Short term rentals in Bluewater have been a bone of contention for many councillors, and the prickly topic of enforcement came up in discussion at a council meeting on Tuesday (September 5).
As a result of a report to council about staff’s current struggles with the cumbersome and antiquated process of tracking registrants on a spreadsheet, they’re looking into cloud databases that integrate with existing software that the municipality uses for building permits, allowing easy access for bylaw enforcement.
Council’s concern was around the number of short term rentals that have slipped under the radar.
Development Manager Aaron Stewardson said that they were working on identifying violators,
Councillor Whetstone emphasized the importance of ensuring that every short term rental in the municipality is registered,
He also pointed out that their licensing fee was how they intended to cover the costs of administrating the program. If they can’t ensure that enough rentals are registered, that cost would be passed on to the tax payer.
There are currently 100 registered short term rentals in the municipality. According to their projections, they currently have around 190 unaccounted for rentals, with more applications being processed every day.
This raised concerns for councillors about the density of incoming registered properties – with the 15% cap being applied only to rentals that did not exist prior to May. Council had previously assumed that rentals looking to be grandfathered in would be the first to register, but that has not come to pass.
Councillor Whetstone made a motion to direct staff to bring the short term rental bylaw back for discussion at the next meeting for review, looking to cap intakes on rentals that are too closely located to others, regardless of their dates of operation.
Staff was also directed to look into software that would scour the web for them, to cut back on staff time dedicated to catching violators.
The bylaw will be brought back for discussion at the next council meeting, on September 18th.
Written by: B. Shakyaver
