LAKE PLACID — Multiple people who attended an informal public hearing on the town of North Elba’s draft STR regulations on Tuesday voiced concerns about how the rules don’t delineate between hosted and unhosted rentals.

A few of the meeting’s more than 40 attendees also questioned the accessibility of the town’s STR special meeting process. All of the town’s STR meetings have been held at 9 a.m. on business days, and some Lake Placid residents said they knew several people who wanted to attend the meetings but couldn’t because they were working.

The town is currently under an active moratorium on the issuance of new STR permits as town officials rework North Elba’s STR regulations, and the town released the first draft of proposed STR regulations earlier this month. Town Supervisor Derek Doty said on Tuesday that the draft is not a finished product, and the town still has more work to do before closing in on final recommendations. That’s part of the reason why the town wants to extend its moratorium, which was set to end in mid-September, through to the middle of December.

The town will hold a public hearing for the moratorium extension at 5 p.m. on Sept. 6. The town also scheduled another special STR meeting at 9 a.m. on Aug. 30. People can attend both the hearing and meeting at the North Elba Town Hall or virtually at gotomeet.me/townofnorthelba/board-meeting.

People can also submit comments about the town’s draft STR regulations, available at tinyurl.com/4zhub6rv, to town Clerk Laurie Dudley at ldudley@northelba.org.

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Hosted vs. unhosted

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Jillian Locke, a lifelong Lake Placid resident, told the town board that she was “taken aback” by the town’s exclusion of hosted and unhosted distinctions. Locke recently bought a home on Jersey Drive, zoned in the town’s residential district, and she wanted to apply for a hosted STR permit for her home to supplement her mortgage payments. She, along with several other people at the meeting, referenced the Lake Placid-North Elba Land Use Code Committee’s recommendations for STR regulations released earlier this summer, which were largely drawn along lines differentiating between hosted and unhosted rentals.

Under North Elba’s drafted STR regulations, there wouldn’t be a distinction between “hosted” and “unhosted” permits — the new permit system would instead focus on where permits would and wouldn’t be allowed, according to zoning districts. The town is considering splitting the types of STR permits into two categories: “lodging” permits and “capped” permits. The town is also considering residential districts as areas where STRs aren’t “compatible” and where permits would no longer be issued.

Town Councilor Emily Kilburn Politi said that the town opted to drop the “hosted” distinction for “simplicity” in the permit system and enforcement and to boost the availability of long-term rentals. Many locals who operate STRs in the town said they didn’t think that was a good enough reason.

After some discussion with people at the meeting, town officials said they’d consider going back to hosted and unhosted distinctions in future drafts of regulations. Doty said the town board did recognize that there was a difference between hosted and unhosted rentals.

“I’ll be the first to admit, we try to think of every scenario, and we’re not finished yet,” he said. “… Please don’t think anything’s coming to us where everything’s carved in stone — it is not. You’ll find this board very open to working through all these situations.”

Kilburn Politi said the town had considered the idea that someone in a residential area, who wanted to have a short-term rental, could try to get classified as a bed and breakfast — which she said was allowed in every district except North and South Lake districts. If the town does go back to hosted and unhosted categories, Kilburn Politi thought one way the town could prove whether or not a rental is hosted could be by requiring someone to provide a STAR exemption or credit check, an idea she said came from Saranac Lake’s STR discussions.

Town officials also talked about changing the term “hosted” to “owner-occupied,” which could better indicate that the host of an STR has to live on the property and be present while it’s being rented. In the town’s current STR policy, a rental qualifies as a “hosted” rental if the property owner lives on the property for a minimum of 184 days per year.

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Community concerns

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Town residents Tim Reynolds and Shelley Reynolds, along with local resident Karen Armstrong, asked the board to consider changing the STR meeting times to the evening, when they said most people who live and work in Lake Placid are more available. Doty said that in his 22 years of serving as a town official, the town’s STR sessions in the morning over the last couple of months have had higher attendance than the town’s evening meetings.

“I would say you have more attendance because you’re hearing from people who have a huge financial investment in it,” Shelley said, “not people who live here, work here, volunteer here, play here, send their kids to school here, because those people are working. People who have a financial investment in a short-term rental have more disposable income than I do.”

Doty said at the end of the meeting that the town would schedule an evening meeting about STRs once the town gets closer to forming its final regulations.

Shelley also said she felt that the town was disregarding the land use code committee’s recommendations to protect certain neighborhoods. While the town is including residentially zoned-areas in its current draft as places where people couldn’t apply for an STR permit in the future, the land-use code committee added a few additional neighborhoods outside of the residential zone as places where it believed STRs aren’t compatible. Shelley’s neighborhood in Beech Hill Circle would be part of a capped district under the town’s draft.

If the town moves forward with its draft STR regulations, there would be a total of 190 STR permits allowed in what the town is calling “capped” districts — the rural countryside, the North Lake and South Lake districts, lots without road frontage in the Old Military Road corridor and the gateway corridor, and units in the Whiteface Inn development or existing townhomes and condos that aren’t part of a homeowners association.

Shelley said it seemed like the town board was “completely selling out” its community with the proposed regulations, which would allow for around 20 additional STR permits to be issued in capped districts. She felt that STRs inflate real estate market values and edge out longstanding members of the community, which she said are “legacy families” in Lake Placid.

“Legacy families are families that grew up here, raised their kids here, raised their grandchildren here, and now they can’t afford their taxes because everything’s artificially inflated,” she said.

Armstrong read several excerpts from the Economic Policy Institute’s study on the economic costs and benefits of Airbnb, which stated that while Airbnb has suppressed travel costs, evidence suggests that the presence of Airbnbs raises local housing costs.

Bob DiMartino, a part-time Lake Placid resident who rents his home on Hillcrest Avenue as an STR, thought that those claims weren’t supported by data. He thought that with or without STRs, taxes would go up because the cost of doing business anywhere goes up.

Armstrong also mentioned that Airbnb has “less reliable tax payments” to cities they’re in, citing the EPI study. Town officials said that while Airbnbs contribute to local occupancy taxes, Airbnbs aren’t charged with sales tax, while hotels and motels are. That’s something that couldn’t be handled on a local level, according to town officials.

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Compliance

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Town officials said that they’re working with the village to restructure job descriptions in the Building and Planning Department to give someone the responsibility of being an “STR compliance monitor.” Kilburn Politi said that person would check on STR compliance in the permit system, follow up on violations, and check with the village police to see if there were calls for noise and parking issues so they could cross-reference that information with the STR permit system and make sure any STR-related complaints are documented as violations.

Town Councilor Jason Leon said that position would be evaluated every year; if there’s a need to expand that position, then the town and village would consider increasing the cost of STR permits to help pay for the new employee. Leon said compliance is a component of the STR regulations that the board wants to be proactive about.

Shelley Reynolds noted that she’s seen “tremendous progress” with “nuisance rentals” and commended the board for its increased attention to compliance.

Code Enforcement Officer Mike Orticelle said New York State Police have started responding to some noise complaints, and he encouraged people to use the town and village’s STR complaint hotline at 518-739-7906.