- October 23, 2024
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In an effort to fine tune the city’s new short-term rental ordinance, the Palm Coast City Council has once again tabled its first vote on the ordinance.
The ordinance covers a broad range of topics: a maximum occupancy, safety regulations, background check requirements and enforcement logistics. The Palm Coast City Council will also need to figure out a fee schedule that will make enforcing this ordinance self-sufficient — at the very least covering the cost of one dedicated code enforcement officer. The ordinance will return at the council's Dec. 4 workshop meeting for more discussion.
One area the council is still working on are the background check requirements.
In earlier discussions of the ordinance, the council was adamant all STR occupants be given background checks.
At the Sept. 3 council meeting, the council walked back the policy some, agreeing to review the platforms requirements and tentatively narrowed the requirement to just requiring a background check of the person renting the STR. That individual would then also be required to certify that none of the other occupants are sex offenders or predators.
At the Oct. 15 meeting, council member Theresa Carli Pontieri and Vice Mayor Ed Danko suggested that a platform’s background checks would be sufficient.
“I think that if the platform does the background check, that should be sufficient,” Pontieri said. “But the person renting should still certify that they're not a sex offender and that none of their guests are sex offenders.”
Danko suggested the city include in the ordinance a list of acceptable platforms that would exempt an STR owner from the background check requirement because the platform’s own requirements.
During public comment, Palm Coast resident and STR owner and operator Joel Davisson said that within five miles of city hall, there are 80 registered sex offenders. Nor, he said, are hotels required to perform background checks.
Chief of Staff Jason DeLorenzo said the platforms' background checks are required to use the platforms at all.
"It's my understanding that to be eligible to use the platform on either side — from [the owner] or from the renter side — they perform background checks," DeLorenzo said.
The council is also still considering outsourcing a 24/7 hotline to make reporting complaints easier for residents. DeLorenzo said after the city approves the ordinance, city staff will bring forward proposals on companies that perform that service and design a fee schedule for STRs that would allow enforcing the ordinance to be self-sufficient.
The council also suggested removing or making other exemptions in the proposed ordinance, like children under 12 months old would not be counted as part of the maximum occupancy of 10 guests and removing the pet limit to leave at the discretion of the the STR owners. Palm Coast already requires that pets outdoors be leashed.
The ordinance, under council direction, also originally proposed exempting STRs where the owner lives onsite, like the Davisson. Pontieri suggested that instead of a whole-sale exemption, the city creates a list of exemptions that would apply to those STR owners.
“Anybody can say, 'Oh, I live in the home. I'm exempt,'" Pontieri said. "How do we prove it? How do we enforce it?"
Throughout the process, DeLorenzo said staff has been in communication with both STR owners and residents who neighbor STRs. Some of their requests were not enforceable — like a request to lower the city's daytime sound noise ordinance to just 50 decibels, city-wide.
“Fifty decibels is basically what we’re talking at right now,” council member Nick Klufas said.
"Adjusting the city daytime noise ordinance to 50 is a little overkill, in my mind,” Pontieri said.
Most of the complaints from STRs come from the city's C Section, around the canals; that is Pontieri's district. Council member Charles Gambaro Jr. asked Pontieri if the ordinance meets the concerns of her district's residents.
It doesn't, she said.
"They still have a lot of concerns, but I'm trying to balance their concerns with what's reasonable and with our STR owners," she said. "I can't just listen to my district, we represent the city at large."
