RANDOLPH, Utah. June 9, 2016. George Peart, Joey Stocking, Mark Hislop told county commissioners that there is good monitoring of short term rentals in Garden City. "How much
monitoring?" asked Commissioner Tom Weston".
Hislop said, "If there are complaints then
the enforcement officer goes out. If he
drives by on a routine check and sees they are not in compliance he will issue a warning. Most of the people are good about complying."
If someone is not in
compliance then the compliance officer calls the property manager or owner, then the owner has 15
minutes to respond and put the rental in compliance. There is a $750 per night fine for each infraction. If there are problems fined three times, then the license is taken away.
The ordinance officer keeps a tally of how many times an infraction has
occurred .
Hislop, who is a property manager as is Joey Stocking said that they take it seriously, and give strict instructions to renters. There are 300 short term rental units in Garden City. Renters are not allowed to park on the street or on lawns. George Peart, County Building Inspector, said that the three strike rule really works.
They also have a dedicated number posted on the home page of Garden city where anyone can
complain. There were only 7 complaints last year and 4 were people who were private owners.
Peart said that the property managers are good
about keeping records for all taxes.
Commissioner Norm Weston, asked if the sanitation rate needed to be adjusted. Mark Hislop replied that the two dumpsters
in Shundahai were overflowing, the city has added two more dumpsters. Areas with short term rentals have more trash. A sanitation fee should be
part of the license.
Bob Peterson, Garden City Ordinance Officer, and
Mitch Poulsen, Director of the Bear Lake Regional Commission presented a power
point of the software Garden City is using to monitor rentals.
Poulsen had looked at several short term
rental ordinances and felt that Garden City’s was one of the best. The 15 minute response rule has been good.
There is a fee for the license of which a portion goes to the city and
inspection of the fire marshal. It has to
be renewed each year.
"The property
managers are a real asset to the city, because they keep the rules and pay the taxes," said Poulsen.
"Garden city is doing a water study
impact, to see if short term rentals using
more water than residential users," said Bob Peterson. "In July and
august water usage is huge in Garden
City."
Hislop said that it should be
looked at for a year's usage. Peterson
said they were doing a lot of analysis, and slicing it up.
Bob Peterson told commissioners that it is a dynamic issue through out the nation. It is a complex issue. A good ordinance is important, enforcement
and a good management software so that
you can monitor if there is real problems
with short term rentals. There also needs to be
someway to track and to check online for
listings. Ideal Beach has 40 short term
rentals and they also have timeshares which makes tracking difficult, so the city has software that maps short term
rentals. It will flag expiring
licenses. All information about each
property can be pulled up including emergency contacts. They can find properties which are not licensed on the internet
listings. They have
every property in city and county in the database so as a property comes up on
the internet listings and found by a web crawler it can be pinpointed.
They can use google aerial views and can validate it from the
website. Peterson thinks there are at least 15 properties which are short
term rentals in county.
The commissioners asked Poulsen to finalize the ordinance with minor changes for county use and then they would schedule a public hearing on it.
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