Short-term rental proposal scaled back by Town Board

After several months of discussions, Town Board members agreed at their work session Tuesday to streamline a comprehensive short-term rental proposal that will be the subject of a late January public hearing.

The revised proposal is could:
•    Apply to non-owner-occupied residences that are offered for all rentals except year-round rentals
•    Require licensing by the town with proof that owners have been registered with Suffolk County for tax purposes and can produce a letter from their insurers showing that guests are covered in the event of any accidents on the property
•    Provide guests with a handbook to familiarize them with information about the limit of no more than two persons per bedroom and limits to noise or overcrowding as well as water concerns on the Island
•    Require advertisements of short-term rentals to list the registration numbers and information about maximum occupancies
•    Exempt rentals that are owner-occupied or provide permanent homes for tenants
•    Exempt existing hotels and bed & breakfast establishments already covered by other ordinances

Gone will be references to how many such rentals are allowed and it’s likely the new ordinance would begin by spring and then be reassessed in the fall of 2017 to determine if there’s a need for adjustments.

The debate over whether to enforce a new ordinance seasonally or year round wasn’t addressed directly.

What’s unclear is fines for failure to either register or to break any existing laws and just how the ordinance might be enforced. Building Department personnel have made it clear they are overburdened with their current responsibilities.

“It’s not worth the paper it’s written on” if there’s no enforcement in place, at least during the busy spring through summer and early fall period, Councilman Jim Colligan said. Councilman Paul Shepherd agreed.

What motivated the Town Board, Mr. Shepherd said, wasn’t the few noise complaints that came in this past summer, but whether there’s a trend toward commercializing residential neighborhoods and an adverse impact on available year-round housing.

A list produced by town assessors shows more than 50 units being rented by internet sites such as homeaway.com and airbnb.com. The list was compiled by assessors in August and goes back over three years. The assessors looked at purchases of houses during that period and through an internet search, showed 95 listings since August 2015 that are registered with one of the short-term rental sites, according to Assessor Quinn Karpeh.

He described the list as “a snapshot in time.”

While Mr. Colligan argued that the list of buyers purchasing houses as short-term rental businesses is growing, resident Larry Adler argued that it’s a reflection of the economy that has been lagging on the Island, forcing more people to rent part or all of their property in order to augment their incomes. When the economy is better, most opt not to rent, Mr. Adler said.

He also argued that a lot of the vacation rental properties sold for $500,000 or less are owned by people who are part-timers on the Island. They pay taxes here and these young people wouldn’t be able to make the purchases if they didn’t have the ability to offer rentals while they are occupying their full-time residences elsewhere.

The right to rent his house should be his “prerogative,” Mr. Adler said, telling the Town Board if it persists in its efforts “to fix a problem that doesn’t exist,” it will face costly lawsuits.

In other business:
Supervisor Jim Dougherty announced that the Insurance Service Office that does an assessment every five years of how well the town is enforcing its codes is expected to increase the town rating that is currently 55. Mr. Dougherty said he’s unsure just what 55 means and the ISO website is unclear. An inquiry about the rating scale wasn’t answered by press time.

Nonetheless, a better score would likely reduce home insurance premiums for town residents, Mr. Dougherty said.

The supervisor announced that PSEG will be installing 155 new poles on the northern end of the Island and 50 on the southern end that will replace existing poles and reduce outages caused by stormy weather.

Resident Don Bindler spoke about the need for the town to charge fees for businesses operating on Crescent Beach, both to generate revenue, but also to guarantee they are properly insured so the town has no liability for any accidents or problems the businesses may encounter.

The town is engaged in a competitive process to try to obtain one of 14 grants — one for $100,000 and the others for $50,000 each financed by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority under a “Clean Energy Communities” program. The town could be named a Clean Energy Community for completing steps toward energy conservation.

A separate story on the program appears on the Reporter website.

Power cable: As expected (see “Greenport backs cable project to Heights,” November 24), the Greenport Village Board unanimously agreed November 28 to have contract negotiations with PSEG over its proposal to run an electric cable from the village across the bay and surface near North Ferry.

Construction is expected to begin in September 2017 and be complete the following May, and provide backup power for the Island, which has been relying on generators mounted on flatbed trucks for that purpose.

Village Board members said the deal includes a $1.3 million cash payment from PSEG, as well as road paving work and free installation of an electrical switch that could shorten village power outages.