LAKE PLACID – With the continuing boom of vacation rentals in and around this village, the Lake Placid-North Elba Community Development Commission has completed its final proposal to regulate them via a permit system.

The CDC’s Rental Permit Study Group, made up of representatives from the town and village code enforcement office, hotel owners, real estate agents the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism and local homeowners, met 10 times since Nov. 2014 to put together its Quality Housing Report. Several other meetings and joint-meetings with the Lake Placid village board and North Elba Town Council also took place in that time period. The final report was drafted last month.

The proposed plan would require no-fee and fee permits for all transient rentals in the area, estimated to be at least 197 rental units in North Elba and 229 in the village.

For transient rentals, where a property is leased for fewer than 15 days per year, the CDC is proposing a required no-fee permit. For rentals in excess of 15 days per year, a permit with a $100 annual fee would be required. Compliance would be voluntary, though the CDC said failure to comply would result in the same punitive measures that currently exist in the land use code.

The CDC said the advertisement of a property for rent would be presumptive evidence of a transient rental. The CDC presented the final plan to the village board Monday. It plans to present the plan to the North Elba Town Council at its next scheduled meeting, Oct. 11 at 7 p.m. at the North Elba Town Hall.

In the August report, the CDC said the main reason for the proposed permit system is to address the “safety gap” between hotels and vacation rentals, as “health and safety regulations of a hotel or bed and breakfast do not apply” to transient rentals.

“Our tourism-based economy is dependent upon events that require the housing of participants,” the CDC writes in the report. “This has led to an explosion in single and multi-family residences, once occupied by full time, year-round residents, being utilized more and more as short-term, transient occupied rentals.

“In some cases, these homes are simply business ventures existing solely for their income producing potential,” the report continues. “While short term rentals play a vital role in the economy and well being of the area, they generally remain unregulated.”

Permit requirements would include the proper display of street-side emergency numbers, working smoke alarms on each level of the rental and/or in each sleeping area, carbon monoxide alarms if a source of carbon monoxide exists, proof of a chimney cleaning within one year and at least one working fire extinguisher in the kitchen area and an additional one for each fireplace. All rentals must also comply with state Property Maintenance Law.

With its proposal, the CDC also attempts to address noise, parking and garbage disposal problems it says are brought on by the increasing amount of transient rentals in the area. The CDC also proposes to require owners to communicate locations for parking, trash pick-up and a summary of the applicable local noise ordinance to parties staying at their property.

Owners of the rental would also be required to provide emergency contact information of a person responsible to the property, someone who would have to live within 25 miles of the rental address.

The CDC also proposes occupancy rate maximums. The rates would be calculated as two times the number of bedrooms, as determined by the Essex County Assessment Office, plus two additional occupants. For example, for a two-bedroom rental, that would equate to a maximum of six people. Studio apartments, the CDC adds, would be allowed two occupants for the first 220 square feet of living space, with one additional occupant for each additional 100 square feet of living space. These calculations are based on the state’s definition of overcrowding.

To be permitted, the CDC proposes to require every rental unit be metered by the municipal water system. Under the proposed plan, three violations in a calendar year would result in the suspension of a rental unit’s permit for one year.

The CDC proposes the Lake Placid-North Elba code enforcement office, a joint office between the village and town, administer the permit system. The code enforcement office has access to Essex County records to determine occupancy rates.

The plan attempts to administer the permit system without increasing the size of the office. The permit system will rely on an affidavit system where owners of rental units would submit a notarized document certifying compliance with all permit requirements.

The application process would be rolling and be conducted online. It would utilize electronic data as much as possible, such as scanned forms that would be shared and accessible via a database.

The final proposal was markedly scaled back from its initial proposals to the village and town, as the village board and town council mutually expressed interest in starting on a smaller and less expensive scale with regulations of vacation rentals.

“The (CDC) rental study group originally suggested a higher fee structure,” the CDC writes in its report, “a fee of $200 per bedroom, for instance, is projected to generate $108,000 at 60 percent compliance. This revenue stream would help build the infrastructure of the Code Enforcement Office, which is already overburdened by inspection requirements, and promote compliance with the new permit system.”