Rental Advisory Group to hold its first meeting Friday
Cape council member tasked with garnering input on short-term rentals
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The first meeting for the City of Cape Coral Vacation Rental Advisory Group, created by Councilmember Jennifer Nelson-Lastra, will be held Friday to discuss how to cover enforcement fees, as well as how to address the "bad actors."
The meeting, which will include a 30-minute citizens input time, will start at 3 p.m. Friday, June 20, in conference room 220A at City Hall.
"I will be facilitating it old school - post-it, flip chart and a bunch of markers," Nelson-Lastra said.
According to the agenda, discussion will include the purpose of the group and ordinance, goals and projected outcomes, annual cost and process of enforcement currently, review of other municipalities' ordinances, proposed cost of enforcement with new system/processes, proposed new annual or one- time rate for vacation rentals and business tax receipt versus a fee.
The advisory group is comprised of 18 people - displeased residents, property managers of Airbnb, Realtors, vacation rental owners, code enforcement and law enforcement.
"I needed to have angry residents that can't stand Airbnb, the vacation property owners and then I needed to have the property managers who manage the properties," Nelson-Lastra said.
She said there are some options - potentially increasing the vacation rental fee, or doing it through business tax receipts. If the route is a fee, it will be something more than a one-time $35 fee, but not as much as the proposed $600 fee that drew criticism from the industry.
"Our goal is to make sure we are covering the enforcement cost," Nelson-Lastra said.
She said there is a cost that comes with enforcing the vacation rental ordinance that is in place - staff time, police answering 911 calls and software that desperately needs to be updated.
"We need them (vacation rentals) because we don't have enough hotels in our city and without them people can't come here and we can't promote tourism," Nelson-Lastra said. "The problem is we have some bad actors in the city that own the vacation rentals that don't follow the current seven-day minimal rental. That is why you have my displeased residents because they live next door to a party house."
She said they need to also visit the number of days that are required for vacation rentals - maybe lower the number of days.
"We are not trying to penalize people that own vacation rentals. We need them in our city. We want them in our city," she said.
The group was formed after City Council decided not to move forward with two ordinances, 26-25 and 27-25, in the current written form and sponsored by Councilmember Keith Long.
The concerns from the ordinance were increasing the one-time $35 registration fee to an annual $600 fee, as well as the police department and code compliance division being "authorized to remove all occupants from the residential rental property until such time that the residential rental property is registered with the city."
After an outcry from the community, and a long conversation among Council, Long said he was not married to the idea, he read the room and saw how much "we muddied it up." He said he did not have the desire to continue and wanted to stop wasting time talking about it, which lead Nelson-Lastra to pick up the idea, form a group, and hold meetings during the Council's summer hiatus.
City Hall is at 1015 Cultural Park Blvd.