Townsend formalized oversight of its short-term rental market through a permitting and inspection system during its regular Board of Commissioners meeting May 19.
City staff said the changes are aimed at improving safety standards and giving the city better visibility into the industry.
The new ordinance requires short-term rental operators to maintain a city-issued permit and a business license. They must submit to inspections and meet safety standards set by the city.
There is a $250 fee for an initial permit and a $50 annual renewal fee. Existing short-term rentals will be grandfathered in as long as operators submit a permit application within 60 days of the ordinance’s passage.
Short-term rental capacity will be capped at 12 people.
A second ordinance clarifies where owners can operate short-term rentals. The text standardizes city code language to communicate that new short-term rentals are not allowed in zone R-1E and are permitted in zone B-1 — a move city staff said is aimed at preserving existing neighborhoods and clarifying existing regulations.
Don Stallions, city manager for Townsend, said the city needed a way to enforce safety codes. With a permitting system, he said, the city can keep track of maximum occupancy and fire code enforcement.
This way, the city can decide how it wants to approach the issue in the future.
“We can’t go in and say ‘we’re not going to have any short-term rentals anymore,'” he said. “It’s just something we want to be able to track. Do we have an issue, are we losing our neighborhoods or is everything good?”
Stallions, who also serves as fire chief, described the current situation as akin to a “wild west.”
Responding to a smoke-filled home a few years ago, he encountered a rental where someone had removed the battery from the smoke detector.
“This is just to have an oversight to make sure that they are safe and life safety has been taken care of,” he said. “Very similar to what any other lodging industry has to do.”
