRs, but we don’t want to do that.”
