- November 17, 2024
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The fight over the regulation of short-term vacation rentals in Flagler County ended quietly the evening of Feb. 19 with the County Commission’s passage of a vacation rental ordinance after about 45 minutes of public comment.
Only about a dozen people during the meeting’s public comment period, most in favor of the ordinance — a contrast with the last time the county held a public meeting about the ordinance on Nov. 3, when vacation rental owners showed up to say the ordinance was too restrictive and infringed on their property rights.
In the interim between the two meetings, at the County Commission’s request, county staff revised the proposed ordinance, loosening some of the requirements that had concerned rental owners.
“We did lessen restrictions,” County Administrator Craig Coffey told commissioners at the hearing. “And we probably made both sides unhappy, which means we’re probably closer to a balance.” County staff held 10-15 meetings with residents about the issue, he said.
Residents, many of them from the Hammock area, told commissioners of how the rentals had disrupted their lives. One woman read a letter from another who’d had her home on the market for about two years, but seen buyers pull out when they came to the house and saw the “commotion” from the rental next door. In the meantime, she said, renters’ children run through her plants and their pets run between the houses and relieve themselves in her yard.
The revised version of the ordinance presented to commissioners by County Planning Director Adam Mengel had set the maximum occupancy for the rentals at 10 people in single and two-family neighborhoods and 16 areas with predominantly greater than two-family units, eliminated a requirement for a landline telephone and eliminated a extra solid waste charge. Day guests aren’t counted for the occupancy numbers, and rentals are permitted a maximum of two occupants per bedroom, plus two in a common area.
County staff had proposed a 10-year grace period for gradual enforcement of those restrictions, a time period commissioners thought too long
“They knew that they were doing commercial buildings in a residential neighborhood,” Commissioner Frank Meeker said of “mini-hotel” owners who’d built homes for the purpose of using them as rentals. “I’m not real sympathetic to that.”
County Attorney Al Hadeed said the provision was a way for the county to prevent lawsuits brought under the Bert Harris Private Property Rights Protection Act.
The state legislature, by passing an act allowing the rentals in 2011 and largely barring municipalities and counties from regulating them until it repealed the legislation last year, had “foisted this vested rights issue upon us,” Hadeed said. “That is the legal landscape we have to work with, and we have to address those vested rights.”
The commission reduced the vesting period to six years, and eliminated a provision that would have allowed it to transfer with the property if the property is sold.
The commission also altered a provision that would have given the new buyers of a rental a year to reapply for a rental certificate, reducing the year-long period to six months.
Violations of the ordinance would accrue over a 36-month period, and the fourth or fifth would trigger a 7-day certification suspension.
Meeker thought that too lenient.
“I don’t know why I’m not at seven days after a second or third violation,” he said. “I’m wondering if anybody on the board is interested in seeing that cut down some.”
Coffey said renters can have bad tenants, and that successive violations do incur fines.
“Coffey: The suspension of a vacation rental certificate is a very hard penalty,” he said. “It’s a very difficult thing for us to implement; it’s very difficult for the vacation rental owner. It gets very complicated very quick.”
He said the county hopes “it never gets to that level, “We’re trying to put this in there to be serious about it, but we’re really not trying to go down this road in an expedited manner,” he said. “We hope we never have to go down this road.”
The commission voted for the ordinance 4-0. Commissioner Ericksen missed the meeting because he is recovering from surgery.
