2018-09-06 Hearing Transcript - Council Initiated Bill 108, Draft 4

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increased to be able to provide those positions. They've all heard the stories, and this is all about enforcement, so I don't think they're absent of knowing it, that the other counties when they instituted their vacation rental bills, many of them were hiring, you know, four plus inspectors just to deal with vacation rentals. So, they know it's a robust situation. In terms of setting up the special account, I think they were acknowledging that we would need as many resources as possible to try to be timely on our enforcement, too. RAFFIPIY: And, I supposed the fee will be used to pay for or to fund those positions and not raising any taxes, outside the fees? YEE: I'll be diplomatic and say that I leave that as a policy -decision for the Council. RAFFIPIY: Thank you very much. CLARKSON: Any further questions on this slide? Please proceed, Maija. JACKSON: So, that kind of concludes the portion of the presentation on what the bill includes. And, so next, I'm going to go onto the Planning Director's recommendations, but does the Commission have any other questions about what the bill does or does not include at this point? No? Okay. So, the Planning Director is recommending that the Commissions send a favorable recommendation of Bill 108, Draft 4 to the Council. We have several recommended revisions, though. And, some of the revisions are really minor. They're just housekeeping issues, and then others are more substantial. So, we'll go through them one at a time. The first one is fairly basic. We're suggesting changing the title of the bill and references throughout the bill to "un -hosted short-term vacation rental" just to clarify for the public and staff that this bill does not apply to hosted rentals because just reading the title without reading the definition, you, at first glance, you would think it applies to all short-term vacation rentals in the County. So, that's one recommendation. The second recommendation, if you look at the definition of short-term vacation rental in the bill that's on page 6, the last sentence of the definition says, "this definition shall not apply to the short-term use of an owner's primary residence as defined under the Internal Revenue Code." And, so we're not exactly sure what that means, what is or isn't allowed under the Internal Revenue Code. So, we're asking that the County Council either clarify the definition or just cite exactly what the IRC allows or does not allow. That would be helpful for the public and also for our Department enforcement staff CLARKSON: Is there anyone here representing the Council? JACKSON: Not that I know of CARTER (from audience): I'm here. EXHIBIT C 11