LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Dear Editor: After attending last week’s Board of County Commissioners work session on short-term rental permits, some words seem to be repeated more than others like parties and bears, to name a few. Ultimately, it’s a complex issue that requires a careful balance between the economic impacts of encouraging tourism as well as preserving housing stability and community character.
Even though it was mentioned that renters have loud parties and do not use bear-proof trash containers properly and trash was a problem, there were no documents or statistics that supported the statements. The County Land Use Office mentioned it received a few complaints and typically it was neighbor against neighbor, so it was really a non-issue as to why this should discourage the possibility of more short-term rentals. The resolution was better communication to folks renting on the importance of noise and bear control as well as preserving our night sky to keep our community’s charm.
Ouray County had capped STRs at 100 permits in 2017. There are two waiting lists in the county for STRs, a “courtesy” list of 32 and an “approved” list of 5. Satisfying the entire waiting list would essentially involve adding less than 50 additional permits. They discussed implementing a “use it or lose it” policy so that if someone is holding a permit and not renting a certain number of days out of the year then their permit would be forfeited. There was also discussion of making STRs owner-occupied a policy too.
It was mentioned that the county uses Rentalscape and pays $30,000 annually to monitor STRs with the ability to see who is actively using a permit or if one is operating without a permit. With this program they stated 60% of permit holders were not active in the last six months. With this knowledge does adding 50 more permits have a harmful effect on Ouray County? The extra revenue could help offset the fee for the expensive software that monitors everyone.
The ultimate takeaway from this work session for me was we need less policy and regulation, and simply revising the cap to 150 could solve this problem, especially since no one in the work session knew why 100 was made the official cap limit.
Deborah Boerner Ridgway
