Selectboard establishes short-term rental registry

This was Hagerty’s final act both as chair and member of the selectboard. At Stowe’s town meeting Tuesday, entrepreneur Ethan Carlson, who has said he supports some of the registry on the grounds of public safety but believes compromise changes can be made, beat out former board member Willie Noyes.

“I have also heard the concerns of the community and believe we can make some modifications and compromises to make this registration something the community can support and feel comfortable with,” Carlson said in a written statement.

Stowe’s public deliberations to create a short-term rental registry began nearly a year ago at a public forum on Stowe’s housing problems: the scarcity of affordable housing, the rising expense of property fueled by a red-hot post-pandemic real estate market and a growing number of landlords, homesteaders and second homeowners turning to the relative ease and profits of short-term rentals.

It was Aumand, who ended up opposing the ordinance, who asked at that forum, “Who is Stowe for?”

He and Adams opposed the registry because they said it infringes on the rights of property owners by requiring them to register information about their properties, while other board members argued that something had to be done.

The Stowe Planning Commission spent the summer considering the short-term rental question and in the fall the process heated up with a series of informational sessions where the public heard from the Stowe Fire Department, short-term rental advocates and real estate agents.

In November, the commission recommended an ordinance to establish a short-term registry that included a moratorium on their growth. But the selectboard instead pursued an ordinance that simply establishes a registry with requirements pertaining to public safety following the fire department’s harrowing accounts of unresponsive rental owners.

Hagerty and Courtney were convinced early in the process of the need for better data to understand Stowe’s short-term rental stock, with a compulsory registry being the best route, while Adams and Aumand established their refusal to support any kind of regulation that they felt infringed on residents’ property rights.

Donza, a residential builder sympathetic to Adams and Aumand’s argument, became an advocate for an ordinance that he said doesn’t “take anything away” from rental owners and was a necessary intervention over public safety issues.

Enforcement of the ordinance begins May 1, 2025, and will require rental owners to provide information through a yet-to-be-defined form and pay a fee. Hagerty estimated it would likely cost less than $200. A rental owner’s registration will have to be renewed annually.

Adams, in particular, fought bitterly against any kind of compulsory ordinance, advocating instead that the board should use the town’s land-use regulations as a mechanism to regulate short-term rentals.

He lambasted the ordinance in a closing statement at the Feb. 29 special meeting and accused fellow selectboard members of failing the Stowe community by not empathizing enough with residents during a moment of surging property taxes and by not crafting laws with good public policy in mind.

“This ordinance reflects a degree of callousness to the business owners and taxpayers of this town,” Adams said. He called on the board to test the ordinance’s popularity with a voter referendum and reminded those present that an ordinance can be rescinded by petition.

Hagerty defended the ordinance as a modest attempt to support the fire department, and said the town needed to better understand all aspects of its housing market. Despite fierce opposition from many with a stake in the industry, it was an action supported by the majority of Stoweites, she said.

“By passing this ordinance, we have established a data collection and a public safety measure that will open up the next selectboard to tackle the many other issues facing this town,” Hagerty said.

But those opposed to the ordinance have wasted no time pushing for a public vote to rescind it. A recognizable group of property managers and rental owners gathered outside Stowe High School on Tuesday collecting votes to petition the town to put the ordinance up for a popular vote, which, because Stowe residents voted against moving all non-budgetary votes to Australian ballot, would be considered at a special meeting.

Organized opposition

A coalition of property managers, short-term rental owners and second homeowners coalesced as the town headed toward enacting a registry late last year, an alliance that made one last push to block the ordinance last week.

It became clear that the various beneficiaries of Stowe’s short-term rental economy were coming together to oppose any compulsory registry at an intense meeting in early February that saw protesters greet arriving selectboard members on the front steps of town hall.

Lawyer L. Brooke Dingledine, technically representing just one rental owning couple, said she met with “hundreds” of rental owners concerned about the type of data being collected and informed town manager Charles Safford of a general concern that he was pushing the board to enact the ordinance, an accusation he took great offense to.

At the final public hearing last week, property management company owners and their clients made a show of force at a standing-room only meeting. Of the 46 people who spoke during the public hearing portion of the special meeting, 35 opposed the ordinance to varying degrees and for a variety of reasons.

Prior to the hearing, a flier was distributed titled “Stop Privacy Violation.” The flier, similar to an ad placed in the Stowe Reporter by Stowe Vacation Rental Advocates, a group of property management companies, called on Stowe residents concerned about looming property tax increases to speak out and mirrored many of the criticisms and concerns voiced at the public hearing.

The flier said rental owners should support a voluntary registry but criticized the board for ignoring “professional” input, echoing the repeated complaints of property management company owners who claimed the selectboard should have looked to them for data and advice on how to regulate the industry they benefit from.

It included a summary of criticism that Adams had launched at his fellow board members and a small cartoon in which a woman in a business suit demands hundreds of dollars from an elderly woman while threatening to put a lien on her house while the woman’s grandchild asks her how they “will pay for the new property taxes?”

Julie Marks — director of the Vermont Short-Term Rental Alliance, Stowe resident and rental owner who has expressed concerns over what kind of data will be collected in the town’s ordinance — confirmed that the flier was “created collectively” by several of the alliance’s Stowe members.

“We fully support their right to voice their concerns about the policy-making process, demand answers to questions that are of public interest and make the wider community aware of the issue and potential outcomes and consequences,” Marks said.

Hagerty said she suspected a coordinated effort was at play to block the ordinance in her comments at the meeting, noting that many of the emails she received against it were nearly identical.

The opposition covered a range of concerns in its testimony, from feelings that the process had been rushed, that the property management industry had not been properly consulted, that the fire safety regulations were too onerous, that the ordinance set the stage for future short-term rental regulations and fears over the fees levied against those who failed to comply, which begin at $200 and can escalate to $800 for the fourth and subsequent violations.

Safford has repeatedly said that the town has a policy of working with properties in violation of municipal regulations to address infractions, not a punitive one.

On more than one occasion, those speaking against the ordinance called on Donza to reconsider his support, pleas that failed to move him.

Those who went public with their support of short-term rentals, including a couple of short-term rental owners, argued that the ordinance would give those speaking out against the ordinance the data they claimed to desire, and would do so more comprehensively than a voluntary registry.

“We can’t pretend that our town isn’t being cannibalized by short-term rentals,” Beth Gadbois said. “This registry is nothing compared to commercial regulations, and a lack of regulations is precisely why people like STRs.”

Stowe fire chief Scott Reeves lobbied for the ordinance as a necessary measure that would benefit both recruitment and retention at the department with a promise of no more wasted hours waiting for an absentee landlord.

“We feel that this ordinance is necessary and if it’s about a show of numbers, I can have 23 people from the firehouse over here with a text,” he said.

Updated March 8, 2024 to clarify that enforcement of the compulsory registry for short-term rentals will being May 1, 2025.