Strawberry Park Group



Strawberry Park Group

PO Box 772464

Steamboat Springs, CO 80477

Meeting of

The Strawberry Park Group

Monday Oct 21, 2015

Home of Mike and Hope Cook

Call to Order: President Mike Cook called the meeting to order at 5:00pm.

Board Members in attendance: President Mike Cook, Anne Kakela, Ben Beall and

Millie Beall, Tim Rowse

Absent: Butch Bowers, Don Johnson, Laura Frey

Guest attendee: Rodger Steen

The meeting was called primarily to discuss the County’s consideration to revise current regulations regarding short-term rentals in Routt County.

Mike reported that Don was disappointed to miss the meeting and wanted to be able to offer input on the topic.

Ben gave a review of the activity that has been going on with previous meetings regarding this topic as he has been attending meetings of RC Board of County Commissioners.

The next meeting on the topic is with the Routt County Planning Commission on November 19.

What stand do we, SPG, take on the topic of short term vacation rentals?

Questions to be addressed at Planning Commission:

1) Is VHR commercial? (according to RC Commissioner Hermacinski, it is not) Is it appropriate to approve when the Master Plan states differently?

2) Does Routt County need to redo the Master Plan? The SSAP states that outside of town is “rural”.

Master Plan is approved by Planning Commission and ratified by Commissioners.

If one plan is charged, do all Plans need to be changed? There would be a trickle effect.

Land Preservation System is what we’ve done here in Strawberry Park.

HOA’s have presented their opposition at the Planning meetings even though their covenants prohibiting VHR are not enforced by County.

Rodger Steen stated that he’s had experience with this as a problem in the area where he owns a home in Oregon. Impact has been negative for the neighbors as the renters have had a disregard for the neighborhood, private property and a loss of security.

Tim Rowse asked what are the concerns?

Ben Beall replied that he does not want to see commercialization of the neighborhoods.

Checking on the VRBO and AirBNB websites, there are several urban Steamboat offerings but only about 10 rural with these two sites, despite the fact that it is not allowed legally. Some say about 40 in total.

Tim asked how the discussion could become a win-win for everyone? Perhaps with regulations and fees. However there is no robust enforcement technique and zero compliance monitoring for County regulations and fees would not cover the expense for that enforcement.

The County would have to have regulation and compliance monitoring. If there are complaints, owner would lose the rights to rent.

Discussion about long-term rental vs. short-term rental by Board members.

We are a complaint-driven County. There are about 15-20 county complaints per year on short term rentals.

SPG wants to be part of the management/regulation discussion. We want to support what we want for our neighborhood.

If it is kept as is, most people would not start doing it because it is illegal. If it is a regulation that is approved, there could be a frenzy of sign-ups.

Majority of Board members expresses reservations about the legalization of VHR in Strawberry Park.

It was decided that Ben would start the draft of a letter to Planning, send it to Mike for editing and Mike would share with the remainder of the Board for comment. Finally the letter will be sent to the membership for their information and any feedback they want to share.

Adjournment: President Cook adjourned the meeting at approximately 5:50 p.m.

Oct 23 email follow up:

Fellow Board members

    Subsequent to our Board meeting, Ben and I have put our thoughts together on the attached proposed letter to County Planning.  While there are many ways to approach this issue, I hope I’ve captured the majority of the Board’s thoughts, that one, we don’t want to open the Park up to commercial development such as would happen with short term rentals, and two, that if the County decides to go down that path, that we and County residents should first have a chance to be part of the process in making any changes to the current regulations.

   With County Planning bringing this back up to the Commissioners on the 19th, I think we should get any of our thoughts to Planning in the next couple of weeks. While you may have editing changes, I’m mostly interested in your general thoughts as to the direction this letter is taking.  

Thanks

Mike

Attached letter:

Strawberry Park Group

PO Box 772464

Steamboat Springs, CO 80477

Routt County Planning Commission

Chairman Steve Warnke

136 6th Street

PO Box 773749

Steamboat Springs, CO

80477

November 1, 2015

Dear Chairman Warnke,

The Strawberry Park Group (SPG), an association of over 120 residential families and established institutional entities in Strawberry Park, is opposed to changes under your consideration to revise current regulations regarding short-term rentals in Routt County. Approval of commercial short-term vacation rentals in the county will have unintended negative impacts to our residents and should be fully vetted with your constituents prior to any implementation.

The Strawberry Park residents have enjoyed the protections in current county regulations from any commercial encroachment to our rural agricultural and residential valley. To give us these protections, county residents helped create the Steamboat Springs Area Community Plan (2004 and amended 2014). Strawberry Park was designated a Specific Planning Area. The SSACP, approved by both the Routt County Board of County Commissioners and the Routt County Planning Commission, stated in the “Strawberry Park Area Policy-4.4: Minimize commercial expansion in Strawberry Park. Expansion of commercial developments (other than on a limited basis) is generally not appropriate in Strawberry Park because of potential traffic impacts and the desire to maintain the scale and character of existing development.”

In line with this, the Strawberry Park Group has developed it’s concurrent philosophy, leading to a Strawberry Park Group Statement of Policy (filed with the County in 2001), noting our “ landowners are entitled to a reasonable use of their property…no landowner has any right to a use which adversely affects other residents of Strawberry Park or interferes with another person’s reasonable use of his own land.”

We understand there are some in the county who wish to use their often empty homes as short term rentals to help cover their costs of home ownership, (as is legal in the City). But short term vacation rentals would affect an entire neighborhood, including such negative impacts as excessive noise at all hours, traffic, trash, trespassing, let alone loss of property values. Renters on a short term basis often have little awareness or care of these impacts. We also expect any relaxing of short term rental rules will open the floodgates to commercial rental management companies, buying up homes for the sole use of nightly rental activities. Again, these activities could cause a significant detriment to our rural neighborhoods and rural traditions. Those affected neighbors will require recourse to address the impacts. They should have a say in whether they wish to encounter these impacts before they are faced with them. And, should rentals be approved, they will require strong County enforcement, likely meaning at the least a full time enforcement officer. That would mean county funding, perhaps from rental fees. We can’t envision such fees covering needed enforcement costs, such that enforcement would require funding from limited existing County resources.

Strawberry Park provides a convenient, quiet and safe place for dozens of people every day who wish to bike, walk or run, or just escape the higher residential and commercial density environment of the City. Most of us live here for the same reasons, where commercial activities have been held at bay. While we see little benefit to relaxing current regulations on short term rentals, we would expect any changes would only be undertaken with full considered involvement of County residents. It is our hope that the Routt County Planning Commission will take the above into consideration when deciding the future land use in the County.

Sincerely,

Mike Cook, President

Strawberry Park Group

CC: Chad Phillips, Director, Routt County Planning

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