Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thanks to everyone for coming tonight. Many of you know me. I'm Patton Berger, chair of The Woodlands, CPA. I know the issue we're discussing today, short term rentals, is one that many of us care deeply about. Most people in the community are well-informed individuals, and I believe tonight will provide insightful and valuable testimony for the Board of Commissioners. I'd like to thank the commissioners. Commissioner Hill, Commissioners Service. Commissioner Roberts will be here soon. He's he's held in traffic. Some members. There you go. Let's not go there. We're not here to talk about traffic. I would like to thank the commissioners for being here to listen to our experiences and thoughts. I'd also like to thank the commissioners for hosting an online virtual town hall about stars back in February. It's clear to me that commissioners do want to hear directly from their constituents. Thank you, two, for choosing Welches as a place to have your meeting. We've really appreciate it here in the Outback. I'd also like to thank Clackamas County Administrator Gary Schmidt. He will serve tonight as our facilitator and emcee. Thank you all again for coming. Make sure you take a turn looking at some of the maps back there, of the locations of some of these short

term rentals, and Gary, happy to see you. Very good. Thank you. Pat. Good evening everyone. Welcome and thank you for being here. Thank you. Pat Hughes, president of the Woodland Community Planning Organization CPO, if you're a member of the Woodlands CPO, would you please raise your hand? Fantastic. Thank you all for your leadership. And if you don't know what a CPO is, ask them. It's a great way to be involved in your community and Cpos advise the Board of County Commissioners on many, many topics. So thank you all for being here tonight. I'm honored to be your facilitator and I'll help guide the meeting for you. But really, this is a chance for you to communicate with the Board of County Commissioners on what your input is on short term rentals. I know you care deeply about this topic because you're here. Here's a lot of feedback the board has already received. I'd like to introduce the commissioners, which Pat has done. I'll do it one more time. Commissioner Diana Helm. Commissioner Paul Savas. Chair Craig Roberts is on his way. Traffic is, pretty bad this hour, and we'll talk about traffic. Another town hall meeting. Commissioner Ben West and Commissioner Martha Schrader are not able to be here. Commissioner West is on military leave out of the state. And Commissioner Schrader's on personal leave out of the state. But they will hear all the feedback tonight as well, that you share. I've been asked what all these cameras in the room. This is Clackamas County. We are filming this for our government channel. And because soon they'll be three commissioners present. Any time a quorum of the board meets, we must stream it live. So this will be streamed live on our zoom channel so people can watch and participate. Mostly listen through zoom. That's an Oregon law that we, of course, are meeting. We have many staff here tonight that are also listening and taking very good notes. In particular, Jeff Manns is assistant county counsel, one of the county's attorneys.

Don't still don't blame him for that. I'm kidding. Jeff. It's a lawyer joke. Nobody laughed. All right. Sorry. And many other staff from the office of the county administrator and public and government affairs. Thank you, teams, for being here. So tonight, the topic, as you know, short term rentals. Back in 2023, the Board of Commissioners approved and established a short term rental program for unincorporated areas of the county. This is a pilot program that we've extended twice that lasts until June 30th, 2026, and a few more months before the board decides if they're going to make it permanent or not, or make any changes. They want to hear what the public thinks. So we've already had the board has held one virtual town hall a few weeks ago, and we had this live town hall tonight. And the board has received a lot of communication via email and phone calls, as well as people attending board meetings at the county offices in Oregon City, which you may still do. So tonight's not the only night. You still may provide feedback before it, before the board discusses this in May to make a final decision on the future of the short term rental program. I know you're familiar with the issues, so I'm not going to talk about it. However, if you do need a primer or a background, there's materials on the back table or when you come to the mic, you can simply ask a question and the commissioners or I will help answer that for you. So for tonight, this is a chance for a dialog. So it is not just the board is not going to sit silently and just listen. That was feedback we got from the virtual town hall. The board just listened and said very little. That's because they really wanted to hear what you had to say. Tonight will be more of a dialog and when it's your time to speak, the microphone is right here. There's no signing list tonight. We're going to we're going to just be on the honor system where I will ask you to come up to the microphone one at a time. But let me start. How many of you wish to speak tonight and give comments to the board? Would you raise your hand? All right. That's not too bad. So I am not going to time you.

But I ask you to please be as concise as you can so as many people as possible will have a chance to speak. If I feel you're going on a bit too long, I might say. Could you please wrap it up? That is only out of a chance to let everyone have a chance to speak. The board may ask you a question as well. I do ask, though, if you could keep your question and comments as brief as possible so as many people as possible can speak. And then if there's time, we can go back for round to around three. If you have another question or want to have a dialog with the board if you are not comfortable speaking in public, that's totally fine. We have cards that you can write down your feedback. They are currently in the back of the room. The gentleman Dillon is holding them up right now. Little white, three by five cards. Either raise your hand and he'll bring it to you. Or please move your, find your way to the back of the room at some point, and you can write down your comments. Here's a card. Sorry, Dylan, I just volunteered. You raise your hand right now if you'd like a card that you could fill out. If you don't want to speak or you have an additional commen Well, there's one anyway. Thank you. All right. Dylan, thank you. So feel free to write it down if you don't want to speak after tonight, you can still provide feedback via email to the Board of Commissioners back at Clackamas. Dot us. Simple. Right back@clackamas.us. Or you can talk to the commissioners at the end of the event here tonight okay I think oh and general if someone has said something you agree with, here's something we do is you can wave your hands or like silent applause that you agree with that sentiment. Or if you disagree, maybe you shake your head or but let's be respectful. Please. No. No catcalls or boozer hisses, but let everyone have a chance to share their input, and what they'd like to share. All right, so, chair Roberts did have some welcoming comments, but again, he's stuck in traffic. He asked us to start without him, but let me quickly read what he was going to say to you because I have his notes. Thank you, Gary, for that kind introduction. The topic of

the topic tonight is regulations for short term rentals. And that is very, very important to the Board of County Commissioners. Tonight. The board really wants to hear your experiences and have a chance to have a dialog with you. But really, they want to hear what your input is. Here are some sample questions to help spur the type of things you may ask. What are your thoughts about the current short term rental programs regulations? What has worked and what has not worked? What has changed about short term rentals since the pilot program went into effect in 2023? Do you think the Board of Commissioners should make these regulations permanent? Why or why not? So just simple things to spur your thinking tonight. As Gary just said, we want to hear from as many people as possible. So please try to keep your comments concise or Gary will cut you off if he feels you're going too long. So again, I'll be respectful, but I may ask you to please wrap it up and thank you that back to Gary. Talk to me. Thank you very much. With that we're going to get started. So again, the microphone is yours. I ask that you please come to the microphone. Make a short line or wait the turn. Please say who you are, where you're from, and then share your comment. So, Commissioner Sachs, yes, I just want to make a couple opening comments. I've been at this a long time, since it first came up six, seven, eight years ago when the board, the previous board tried to initiate this. It's, it's a sordid, complex thing, but there are some things I heard at the town hall in February that I think are worth clearing up. And take these comments constructively. So, first of all, one of the things I heard was, I think I sense that there was some confusion that somehow the Board of County commissioners implemented the tax, the tourism tax. Right. The TLT, fact of the matter is, no, we did not, it's always been there.

It's, it's it's embedded in statute. It's state law required that that fee be collected. It applies to short term rentals. Regardless, before the county commission did anything or afterwards. So that fee, is established through a very complex, procedure because the tourism board who monitors those dollars is independent of the board of county commissioners. So that's not why we're here today. But I just wanted to clear that up. I really sense that people thought that we actually implemented this, this tlte tax rate. We did not. The other aspect about that is that it's the same amount. We don't control the amount. What we did do, though, in all honesty, as we added a small surcharge to help pay to administer this pilot program. So that surcharge is amounts to about an average of a little over about a $1.88 on the dollar, if you will. Our point 8%. So on a $100 rental, for the night, it would be $1 or $0.80. Yeah. For $100 is $0.80. So it's a small surcharge and helps pay for this to minister this program. And the idea that we heard was, to administer this program, the issue was, were complaints about code enforcement are having a more control to make sure that the livability, your neighborhoods, parking, noise, parties, all that stuff that is, you know, for some of the bad actors, that's impacting your community. We heard that, the code enforcement element is another thing. I want to clear up the code enforcement that was in place before. This is identical to the code enforcement that's here today. We didn't change it. We didn't ramp it up. We didn't do anything. The the by this pilot program we implemented, it was simply a requirement, a requirement for short term rental operators to file a basically a free application for free registration and that affidavit that they would fill out,

they would basically sign it and swear to it that they meet all the requirements that we expect to make our community better, right? Contact information, everything else. So that's what we've done. So we have that. But not all of those people did register, right? We have a lot of people. They didn't register. They're they're they're not paying the fees, so forth. So I just want to just clarify if there's any questions of that specifically. You know, we'll respond to those, and we also have legal counsel here, if there's anything technical that I can't answer. Just to clarify for you all. So I'll just cover those again. One of the thing I want to add is that, as Gary said, we said at the town hall, we're saying here tonight, we don't know what we're going to do with this because it's going to be somewhat based on your input. We have no preconceived ideas or plans or increases or decreases. It really depends on is this constructive? Do you feel is constructive? How do we make it better? And so everything's on the table. There's no preconceived decisions or approaches to how we tackle this. So very very good. Thank you. Commissioner Sarvis. Commissioner how would you like to make any opening comments? No, just that there was a lot of great takeaways from the online town hall. A lot of, the same things were mentioned over and over, the accountability for the people who own the homes and making sure that they're, they're doing the responsible thing for the neighborhood. The software program is very cumbersome and needs to be upgraded or updated or something fixed. So that it's not so hard to use. Which I think that's a probably an easy fix. But I will just say, because I'm I'll, I'll keep using this I'm new here thing for as long as I possibly can. Looking at the map over here that you guys have put up and I don't, you probably do that. I, I, I think it's, I think that the that it's, it's gotten a little out of hand

and I think that that's not what you guys intended. I'm not sure it's what we intended. I'm not sure when it was set up. There's it's not a blame issue, but it's. How do we contain that. How do we maybe, rightsize the numbers, so that you have livable neighborhoods again and you have people going to your elementary schools and families can live here. So I hear all these different things, and I hope that we can find a resolution to some of it. And as I said to a couple of people earlier, sometimes that is compromise. And compromise means neither side is happy. Right? But we try to have to we have to try to find a middle ground. So, I think based on your input you've already given and what we're going to hear tonight, I think it's going to give us a real good pathway on what we need to do going forward. So, we're here to listen and we're here to dialog with you. I don't want you to feel like we're talking to you or you're talking to us, but, I, I think we're on, on kind of the path to, to fix it because I'm all about fixing things. It's very good. Thank you. Questions? All right, now it is your turn, your chance to give comments and feedback to the board. Again, please come forward to the mic so that everyone may hear you and first come first serve. Yeah. You know, I I'll start. You can hear me. Okay. I'm Mary Ellen Fitzgerald. A lot of you know me. Yeah. I, I have three points. One is like, you just mentioned it. We've hit the saturation point on this. I live on a working class neighborhood, not fancy golf course. I built my house for $100,000. Not fancy 20 houses on my street. Half of them are short term rentals. So my point is, for folks who, like me, was a working class, you know, maybe 50,000 a year, most of you know, are 60. How can they even start to look at buying a house here? And no one wants to rent because it's, you know,

long term and know so so my question to you guys is, are you willing to look at limits on the density of short term rentals, not taking into account government camp and owner occupied? I think those need to be handled differently. So that's question number one. And of that and you mentioned the the fee, it's being charged now, you know, basically $0.80 on $100. I wonder how much that's generated and how has it been used so far? Because from my observation, there's been no enforcement of this program. If there has, I can't see it. Looking at the ten, short term rentals on my street, none of them have the required phone number and permits out front. Overall, though, I haven't had an issue that the guests have been okay in my community or my street. And let me take one more question. Yeah. So my two questions. Are you willing to look at density into how much money has been developed generated and how has it been used? That's a sure. So, yes, I am, I am willing, I'll let Commissioner Helm speak as well. Obviously. Get her opinion. I think it's important. And we actually back in the years back, we actually discussed that, but we struggled for several years and we couldn't move the, the, this program forward. So we had to restart this later on with a different board. And fortunate we have again a pilot. So how much money did it generate? If I'm reading what's in front of me correctly, it looks like, over this period of time is generated, $287, $287,000. This is $287,000. Okay.

And expenditures for the, start up and the, operators that for the for the website and all that is the expenditure has been about 100 and 7060 9000. So, we had a rough start. That's another thing I'll just say right now, we had a rough start. The the people we, the the people we got contracts with, they don't really perform. I'm not happy with the performance of this program. To be put that perfectly upfront, but I still think there's a lot of life and opportunity to get this right. And I'm all for improving it. So we have and I the question that you asked that I don't know the answer to is I don't know. And you're not going to see it, and I'm probably not going to see it. What enforcement action via the affidavit. Did either our finance department or our legal counsel's office take as far as fulfilling or tracking some of these complaints? The complaints were lodged. I had a number here, and I'll look for it. Yeah. There's been 52 complaints verified. Short term rental complaints on this program are for operators. And, and essentially I don't know what actions were taken. I mean, I need a briefing on that. We all need a briefing, but I'll stop there if I get two questions. So yeah, absolutely. I think that density should be, managed now that the horse is out of the gate. How do you do that? And I think that you do that by if it changes hands, it goes back to not a short term rental. I think that's kind of the easiest way, to do it. Gerard is here. I know you probably have thoughts on that. I know you're a good partner to the people here at the mountain, but, I, I again, what it's doing is changing the fabric of your community, and I think that's your number one concern. And I feel that concern. I don't think there's been any teeth in the code enforcement part of it. And I think that that's a missed

mark for us and how we do that is talking to our code enforcement team and trying to figure out how to, get them on board and use some of this fund, these funds to, to get them up here when there's a problem going on. And then to the 52, I think they've gotten hundreds and hundreds of, it's not 52 verified complaints. I think there's been many, many complaints. Right. I'm seeing this in the audience. It's, it's it's, and one of the things that I know that we had trouble tracking was there's a lot of, and this is part of the the program that we use is that it doesn't give it says, like, a reason, but then it says other, like, I don't know, half or three quarters of what are the others, I mean, and so I, I don't want to discount those, but there's been a lot of complaints and, and I understand it. I, I'm dealing with an issue in a neighborhood in Damascus where there's somebody firing their gun all the time. And the sheriff said, well, we've only gotten five complaints, and the people have logged their phone calls and they said, no, we've done like 75. So I it's like, how how do we track that and make sure that we're hearing it a number one and and responding to it. So I that's these are some big issues that we're going to have to try to, to figure out. But I know that you guys are going to have ideas on how to do that too. So I'm looking to you for help. Yeah. One small on that 52 complaints. Those are the verified short term rental complaints. There were a lot more complaints, but according to this and this is I didn't craft this, but 52 of those were verified as STR properties. All right please. Thank you. Please come to the microphone for your next question or comment. Okay. Let me go and do this again. Okay. Patton Burger Welch's

I got deep into the data, into the numbers of things comparatively. There are approximately 3200 housing units in the Mount Hood corridor. This includes government Camp and 647 are registered short term rentals. And that's 20% of the housing stock, which is extraordinarily high for what some observers call a mountain gateway community for the place that's less expensive. Before you get to, Garvey, members of the community who've been focused on this issue for the past two years are quite sure they're more than 100 unregistered as your if that's true, the percentage would rise to about 24%. I was noodling around online and I found a study done last year at the University of Montana. It was carried out and focused on SDR, overwhelming the housing stock. In Montana, there are two. There's Yellowstone and another one, and communities like ours that are nearby were, they had they complained bitterly because it was so high and it was 5% of the housing stock. The authors concluded each community must take a data driven,

context specific approach that balances housing affordability with economic opportunity. The percentage of causing issues for each county were very low numbers compared to ours, and I put those those charts from that and cited that 51 of the registered stores are owned by people or companies outside of Oregon, 537 of owners or companies live outside of the corridor. Now, that tells me that we're not depriving people of renting a house, a room in their house. And I do feel if people are doing that, they deserve a break. They deserve some a different approach. Because they're much less likely to have issues. Program management for this program has been dismal, and it's pretty clear to us. You see, there has to be a couple of factors dedicated to this one enforcement and one administering and and transferring money and checking things. The to our knowledge, no one has ever come and checked on one of these. So program management is a big deal and enforcement to big deal. As you mentioned. So we need of

perhaps to raise the fee. If you raise the C, some people may find that they would rather sell the house or rent it to a family full time, and then we would have more children in our school, which would be very nice. Anyway, it is a lopsided housing issue, the sort of thing that sort of snuck up on people. And that's what the Montana study does. I don't have questions at the moment, but thank you for listening. Thank you for the information, Pat. Thank you. Well, my name is Marie Lauterbach. I actually live behind the koi and kitchen, so I'm not a Tim room person. I'll clean one str up in government camp and wow, talk about party house. I mean, liquor bottles broken windows, all kinds of stuff. And they didn't seem to care of the management whatsoever and it was probably $1 million home. Anyways, my question, my question is, and then my statement is my question is if you ended the program and told them, well, we're not going to do this up here anymore, or you limited it to so many a street, then you would kind of force these people into having to maybe sell their home. Now, I've lived up here since 2016, and we used to have a nice little thriving community. I always wanted to live up here. I moved from Oregon City and I thought that this is great and living in the mountains. Smokey bear, you know everything. And I thought, this is really cool, but it's been dying off, and especially since Covid, you know, people close down the restaurants and we used to have great places to have food. And there used to be families out eating food and eating breakfast and places opened and it was vibrant. And now, you know, you get the people coming to thrift Way going,

I need to get some more beer. And they're usually from the stars coming into the party now, I don't know if that would even be acceptable or even be a thought to sit there and say, well, you know, this is kind of expired and we're not going to allow you to do this anymore. And then you get to, you know, figure it out. I don't know, I don't know about that, but I've noticed that less children at the school, less community is less families. And when I first moved here in 2016, 17 and 18, it was teeming with people and everybody was really into the community. And you just don't see that anymore. And it's kind of a ghost town. So that's my thoughts on everything. And I wish these people good luck. And I feel very sorry for them because I've been in one of them and I went in and the second time I said, I'm not doing this anymore. So like, you need to bring your laundry soap and stuff. No, I don't, it's $1 million House is three stories. You got two kitchens in here and everything. Everything was just trashed. So yeah. And they didn't seem to care. But I think this community cares. Thank you very much. Thank you, thank you. That's. And Chair Roberts has arrived. Thank you. Chair, be here as we have a great long line of people here. So again thank you for being concise. Go ahead please. Sure. Thank you. My name is in. I'm a resident of Clackamas, near, Molalla. Good evening, commissioners. Thank you for your time. Speaking about an unintended gap in the current short, short term rental regulations, I want to start by saying I understand and support the intent behind the regulations, actually, especially addressing issues in areas like Mount Hood, where speculative short term rentals can impact housing availability and create problems with large gatherings. I grew up in Key West, but Airbnb is banned.

I think those are all valid concerns. But at some, at the same time, the current approach is having broader impacts across rural parts of the country, the county, including properties and exclusive farm use and timber zoning. And many of these areas. Short term rentals aren't competing with housing. They're often a small supplemental income source that helps families, sustain agricultural or rural land, in our case, our properties in a timber zone, but is also under a permanent conservation easement that I had put on the land. And that does not allow timber harvesting. So while it is zoned for timber, it cannot legally be used for that purpose. We are in a very rural setting. Our nearest neighbor is about a mile away, and this type of use is fundamentally different from what the regulations were designed to address here in Mount Hood. Before the current restrictions, short term rentals made up about 30 to 40% of our income and we removed those offerings at the end of 2024 to comply. The challenge is that there's currently no pathway, no conditional use permit, no exception process for properties like ours to even be considered. So the result is that land that cannot be used for zoned purpose is also prevented from being used in a low impact way that doesn't conflict with housing or neighborhood concerns. We would absolutely be willing to go through a permitting process if that were an option, but having no option at all creates an unintended situation where certain rural property owners are significantly limited in how their property can be used. Without a mechanism for individual consideration. I'm not asking for unrestricted short term rentals. I'm asking whether the county would consider a narrowly tailored pathway, such as conditional use or discretionary review, for rural properties, including those under

conservation easements or in very low density areas, and whether regulations could be better aligned geographically or contextually. So areas facing specific pressures like Mount Hood can be addressed without unintentionally affecting very different parts of a very large county. Thank you for your consideration. You. Thank you. So. You can go back now. I want. Hi, my name is Sarah Robertson. I live in Timberland room Division five. I'm also, on the board of the Timberland Rim HOA. I got involved with all of this discussion about ACR when it very first came up, and I have testified several times about this when it first came up. And then the decision was to wait two years and let's see what happens. I knew when I walked out of that office that we were going to have more stars in that next two years than we would be able to handle, and it's grown exponentially since then. My problem is, on a personal level, I don't feel safe anymore. I absolutely don't feel safe. My house sits on a road with no sidewalks, so people walk in the road next to your right, next to your property to go down to the river. We have that all summer long and we also have it in the winter, but it really booms in the summertime. So I'll have groups of 15 or more at a time of people that I have never seen before, going within 30ft of my house. This happens constantly. The stars are a source of, damage to our neighborhoods. They leave out their garbage cans because the person left on maybe, Thursday and that garbage is going to be picked up for Tuesday. So we deal with garbage all on the street.

It gives food for the bears and puts us all in danger. So we've had a lot of that kind of stuff going on. And it they also are a drain on our water system in Timberline Rim. We own our own water system. Those the amount that of 15 people showering that are staying in one house when you have so many it adds up and I guess in my little section of Timberline room where I live, we have about 60 homes, and there's about a third of them now that are eight stars. And what has happened? Everybody that buys one of these houses tells the they come to look at the house, make sure, you know, they might want to do this or that to it. And they tell the neighborhood, oh yeah, we're going to live here a month later. It's happens constantly. It's happened over the past few years. That's happened. Every single house is sold in my words. So we had a two year wait and see what happens. Things got worse. Then it was extended. Then it was extended. Saying enough is enough. We actually had enough testimony that first time around when they said two years, that decisions could have been made right then and now we've gone on and on and on and on. It's time to stop it. It's time to do something or maybe you need to be in another line of public service. If you can't do this honestly, I'm sorry I. Don't apologize. All input is welcome here. All right, come on. Forward, please. My name is Peter Himes. I'm, Welch's resident, and I'm a Hudson CPO board member. And I'm just going to focus on signage today. The county encourages owners, registrants, occupants, and affected residents and owners by nearby properties cooperate directly to resolve conflicts

arising from occupancy, parking noise, complaints of loud parties in the middle of the night. The only problem is if there's nobody to notify. How do you do that? Yeah, the signage is a very key issue. So I live in a little neighborhood called Twin Mary Lou, right down Welch's Road here. And here's some statistics that we actually got from an FOIA, from Clackamas County, given us who the registered stars are in the area. So we have 48 residences. 11 in my neighborhood are, stars, 23% of the neighborhood. So falls, along with Pat's numbers. Nine are registered, two are unregistered to have signs. Only one has a sign with contact information and star numbers on it. So out of 11 stars, only one is compliant. This is after two years of this program being in place. The County finance department. Then the online complaint form was used at least three times to report non-compliant properties on twin Berry Loop. So for the 52 is not correct at all. The 52 point. So proposed changes to the current, short term rental rate regulations for signs. First of all, you need to standardize sign. So pick a size that works is probably a political sign size you know that go in people's yards sign must remain up at all times. Current regulations says only when paying customers are there. It needs to be there all the time, so neighbors know where the stars are in the neighborhood, and the contact persons phone that it's listed must respond within two hours. And I think, Commissioner Sarvis, we worked on these regulations

way back when, and that was one of the things that got dropped out of there is the two hour response when you have people doing naked snow angels at 430 in the morning on Christmas Eve, and you have no color to call the Clackamas County sheriff isn't going to show up. Anything else that contact information is is vital for that to stop that activity. Contact signs are probably the most important part of the program other than the tax collection, right? Which it's probably what you guys think is the most important. And, there needs to be a way for residents to let authorities, property management companies, owners know about bad actors up here. The key to this public, the key this is a key to the public safety and livability in the Mount Hood community, enforcement of all short term regulations. This next priority for this program. Please fund some full time employees and code enforcement to make this happen. Thank you. Thank commissioners. Jared Lester Cascadia Getaways is my company. I'm a Full-Service Property manager focusing on short term rentals. Peter and I did not coordinate this, but I brought a little show and tell. This is two sided so everybody can see it. I find that one of the easiest things about our business, and it is a very challenging business. One of the easiest things has been to comply with the regulatory situation for the foresters. It is not challenging at all. And the community, the county has been very simple to work with. One of the most challenging things we do is to manage guest behavior. And that's something that we work very hard to do. I'm a lifelong. We're going in I'm in this business because I love hospitality for Oregon, and I love creating wonderful experiences for people. One of the things that I do want the commission to keep in mind

is that simply because a home is no longer a vacation rental, and it may be owned by somebody who doesn't live nearby, it doesn't mean it's going to be a long term rental or a something where the Or it's going to be for sale. There are many people who, on second homes are fortunate for them. I work for many of those people to take care of their homes and to drive revenue for those homes. You can extrapolate through the amount that has been collected through the SDR program, that there is quite a bit of revenue that has come through short term rentals. You can also extrapolate that there is a daily spend for each guest that visits here. So I think there's additional work to be done to see what the positive economic impact has been for short term rentals. And I want to conclude by saying that I've worked in many different areas of the state and of the country in this particular business. I've been in the industry for over ten years. My company operates only in Oregon. It's very important for us to work well with the communities where we operate. So I ask that the commission seeks property managers, in developing fair regulation, that going to serve us all. Thank you. Could you put your sign up so I can take a picture? Thank you. Absolutely. I'm sure. Thank you. Thank you. The only thing I love your sign. The only thing I would like to see is number of parking spaces. And that can be enforced as well. I've seen that on the only other, I'll introduce myself in a second. The only other, companies that are complying by providing their phone numbers and parking spaces are local rental companies. Not your Airbnb, not your vacancies. So I'd like to get rid of them entirely. So my name is Michelle. Thanks for coming, you guys. I'm a certified wildfire mitigation specialist, so I've been to a lot of these homes doing wildfire risk assessments. And that's why I know that not many are in compliance. I live in the Mountain Air neighborhood.

I live in a 1940s Steiner cabin. And I thought it was going to be my forever home. I don't want to live here anymore. You've heard about the garbage, the parking issues, the noise, the fires. When there are no. If their fire season is banned. And I do want to stand up for the bears a little bit. They get dispatch, they get punished, they get killed. Not the people who are leaving the trash out. So. So I'm not going to repeat all of those issues. I just want to share a couple of my personal experiences with Esther. I would like to propose no more new Esther's until there is compliance. A compliance officer, only. And as I mentioned, only the local company rental companies are the ones complying with phone numbers and parking spaces and that sort of thing. We don't have a housing shortage. We have an STR problem. We are saturated on the last, zoom meeting that you guys had, I heard, some of the short term rental people complaining that, they had low bookings because we're saturated. We have too many. It's okay. I would like some of the short term rentals, if they're having financial issues. Let's turn those into long term rentals. Let there be some incentive for that. So my experience, one evening, I'm sitting on my couch, my curtains are open, I'm watching TV. My car's parked in my driveway, and I didn't hear the car pull into my driveway because it was raining a little bit. I did hear the car door close, and so I waited for someone to knock on my door. I saw someone pass in front of my open curtains. They could easily see my TV was on. My car was in the driveway. This person turned my doorknob and went to walk into my house because he thought it was an STR.

So there's a couple issues there. People that are using this year are using Google, Google Maps. We don't have good internet service on a good day. So their Google Maps tells them that they've arrived at their destination when his destination was a block over. He's lucky he didn't get there sprayed, so I well, he met with one very unhappy homeowner. The this one is, very recent for me. And the county has allowed a new short term rental to be built ten feet from my fence. I have a lot of issues with that, because I can no longer see the sunset from my backyard. All I can see is the side of his house. That also creates density in the WUI, the wildland urban intermix. By doing that, he's greatly increase the chances of my cabin burning down in a wildfire. The NFPA National Fire Protection Association recommends 30ft between structures in the California fires, and I was shocked to hear that Clackamas County is not acknowledging these recommendations, which are done by extreme testing done by the NFPA. Clackamas County doesn't acknowledge that 30ft recommendation. In the California fires, they found that 60ft, the radiant heat from a house here could catch another house 60ft. That's why you see whole neighborhoods burned down. I don't appreciate the county allowing him to build his house ten feet from my fence. Thank you. I'm Doug Saldivar. I've lived in the area since 1991, and I've got a couple of comments and proposals about issues that have already been discussed by other people. First of all, the unregistered, stars, I think the best way for you to do that is to listen to the community get a place on your database

or somewhere, somewhere where people can report possible stars, and then you can investigate to see if they actually are the stars. Second is, the density control. I think that's a that's going to be a difficult one because of legal issues, I think. And so I think the best way to do that is just figure out what our recommended density is going to be in some neighborhoods and then not issue new permits and use attrition as a way to control that, to control the density. Let's see, second or third, I guess if you decide that you need an additional room tax or registration tax, I think the resort here and other commercial, vacation rental places need to be exempt from that. We're having some problems here with, revenue at the resort. And I think a lot of that has to do with competing against the residential area. Stars. That, you know, commercial areas is where these things are supposed to be, not in our residential areas. So don't penalize the commercial areas if you need a little extra money to do some of these things. And let's see here, communication and the lack of, verifiable complaints. One of the things that I've noticed about people I've talked to is that they don't really want to make complaints anymore, because there's no feedback. So I'd like to suggest that in the future, you, send the community CPO, perhaps, a report on,

complaints and action that you've taken. I think that would be a good way to get people interested in using your website. I think that's about all I have. Thank you. Hi. My name is Dylan Kenny. He they. I was born here on the mountain. I've lived my whole life here on the mountain. I'm now the rental coordinator for Mount Hood Kiwanis Camp, which is a nonprofit for adults with developmental disabilities on the mountain. So, to piggyback on Doug's point, we have seen, our business being impacted by the short term rentals, as when we don't run our summer camp, it's, rental property all season for skiers, churches, Boy Scout groups. Any things of the sorts? We are also located on road 39, which is a hot spot for spring camping. And we already struggle with getting enforcement out there to keep our streams and our roads clean, let alone these random type of maybe bad actors was a word that you used, but I maybe push back on that language that you're using, because it does seem to be a pretty common thing. And when you use terms like bad actor, I think it, invalidates and diminishes some of the feedback you're getting because those bad actors are actually shaping the community and the culture that we have to live in. And raise our kids in. So those bad actors aren't just there for a weekend, because in our eyes, those bad actors are the same bad actors that we see every other weekend. So I think that term, I think, maybe you could get some thought on, but I also just want to, give some insight and just remind us all that all the legal issues and there's a many hoops to jump through this Mount Hood corridor was founded by settlers and pioneers, on the basis of tourism. Whether it was grizzly bears in cages on the side of the roads

or huckleberry picking or skiing, or the construction of Timberline Lodge that was created by some of the highest tax rates on the wealthiest members of our country and community. So when you're talking about tax rates and short term rentals and the opportunities of income and revenue that it could supply for our local community, I guess I just ask what those taxes, whether it's the, percentage that goes towards running this program, what communities and what percentage of the profit is actually going back into those communities, and what type of culture it's creating, whether it's a safety or prosperity. I think because we are live in such a beautiful area, it was chosen to be developed into a recreational area. And I don't think that we should turn our back on the, economy that we have here. But I do realistically need to just validate everybody who has given comments here about not wanting to live in the community that they've spent their entire lives, and because it's no longer a community. So that's all I have to say. Hi there. Thanks for listening to me. My name is Mark Seaford. I've been on the mountain over 30 years. My son's a firefighter here. My granddaughter goes to the school here. My kids went to school here. I've also lived in Michigan for a little time after my husband, was had a traumatic brain injury in both places. I've had short term rentals, attached to my property. I was there, I was responsible. If there was a problem, I could take care of it. So I don't mean this to be like, I don't want this to stop anyone here who needs that extra income to pay their taxes or do whatever or, you know, get a vacation out of it. You know, I'm here because my community's gone.

All the people that I know have left, they've sold, they've moved away. They don't want to be here anymore. I want I came back here. I was when my husband was ill. We were in Michigan, and I had to come back because I loved the mountain. And all these people love the mountain. But we don't like living like this. On my street there are seven houses. It's a cul de sac. Three full time residents, three rentals, one part time. That is not okay. And you'd want to talk about traffic, you know, want to talk about traffic? There is a traffic issue. I live on a cul de sac. There shouldn't be anybody coming down my road unless they're lost. I've got people turning around in front of my house at 35 miles an hour. That's not okay. My granddaughter's five. They could run her over my dogs out. They could run her over. This is. This is a livability issue. It's not just an STR issue. This is our home. And that's something somebody said before about. That we need to compromise and find middle ground. No, this is our community and our our county and that we pay taxes to be for to live here. And we're not we're not getting what we need from our county. And I'm wondering if there's a conflict of interest because the stress generates so much money, not the $0.85 or whatever, but the tax money that normally would have been paid by the hotel if they had stayed here. So I think you guys have a lot of to do, and I've got a lot of ideas about solutions, and I'm sure

a lot of other people that have showed up today are starting to generate solutions in their minds. And we need to, get those to these people solutions that will help us get through this, because this is untenable. Thank you. Yes, Chris. So, I heard from a few people here. I want to just clarify, as I mentioned earlier, based on the information I was given, yesterday, that, the revenue generation over three years was $287,000, right? That money's not going anywhere. 169,000 of that was spent on this program. We did not do this. We deliberately did not do this to raise revenue for any purpose. This money is staying here for this program. We're not it's not going into it for any other purpose. So there's not a motive to raise revenue or taxes, for anything else. But this program, if we want enforcement, the previous board, could not get agreement to raise it high enough to provide, you, the enforcement you all wanted. I'll just tell you that back when the originally it was proposed to us 6 or 7 years ago, the recommendation was to have a $650 annual filing fee, in order to get the deal, in order to get the, enough revenue to provide some enhanced code enforcement, but that the board never got there. They never approved that. And so just want to just add that. All right. So I am going to start doing a time check. There's about 30 minutes left scheduled for this event. And there's 11 of you in line. So could you please be a little more concise. And you can always leave comments in writing, or we can talk to you after the meeting. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, commissioners. Thank you for continuing the short term rental pilot program and actively seeking our public input.

My name is Ian McCluskey and I live in Clackamas County. And in fact, I'm a seventh generation Oregonian, and my experience and relationship with this mountain has been life long. I'm here representing myself as a small, family scale, short term rental owner. We've been registered and we comply with all the rules and regulations, and we have first name relations with our neighbors. Our cabin isn't a large commercial operation, and in fact, it's a small, historic 1930s cabin that I restored with my own two hands, as well as local plumbers, electricians, the roofing company, and Mountain Hardware, which I joke, I think I've put all of their grandkids through college many times over because I'm there probably every other day. My son, who is two years old, likes to split wood and make fires is his favorite activity up here. Visiting our cabin, my great grandparents took my grandparents to mountain cabins here on Mount Hood. My grandparents took my parents to cabins here on Mount Hood. My parents took me and my sister here to cabins on Mount Hood. And now I'm taking my son and my family here to Mount Hood. And because we were a working class family, those generations, we, we had to rent. But for a week in the summer or a week in the winter when it snowed, we could have that. True Oregon mountain experience and stay in a historic cabin. And this is something and no offense to the big resorts or the big hotels, but it's something that can't be duplicated in a hotel or a ballroom like this or in the city. It's something that is unique to these vintage 1920s, 1930s historic cabins. They just they're authentic and they just can't be replicated. Being able to rent our family cabin as a short term rental

is something that we rely on to to cover the very, very real rising costs of ownership from property tax. But as you know, quadrupling of insurance recently, the utilities like PGE, and maintenance, it's just such, such costs and we operate basically at a break even point. And that and beyond being able to keep the cabin preserve it, it allows us to employ a small network of locals, including several cleaners, a local garbage provider, not bliss and others who depend on the income in this community. And these aren't just houses. These actually aren't removing stock from a livability. I wouldn't be able to rent them long term. I wouldn't even be able to live there full time with my family. These were built in the 30s as getaways, vacation homes. They're not well insulated. They're not well heated. They're great for a weekend. And that's about it. They're they're less than 800ft■. Imagine trying to live in a campsite. I'm sorry. All sorry. I'm gonna ask you to read, okay? Please. I understand there's concerns, and I've seen them firsthand. The partiers, the hood and haulers, the yeehaw girls. The big houses, the multimillion dollar houses with the big TVs and the lost tourists. So I, I understand that I support reasonable regulations that address noise pollution and all those common sense safety issues, but I, I plead and implore you to not take a one size fit all, not do sweeping measures that lump all of us together because there are us small family owners and operators who are barely breaking even raising cost or fees could take us out of the picture and allow only the private equities and the larger companies to come in. And it would also stop that experience for generations to come. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Pat banging.

I'm here to speak for the short term rental owners that are managing with respect to their neighbors. I've had mine for five years, and I'm here because half time. Because my family's here, my grandchildren are here. So I care about this community. I spend half my time here, in fact. So, I screen the people that come into my home because I it's family home and it attracts families really well. And, my neighbors have my phone number and they are known they know that they can call me any time of day. If they have, I don't care. They can call me midnight. I don't care if they have a problem. And I have a neighbor across the street, so they own their home so that he can. He's a doctor with, the National Guard, and he spends a week up here at this home every month. And his, family, his kids come and stay in it, and they do rent it out to I have two local gals that are mothers that I employ to take care of my property and, help out with the cleaning or, and management and, my concern has been this sign in the yard. To me, that's just an invitation to a thief. And my neighbors aren't going to know that that thief isn't supposed to be there, or someone that can come and just decide that he's going to live there for a while. And so I don't that sign doesn't help me out. It's going to make things worse. They know me. My neighbors know me. They can call me. Thank you. All right. My name is Dennis Tellico. I'm a Welches resident. I've lived in the same house about 55 years.

And what I see is the crux of the problem is the short term rental businesses are trying to stick to many people and too many cars in one house. And that's the major problem is when one car leaves, you see a caravan of cars, one right after another. So the major problem is you need to define a sleeping area or bedroom. A bunk bed and a closet hallway closet should not because there are a sleeping area and. You have to limit to two people for every bedroom, and there shouldn't be an exception because septic tanks are designed for two persons per bedroom. So the way the current regulations are, you allow two people per bedroom, but then you allow an extra four people. That's like adding an extra two bedrooms. You need to consult the sales department and see what they have to say about that is if you overload the septic tank system, we have domestic wells and we have wild and scenic rivers and wetlands up here that that water is going to go into. You also need to limit how many people can be on the site at one time. The way the current regulations are written, you allow only 15 people to spend a night, but you don't have a limit on how many people can be there. You have to limit events. No short term rentals should be used as it event. We're dealing with a house right now. It's a violation and a person built three houses and then you put up a wedding band. You send, we investigate and zero 826 requires the owner to actually live on site and be the permanent resident there in order to even try to get a live event.

And if you look at, rental places, I've seen places where they run up for any kind of event. There is up to 50 cars in a. So and that's been another thing too, is you need to limit how many cars and where they park. But I have no problem with one person who lives on the site renting a bedroom. As long as they're there, there's no like a home owner occupied business. Those aren't. The problem is to, like I said, these houses that are trying to put as many people in there. But thank you very much. If you got any questions. Good evening commissioners. Thank you. Thank you for coming to this corner of the of the county. And listening to us, I think there's been some really great anecdotal and qualitative data that's come out tonight. And I would urge you to look at the quantitative data as well. We've heard probably an equal amount from the audience here, as we've heard from you. And I appreciate, Commissioner Sarvis, you sharing what you have today, because that's more than what we've had, previously. And just with the decision decision, I would urge you to to look at that and consider that data, especially when it comes to the affordability of housing, you know, home prices everywhere are rising, but are we looking at STRs that are driving that, or is there anything else that's driving that? I think we really need to be considering that. And and we have a surplus of funds right now. We have certain, operators that are maybe not operating in the best manner. And so let's look at using some of those funds to try to find a balance in improving the community in the neighborhoods up here. So that's what I have. Thank you. Hi there. My name is Kate Willey. I've only been here about ten years. I live in Welches, just not far from here. I have some interesting perspective. I own a townhome on the golf course. It was a place I owned with my dad. I had to go through some transitional housing,

so I landed there for a couple of years, and just moved to my new spot. And decided a long term rent. It certainly could make more money with short term renting it. Being on the golf course, I think that kind of product really works well for, short term rental. Having the shared wall living there for two years, I definitely experienced all the short term renter guests next to me. So firsthand experience there. I also am a realtor, so I am one of the people that is helping a lot of locals buy and sell homes and also helping people buy their investment properties so you can boo if you want. But I, I'm really it's been fascinating to see and especially with home prices. And I don't know if you guys have done much on collecting where prices have come down on some of those short term rental homes that are turning over so quickly. So there are so many homes that sold 20, 20, 21, 22 that are selling for at or less than what they sold for back then. And, a lot of that product, when you think about the product, like the gentleman talking about his 1930s cabin, perfect short term rental, that's what people want. They want a cute, rustic cabin. What they don't want is their suburban home plopped on the mountain. That does not make a good short term rental that takes real family housing off the market. So, there's no way to regulate that. But I do think it's really interesting when I see what buyers want these days. They want the cute, quaint cabin, and they are no longer settling for the more traditional home. That, is what I think really impacted us as far as housing for our local residents. I have kids, there are actually 29 kids in kindergarten this year, so that is a lot of kids, I think, for, for this year. So kids are coming around. But, I, I don't know, I know there's no way to regulate that, but I would like that to be taken into consideration where there is a product out there that makes for a really great rental that is kind of needed for up here. But it's really hard to lose the product. That is much more serving for our families. The septic I talked about the septic that was on my list. I really deal with that with, reselling of homes.

And I see the skeptics. I've seen more people septic than you ever want to know. And, and I really have concerns about packing ten people into a house that has a two bedroom septic system. So something that I think needs to be part of the registration program. If you have a septic system, you need to have it pumped and inspected in order to get approved. That's my personal preference. My name is Mike Paxton, and this is probably going to be unsubtle. The the the principle of me being here today is to to support both the short term rental and the county, okay? Because right now the county is in a rock and a hard place where you don't have the funds to actually support. What Dennis over here just said that. Do you have like ten cars and and people going back and forth. All right. So regarding as of the fact as to what some of the other counties like Lincoln City has done, okay. We all nobody really likes a rental house, but right now is that the voice is not ours to actually, to, to to debate. It's up to you to make the actual the process, to make the funding, to put the ordinances in place, to actually make it happen, to actually have permits and have regulations regarding that are upheld and so be it. Okay. So regarding the fact if you're going to be a short term rental, you need to be held accountable for that. Right? There's no middle ground to that. But regarding the people that are actually renting the house, they also need to be held accountable for that too. What I'm trying to say is that there should be an ordinance written regarding in any county, across the entire state, that actually upholds the person that actually, literally does the disturbance of the piece that actually has ten more cars. The ordinance is actually have to be be written by you guys. The fines need to come from the police department. They need to have the jurisdiction to be able to give a citation. Right now they don't because they arrive on a property.

Or if they do or they don't appear, but like in Lincoln City, they don't have the ordinance, they don't have the ability to give a citation. So right now is that, no, I'm not the person that was doing naked. Let's make it snow angels earlier in the year. And right now I'm probably one cookie short because I haven't eaten dinner yet. But we now it's up to you guys to make the difference. To have the funding be available so these people can actually have a peace of mind and somebody is held accountable. The person that actually rents the house, the ordinance should be written, and I will help write the ordinance regarding the person that that actually rents the house, not the person who owns the house, the person that rents the house, that actually has a contract is held responsible for what they're doing. This is our town. And if it's Lincoln City, it's their town. It's wherever these people are not abiding by. Our rules need to be upheld. But right now, it's got to be through funding, through you guys, because you're understaffed. You're, you're underfunded. And right now is that. Yeah, there's going to be a fee for us. I am going to be a short term rental one day because I plan on being an island six months out of the year. But the point right now is that there has to be a funding to support this. So you guys are the people that can make this happen. And right now is that stop delaying it. We know where you're going already. We know where you're going to be. Get it going. The people like Dennis and the other people here need to be heard, but it needs to be enforced. That's it. Thank you. My name is Bob Phillips. I live on Marion. I have a cabin on Marion Street in Rhododendron. We've had it for 30 years. We are part time. I mean, part time owners of the house. We we don't live there. When we moved in, we had six full time residents on or 600ft portion of the street and one short term rental, and five of us were part timers.

We now have one full timer, six short term rentals, and five part timers. We have exceeded the carrying capacity of our neighborhood. There are times when I go up during peak season and I am totally outnumbered on the street. I am the only one there, and I had an instance in November when I had to call the police at two in the morning with 15 young men outside that were chasing the woman into the woods, and I felt vulnerable for the first time in my life. And I don't get upset. I was a middle school teacher. Nothing scares me. Okay. But, we have exceeded it. Our road is in difficult repair. We are on an unimproved right away. I go out and I try to do the best I can, taking care of it. But it's rutted. It's in bad shape. The garbage is left out. And the bears are coming in. And I just hope that you could do something. Looking at the saturation and anything you could do to encourage the homeowners to get bear proof cages to put their garbage in so that we don't have I. I'm worried about going outside to check the cart right now just because I might run into a bear. So if you could do something about any of those things, I would appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Richard Carlson, and, I live about two blocks from here. We bought originally, bought our home in 2006. Since then, we've moved to another place that's just a little closer to the resort.

But I'm also the chair of the rippling River Association. That's our HOA. In this area around the resort, we have 150 units. About 21 or 22 of those are stars, and some of them are just fine. Some of them have been problematic over the years. And these are all amongst residences. And some people have homes up here that are their second homes. They come up on weekends. The violations we've seen, we've seen all the all that you've heard about with the noise we've had the parties, we've had fires when they aren't supposed to be building fires. I would say that that rule that you have the ordinance, it says 15 people. That's a lot. The place that we lived at before, we had a place that they advertised for 15, you know. And how do you know how many is in there? I know there were more than 15 people in there. And when you consider 15, you need to consider the fact that now we have one person over here that finds himself. He's an older fella, you know, probably older than me, but but he finds himself in the middle of three stars here. So what happens? There is a bachelor party and one of the places. And then right next door, there's a bachelorette party. And so when you say 15, you've got to take into consideration an area like this where groups come up for weddings at the resort, golf tournaments, they're going to bring up a bunch of people. And that creates that creates the problems. You know, I guess I also want to say that as an HOA, you know, some people think oh HOA is can control what happens. And that's only to a certain extent because it depends upon your declaration or your master plan.

So for us here as a board, the most that we can do is fine. $500 per violation. That's it. Now you can imagine that some of these houses and I think you've heard this a lot of these of these, stars make a lot of money. The place across the street from us with the 15, I can tell you they make a bunch of money. In fact, 500 bucks is a drop in the ocean to them. You know, that's also come up in the context of your enforcement when you charge .008 5% on a $250 house, that gets you about $2.12. That's it. And so if funding enforcement is a problem, well, there's I think there's a pretty easy answer to that. And so the enforcement for us, that's a huge thing because our HOA can only enforce to a certain extent. And it's important. And I guess that would be my my main message to you is it's important that these rules remain in effect. It's important that people know that if they don't abide by the county ordinances, that they could lose the ability to rent their places. And I don't know what the enforcement has been. You know, I don't know what can you please wrap it up, please wrap up your comments. Okay. I don't know what the county's response has been to. Complaints from neighbors are. What if a property complaint, about a neighbor that's not registered? What do you do about it? How does the county respond to that? You know, the rumor mill. Please wrap up. I'm sorry. We have seven more people want to speak. Okay, well, that's my main. I guess that's my main pitch is that hopefully you'll continue these because we all need it up here. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Yes.

I'm Donna Rogers, and, thank you for being here and Craig for showing up and, so I want to thank everybody here for coming out. This was pretty emotional. And, many of these people haven't spoke before, and there was a lot of passion. What I didn't hear. And yes, we need to firm up these regulations and they cannot expire. Absolutely. This pilot project has to move forward to become real regulation. The second part of that is nobody talked about fire and emergency. And in the case that this wonderful person said she doesn't want to contact information, I hope Murph's behind me. But it what had happened on December 17th is a very good example about why contact information is so important and why many of those homes, were vacant and or, or had vacation rentals in them. I'm not going to spend any time on that because I want to talk about fire. And I think not one person, except for the kid that's cut in the wood, has spoke about fire. This is critical. Every vacation rental in my neighborhood has a fire pit. Almost everyone, and there is nothing out there that tells them there's a burnt do not burn sign. So I would implore you, have fire regulations in, that they have to have a fire extinguisher. They have to have a smoke detector. But there's not one word in the regulations about fire pits and the responsibility of that owner to make sure that we do not lose our homes in a fire. And I talked about that before. I will again, also, shooting and fireworks.

Now, I called the sheriff, and guess what he said to me on the shooting? Is anybody bleeding? And I'm serious. That was the conversation from the dispatcher. And what I said was maybe. So what my point is here is that discussion. The the homeowner says, yeah, it's in the book that she has for her renters. And I'm like, you're kidding me, right? That doesn't stop anybody. So I, I don't know where that fits in, but it absolutely we need to be we are in a fire community. And I am not the only one here that has seen a lot of the illegal fires. We need to have some kind of responsibility or some citizenship that allow us. I show up with a bucket, a shovel, and, the fire closure order. And so the responsibility of those homeowners to help us save our homes, the one man that did talk to is a 15 person vacation rental across the street. And he told me I have homeowner's insurance. Are you kidding me? So I want to give a plug to Cascadia because they are the only management company that I have dealt with that has handled the problem. They showed up, they had the fire put out. He even went so far as to buy a solo, fire pit to help my peace of mind and those I got it. I'm I'm wrap it up. So thank you. And this is a responsible owner. And thank you all for being here. Okay. Before you, before you. So we're at the formal end of the event, but the commissioners have agreed to stay until everyone has had a chance to speak. But now I'm going to start timing you. I have been timing you actually. Two minutes each. Please, just cut right to the point. I apologize, but we have to be up at 8:00,

and the commissioners want to make some comments. I want to go quickly here first. A couple comments. First of all, what everybody is saying here today, they've got valid points. We all need to address this. There's no question about that. I'm surrounded by short term rentals all around me, and I have successfully been able to work with the short term rental owners and ensuring that they're compliant and I'm compliant, that my lifestyle isn't changed. I just simply let them know I'm not dealing with your management company. I'm dealing with you. And if you want me to manage your short term rental, you're not going to get good reviews. So we have an agreement. I've taken it on myself. Secondly, I'm just going to go through because I only have two minutes here. Okay. First of all, that signage thing, I think it's absurd. It litters our mountain with more signage. I'd like to see when somebody comes up with a, a conditional use permit or an application for a conditional use permit. People are notified within the area if an application comes in for a short term rental, and the people around should be notified with the owner's name. 24 hour access, not necessarily a rental company. That way, there's no more signage in our beautiful community because all they're doing is advertising and we've got enough of that with the old Oregonian boxes that still remain, code enforcement. I think you need to revamp and code enforcement altogether. It needs to be for long term rental, short term rental, and homeowners. We're a mess up here. We've got we've got people living in front yards. We've got trash and full time rentals. We've got bears eating trash in homeowner, you know, properties. It's not just short term rentals. Property manager came up and said he'd like to have been part of some sort of communication to show their perspective. I tried that when this first started, the community, simply the those that were in charge of, the committee to to evaluate short term rentals and what our community, they wanted nothing to do with that input. It was strictly blinders on.

We don't want short term rentals. We need to get these people out of here. And there's been a lot of vigilantism that's gone on here. Thank you all so much. Thank you so much. The Covid surge, there's a natural recalibration going on. Things are changing. There's a lot we can do and we need to work as a community to get it done. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Okay. My name is Suzy. I'm glad to have the opportunity to talk. One of the things I wanted to mention is the marketing of the short term rentals. If you look at some of the, the advertisements and how the pictures are put and it's listed, the problem that I'm having with mine on the street is the guys will show up, the gals will show up, the people show up, and they don't know they're coming to a neighborhood. Because if you look at the listing, oh, it's so slick. You looks like you're out in the middle of nowhere and you could run naked. You never see a person. They get there and they're like, oh no. But then you go talk to them about their fire pits or them trying to, you know, whatever they're doing. I can hear every word they say from my porch. They don't know it because, yeah, there's some trees next to the street, but I literally hear every word they're saying, and they're in the hot tub talking about how they were banging this person and banging that person. I hear every word I have to go in my house not to hear. They're partying and they're talking, but they think they've they've rented some place out. So when I go talk to them, they're mad at whoever listed that short term rental. When I call the short term rental company, they have the attitude like, well, it's better to get for forgiveness than permission. So we'll just send somebody over there. They don't know. I can hear them too, because I'm on my porch and I hear them talking to the person who says, I'm so sorry. This woman calls all the time. She's oh, she's so much trouble. Oh, I'm sure you guys are fine. Oh, I don't see any fire here. I only see two people. There's like ten cars. I'm like, what? So they. They play the victim to the people who rented the house.

Who are playing the victim to me, that they thought they were out in the middle of nowhere. So there's got to be some sort of looking into how they're marketing these, these places. They're not honest because they're going to lose their revenue if there's some sort of marking over each one of the listings that says this is in a neighborhood, they've got to be, they've got to put a sign out front for all of us to have to see. There should be a sign on that listing that says, you're in the middle of a neighborhood. You should know before they get thank you. Thank you for your comments. Good evening, commissioners. Welcome to the hood. My hood for a change. My name is Gerald Murphy or Murphy. I, vice chair of the Clackamas County Planning Commission. I'm a community volunteer here in this neighborhood. I've been here for 52 years. Worked on this before with Commissioner Savas, as a planning commissioner eight years ago, we had a set of regulations, quite upset, as I remember something that I would like to see. And I brought it up with one of the, principal planners would be, require short term renters insurance. Clackamas County does not require short term renters insurance. In my neighborhood of Timberline Rim, we have 92 at least short term rentals. If a fire is started, they could burn down multiple homes. Million dollars isn't going to cover that. It's going to take more. It's going to take a commercial insurance to cover this. And I think perhaps we could get some help from insurance companies on inspections of these places. I think this would be pretty important. Another point would be in urban areas, which Clackamas County also has areas within the urban growth boundary. We have commercial corridors where we allow this type of activity.

We respect the residential neighborhoods. We need to start focusing. I think in that direction, and award people who have long term rentals for short term rentals. Commissioner helm mentioned. Once one sells, it cannot go to a short term rental. I think that's a plus. I think that's huge. I'll stop there. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Just a reminder there cards in the back. If you'd like to write down a question or comment, because we're almost about to wrap this event up, please, in the back cards, if you'd like to write your comment, go ahead please. My name is Dennis Kelsey, and I just want to be sure I'm not familiar how the payment for these permits or this regulation is, but it should be based on size of the unit in regards to us a sliding scale. And then that also should tier into the occupancy numbers. The parking numbers and all like that. Because like that, one fellow through the 800 square foot cabin versus the 40 200 square foot house, you know, there's how they're going to impact a neighborhood. Is a lot differently. So hopefully in any not call fees that are charge, it's based on the actual footprint of the facility. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. 30s well done. Thank you. Go ahead I'm going to go for a minute. Ron, tour about 20 years up here. Some suggestions maybe, what about a classification system for us, it seems like the people that actually live on the property and are there first hand to manage, are a different animal than people that have the property as an investment property. Yeah, yeah. Permit, time limit on how long you have the permit for the STR people again on that property. And that's part of their livelihood. Maybe they have it indefinitely. Somebody who buys property as a commercial investment, maybe it's a three year cycle. Then they have to relinquish the permit,

let somebody else that's waiting in line to get a permit to do that. Up here on the mountain, they can come in. There could be exceptions. You could get back on sooner. If there was nobody in line waiting to get a permit. Enforcement seems to be a key issue here. I come from a different land. Far away was part of law enforcement a solution there for the rural communities? They actually subsidized housing for law enforcement so they could live in that area and support that community with enforcement. And lastly, if it is an investment property, doesn't that make it commercial? And these are residential neighborhoods. Yeah, yeah. Hello, I'm Dan, I'm the lodging manager out there, Collins Lake Resort and Gabby. But I am also a resident over in the Tim Room neighborhood. So I see two perspectives. One where I am there every day managing guests. And please, I can use all the support that I can get. But I feel like I work very, very hard to ensure that the guests that are coming up to Collins Lake Resort are there to have a good time, but be respectful. But at the same time, we've got over 200 homeowners, in a resort facility who are paying HOA dues, as well as their, you know, general rental expenses, to provide the services of trash security, and etc. that the STR program is looking to cover. All a lot of the owners that I work with up on the mountain want to understand if this program moves forward, we feel like we do a very good job of ensuring trash is taken out in time, ensuring that basically all of these regulations that they see our programs trying to bring forward, we accomplish that very well.

So if this does move forward, I just really want to understand how the enforcement side will further benefit the Collins Lake Resort homeowners. Beyond all of the fees and such that they're already paying. So that's all. Thank you. Just a shout out real quick for Collins. Like it's a beautifully managed complex. My name is Marty Brown, and I live here in Welches. I am a member of the woodlands CPO board, and I'm also chair of the Land Use Committee. Just some bullet points from tonight. That's why I wanted to close, things that are really on people's minds tonight are enforcement of the short term rental code. Subparagraph point. Excuse me. Code 8.1 out. Sub paragraph 010, is to regulate short term rentals for public safety and livability and clarify the process and enforce the violations. So that's what the purpose statement says. And that's what we expect. We expect public safety, livability noise. That's a big issue up here. And then I'll refer you to County chapter 6.05 Noise Control. I believe that those should be posted in every short term rental, that quiet hours are between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.. Any visitors ignore the noise ordinance or did not know about the ordinance? I think that I think that more people would be quiet if the ordinance were posted. I really worry about outdoor wood burning, burning fire pits, and I'd like to see that change to being propane only, especially up here in our forest. Also, that safety issue that was talked about where you're supposed to confront the party that's causing the problem, not going to happen. It's that's going to lead to some, some disaster somewhere along the line,

one off street parking spot per sleeping area, as stated in code, is unrealistic and leads to overflow parking onto the streets, blocking emergency vehicles and residents. In my mind, a model could be just a total number of cars for cars, period, whether it's on street or off street. But oftentimes we see 1015 cars. Signage is important for me. I don't think it has to be anything, as glamorous. If you were ever go to Hawaii, they simply have a small sign with the, with a, with a code number on it that regularly that says what that house is. Then you can go online or something and find out the rest. Dennis brought up the fact about sewers. I'm also I'm a retired realtor, and I see that up here all the time. Our sewer systems fail, and, usually it's because there's the wrong things to put down the toilet. And, when you have people up here that aren't familiar with subjects, it's leading to a problem. Evacuation routes should be posted, and it just. Tears are down at the coast for tsunamis. Realize that's a difficult choice here. It's basically just an arrow to highway 26. But still, that should be posted because people, you know, when they follow roads and, and follow Google Maps or whatever to get somewhere and they're in the middle of an emergency and the cell phones don't work and they don't realize how to get out. And then, of course, the return of SDR collected funds to the woodland corridor. We'd like to see that to promote compliance, with dedicated county FTE, we want to make sure that headland remains a vibrant, well maintained, quiet and safe natural haven for those visiting our beautiful Mount Hood for generations to come. Thank you Marty. You're welcome. Thank you. And I one last time. The land CPO is willing to collaborate with you at any time for best solutions to these issues.

Let us know and thank you very much for coming. Well, just. Thank you so much for your feedback. Now, commissioners, are there any comments or insights you'd like to share based on what you've heard or something? Oh, I haven't taken a lot of notes. Wow. Okay, I'm just gonna throw this out there just because this is like, my mind is just going and I'm a processor. I'll go home and I'll be up like a 2 a.m. going, oh, I should have said this. I should have asked this. But. So how do you feel? Just show of hands. How do you feel about homeowner only stairs up here? Yeah. I'm sorry I was out there. All right. Okay. I wonder owner occupied homeowner, local residents who own them, who rent them, who are here to manage them. Right. Okay. And then for, and then I guess three strikes in year out kind of thing for people who are not following the rules. I mean, doesn't that kind of make sense? Right. These are just things like, well, and then, Jerrod, I'm going to put you on the spot really fast here. If you run over to the mic really fast. I want to ask you a quick question. So what do you. Rick? I've. I've been to a lot of Airbnbs. I've been to a lot of vacation rentals. Yes. Okay. All of those. Right. I follow the rules. So I leave the house in better condition than I arrive, right? Sometimes I fix things just because I'm bored. Thank you. But what do you require from your renters, and what accountability do you make them have? Like, I've seen things like, if you break this rule, you're you owe us $1,000 or something, right? So it's, you know, it's a complex situation because some of those renters come in through Airbnb. They're not direct. Yeah. So they have to have the the backing of a channel, a marketing channel like Airbnb, Airbnb says do not confront them directly in person, etc.. So there's a lot of

barriers, in this and so it's a very complex issue from my perspective. Guest management starts well before somebody checks it. Exactly. And there are several phone calls, communications letting them know exactly what behavior is expected of them. If this behavior is not, as expected and conducted, then we do reach out and conduct and contact guests directly. That does need to be reinforced. People get vacation brain, that is for sure. And so those things do need to be reinforced quite often with people. Okay. Does that does they set up for question from a short term rental on on the mountain that acquaintance camp we make all of our guests for short term rentals have an event insurance policy, regardless if it's a wedding or just if it's a Boy Scout camp. And that's $1 million policy that they have to pay for if anything were to happen. So you can get a policy for an event insurance policy from anywhere from 10 to 15. It's cheap. Yeah. Yeah, I've been there, done that. Okay. Cool. Okay. So that's your question. And it does. It does because I know that I have had to sign my life away before I go to a short term rental. And it sounds like there's so much unregulated stuff going on that there aren't the rules in place that hold the people accountable who are doing the renting. So and it is different with everyone that does that. I think friction is what vacation rental managers are trying to avoid. I want to make it as easy as possible for people to book, because otherwise they'll go to a different, environment. So I think that goes hand in hand with guest management, which is a very big challenge in this industry. Guest management. Thank you, thank you. We also have a great deal, a great number of SDR that are owned by corporations. Yes. Right. Okay. The property that the coffee. Yeah. Good property managers. Right? Yes. Right. Right, right. Okay. Okay. Go ahead. That's that's good. Thank you all for contributing tonight. Thank you. A lot of good input. And, I know it's a few new ideas I hadn't heard over these years.

The ideas that, we've been kind of chatting about, I think Commissioner Howe mentioned one of them was three strikes. You're out. One of them was a cap. I'll just use the word cap, you know, and we talked about that years ago, but we didn't have the votes to get the cap. Two of us on the commission talked about it. I thought it was a good idea. The idea of that, if you're also three strikes, you're out. And, you know, maybe we can bring the cap down or adjust the cap, of how many short term rentals are are, and, what was there was another like there's another idea as well. But as I mentioned earlier, we're open to input. We're open to how we shape this or not. And the code enforcement is probably the most expensive challenging. All right. Because as I mentioned, the code enforcement that we have at the county, regardless where you are, regardless of a short term rental, is the same today as it was before we did the short term work or this pilot program. So I would, you know, we hear all around, we're not let's say we're not even talking about short term rentals. We're somewhere in a CPO somewhere that's have an issue. People are complaining about something and it's a code enforcement issue. Right. I've heard this for the entire 16 years I've been a commissioner, and I've been in public service, where as a CPO member myself since 1997. So I, too, as a CPO member, was trying to get code enforcement out of the county. So it's never been robust. It needs more funding, significant funding to make it happen. And our code enforcement staff are pretty loaded. Gary knows this. But if we want more code enforcement, I think that's a topic that it can't be just limited to STR as a lesser as a separate funding stream that STRs pay for, right. That make it a little bit for that. So we'll explore that again. I know we'll have more conversations with you all and I look forward to continuing the conversation. Yeah. All right. Just one question. Also.

So sir could you go to the microphone please. Oh yeah. Right. So when we were visiting this in 2023, we had a model to Tillamook. And right now we have no way to see who that owner is. Tillamook. If I want to look up an owner in Tillamook, it is a public document that we can go in and say this address. Who's the owner? Can we have something like that? And I know we have gotten a public request, and we have this list, and I can tell you right now that there are at least a dozen that I can see that are not registered. But the only way for me to do that is go to call the county, see who the owner is. And if we know that that's a vacation rental, can't we come to you? Can't we come to enforcement and ask for that? And would that be something that we could have in the future? Well, looking at that, I know we we all look at it. And that actually holds the people that are not actually biting by the rules that are reaching out and hold them accountable to a, a fine if they're caught renting out without legitimate procedures that the county required. And, sir, those are some of the problem homes. Absolutely. So I'm going to the ones that are not trying to fly, you know, somebody that's got to start this. It's got to be easy. Yeah. So, I think kind of to wrap it up. Yeah. First and foremost, I just wanted to say, a huge thank you to everybody. This is just an amazing turnout. And one of the big things I, I really see here is really a lot of heart, a lot of passion. And, and really, this is about livability and this as you know, as former sheriff, I used to be a deputy work in this area. I love this area. And when I hear people, you know, wanting to move and talking about how disappointing it is is,

the only thing I can tell you is I want to give you hope. Right? And I feel like our job is to be good listeners, and also to act with some urgency. And that's what I feel like this situation needs, is really, making sure we're getting all the input and make sure we do this right. I want you to know we have a lot of staff here taking notes. We have county council here who's really in charge of a lot of this, listening to your input and really kind of steps forward. I can tell you personally that I've spent a ton of time trying to get up to speed on this issue myself, because I know how important it is. This community. I've looked at programs in Arizona, Lincoln City, Boise, Idaho, McCall, Long Beach, Washington. And the one thing I can tell you in talking to a lot of these different entities, they've had a lot of problems to write. And so we want to get this right. And, yeah. And I think, I think my colleagues here, we see one of the big issues is number one is really this code enforcement and some accountability. And and you also heard, you know, and when I talked to some of these other, agencies that, have short term rentals and different counties, they do have kind of a three strikes year out kind of one program. They also, limit based on bedrooms and space. And a lot of those things really are taken into account. And the very last thing I kind of want to say is, I know many of you lived through that 20, 20 fire and, you know, I was right in the middle of that, and I it kind of sticks with you forever. Yeah. And we're back in DC just seeing a debrief on the Palisades Fire. And one of the big issues is really is we have to be on top of this fire issue. It will spread so fast, and it will not only be lives, but, it will be disastrous. And so to me, that's one of the big priorities of how we regulate and make sure that that's done. I don't care if you have to put a padlock

on that fire pit or whatever, but this is not the place to be having fires. So this you would remove the fire, right? Right. Yeah. So whatever. I mean and that's what my, my point is, is we just have to take that seriously and making sure that we're looking at all those things. So I just I want to just reassure you that that, our boards, working together. Well, our commitments to really take what you said and really take it back to the office and and really start working on making some things happen. And, and with that, sense of urgency. Yeah, I just that's what I wanted to ask you about. Are you on any type of time schedule to consider this? So I can just say personally, I mean, when it got extended, I was I was frustrated, to say the least. Right? And part of the issue was when we had discussions about coming up here in the winter when there's a ton of snow. And I was saying, I don't I'll come up. But we wanted to make sure we had, everybody here that could give us the input and that. And that was one reason why it was put off. Right. So, we are committed to moving with this. I also think what would help all of us to is is really looking at, really I kind of heard this as almost a fact sheet of the number of complaints, you know, how many have been addressed and really taken a hard look at some of those numbers. I mean, we have some of it, but I think some of that is also important. And and I guess lastly, closing that is, I don't want this to be the last time that we're here. I want us to really come back here again. We want to continue to hear how it's going. We want to hear what you think of the improvements or, they work in or not. So we will be back up here to be listening. So we've had enough discussions and hopefully my actions and discussion. You want action I want action right okay I'm going to wrap that. Thank you Commissioner for your comments. We will be will wait wait wait.

So the board is discussing this for a decision point on April 21st, 20 days from now. Tuesday, April 21st is the policy session where the board will compile all of this feedback and I hope give direction to staff because this current program ends on June 30th or they will extend the program. We'll see. So April 21st again, if you have feedback, you can still provide that with a card in the back of the room. Or email the board at bcc@clackamas.us, bcc@clackamas.us, or attend any of the board's business meetings coming up in the next few weeks. An Oregon City Oregon city is a long drive. Yes, it is an open. It's open. All the meetings are open. The business meetings. You can testify on Thursdays, the Tuesday, April 21st. You may attend, but there's no public comment on that date. So that is our event today. Thank you so much. Thank you to Pat and the woodland CPO members for all your help. Appreciate you. Thank you all very much.