Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Thank you.

Welcome to the March 5th, 2026 Planning Commission hearing. I'll call the meeting to order at 1.03 p.m. Ms. Carmen, can we please have roll call?

Thank you, Chair Boss. I will begin with Chair Boss.

Present.

Vice Chair DeLuccio.

Present.

Commissioner Bauke.

Here.

Commissioner Peterson.

Here.

Commissioner Wardlow.

Here.

And Commissioner Wiscombe. Here. We have quorum. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. We'll move on to the next item, preliminary matters. The first topic on our agenda today is requests for continuances, withdrawals, postponements, or ex-agenda items. Ms. Arseniega, do we have any?

Thank you, Chair Boss. We do not.

Okay. Thank you. And do we have any announcements or appeals?

No, Chair Boss. We don't.

Okay. We're now on to Item C, Review, Consideration, and Action on the Draft Planning Commission Minutes. From one hearing and the corresponding resolutions, the February 5th minutes, Planning Commission Resolution 1-26 for 101 North Milpus and Planning Commission Resolution No. 226 for 419 West Pueblo. First, are there any Planning Commissioner comments on the February 5th minutes or resolutions?

No comments. I have a real knitter, I guess, and I can't find my resolution. But in the resolution, in the site secret number, it's transposed. The number was transposed. If you could maybe just correct that. Otherwise, I'm good.

Thank you. Any other commissioner comments on the February 5th minutes? Okay. Are there any public speaker comments for the minutes or resolutions?

Thank you, Chair Boss. At this time, I don't have any speaker slips to comment on the minutes or resolutions.

Great. Then can I get a motion to approve the February 5th Planning Commission minutes and resolutions? Vice Chair DiLuccio?

I'll move the resolution and the minutes with that one small correction. Second.

Great. Thank you. Ms. Carman, can we please have a roll call vote?

Thank you, Chair Boss. I'll begin with Commissioner Bauke. Yes. Commissioner Wardlow.

Yes.

Commissioner Peterson.

Yes.

Commissioner Wiscombe.

Yes.

Vice Chair DiLegio? Yes. And Chair Boss? Yes. Motion passes. Thank you.

Thank you. That takes us to item D, comments from members of the public pertaining to items that are not on today's agenda. Due to time constraints, each person is limited to two minutes. Ms. Carman, do we have anyone in person or remote who would like to give public comment on items not on today's agenda?

Thank you, Chair Boss. At this time I don't have any speaker slips for general public comment, though if anyone in the room would like to speak under general you can approach the podium at this time. But I'm not seeing any movement towards the podium and I would just like to remind the audience that if you would like to speak under a specific item on the agenda that you can fill out a speaker slip at the back of the room and bring it up to me and I will call your name under that item. If you are looking to donate time to someone else, We can only pull up to five minutes. And you would need to write on your speaker slip that you would like to donate to that person. And you will need to be present when they are speaking in order for the donation to count. But with that, I'll move to virtual participation. If anyone online would like to speak under general, you can raise your hand at this time. But I'm not seeing any raised hands. And I will acknowledge that we received written correspondence from Onalisa Hoods and give it back to you.

Great. Thank you. That takes us to item D, or I'm sorry, we'll move on to item 3A, 1422 San Andreas Street. The proposed project involves transfer of an ABC license type 21, which allows the business to sell alcohol for off-site consumption under the Alcohol Beverage Control Act from raised liquor to the new market, and no exterior changes are proposed. We have staff here to provide a presentation. They'll introduce themselves during the presentation. Ms. Plummer, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Chair Voss. Pilar Plummer, Associate Planner with the City of Santa Barbara Planning and Zoning Division. The application that is in front of the Planning Commission this afternoon is for 1422 San Andreas Street. Um, as was noted for the project description and the staff report, um, this project involves transfer of an existing ABC license type 21, which allows for the offsite sale of alcohol for offsite consumption. Um, the existing business has been occupied by raised liquor. Uh, there's no physical changes that are proposed to the building or site with this specific application. All site improvements were previously addressed in another separate planning application. And to the right is just a view of the existing building. The required applications in front of the Planning Commission is a conditional use permit, which allows for the off-site sale of alcohol beverages with a Type 21 license. And then also for the Planning Commission to affirm the CEQA determination that was not in the staff report. Just as some background, the California Department of Alcohol Beverage Control, ABC, is responsible for regulating all retail alcohol sales within the state of California. In this particular case, we do require licenses that are type 20 or type 21, which is off-sale consumption licenses, to receive a conditional use permit. So those are issued for businesses that sell alcohol, such as liquor stores, grocery stores, markets, things like that. It does not apply to bars or restaurants. And then as far as the city's purview, we regulate secondary aspects of alcohol beverage sales through a conditional use permit, which is, again, the land use decision that's in front of the Planning Commission today. And the purpose of doing this is to address related nuisance or potential nuisance impacts associated with the sale and consumption of alcohol. This particular project triggered a conditional use permit because they triggered a substantial modification which is a motor character of operation, specifically in this case it is this, change in ownership or transfer of an ABC license including new owners or licensees. THE PROPERTY OWNER, AS WAS NOTED IN THE APPLICANT LETTER, TOOK POSSESSION OF THIS SPECIFIC PROPERTY IN 2022, AND THEY'VE GONE THROUGH THE PROCESS WITH THE CITY TO DO SEVERAL PERMITS TO CHANGE RAISE LIQUOR STORE TO A MARKET USE. THEY ALSO RECEIVED ARCHITECTURAL BOARD OF REVIEW APPROVAL IN 2023 FOR EXTERIOR CHANGES TO THE SITE AND BUILDING. So just for context of the location, this is the west side neighborhood in the general plan. This is West Mitchell-Torino Street, San Andreas Street, San Pasqual Street, and this is Almond Avenue here. So this is the existing building. This is part of the commercial corridor on San Andreas Street. And this just shows you the approved site plan that the Architectural Board of Review did. So they did actually quite a few improvements to the site to really bring it up to Mornibird compatibility. This included some minor modifications to the parking lot to install an ADA space. They've also incorporated landscaping around the perimeter, addressed in as-built addition at the rear of the building. And you'll see in some photos, but they've also removed a payphone, an ice machine, and other elements that weren't permitted, and some bollards that were along the side of the building here. These photos represent what is directly adjacent. So this is to the left of the project site. 428 San Andreas Street and this is to the right of the project site and then across the street are two commercial operations 1417 San Andreas and 1427. So the purpose of the conditional use permit is to consider the desirability of the particular use to the public's general welfare and compatibility with the general plan also for ABC, alcoholic beverage establishments in the city, the CUP may only be granted if they're consistent with the standards in the ordinance or if the Planning Commission approves a variation to those standards. I do want to point out in the staff report the applicant is opting to comply with all standards, and I'll go over that in more detail in a few minutes. Also, the establishment shall not have a significant adverse effect on the crime rate or nuisance activities. THERE'S SPECIFIC STANDARDS OUTLINED IN THE ORDINANCE. ONE INCLUDES LOCATION AND DISTANCE. THAT APPLIES TO NON-TRANSFERRED LICENSES. AGAIN, THIS IS A TRANSFERRED LICENSE. AND THEN THERE'S ALSO CRITERIA THAT PERTAINS TO LIGHTING, NOISE, AND OTHER OPERATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS. REALLY, AGAIN, THIS GETS AT TO POTENTIAL NUISANCES THAT YOU COULD HAVE ASSOCIATED WITH AN ALCOHOL ESTABLISHMENT. SO LIGHTING NEEDS TO COMPLY WITH THE CITY'S ORDINANCE. AS WELL AS THE NOISE CHAPTER IN THE ORDINANCE. THERE NEEDS TO BE ADEQUATE WASTE AND RECYCLING RECEPTICALS FOR CUSTOMER USE. NO PAY PHONES. AS I ALREADY MENTIONED, IN THEIR LAST PERMIT, THEY OPTED TO REMOVE THEIR PAY PHONE. SO THAT'S DONE. NO WINDOW OBSTRUCTIONS AND NO There's also limitations on the container and product display. So there is no allowance for airline bottles. Wine is limited to certain sizing, beer and display, particularly not within five feet of any entrance or exit. So just to point out the floor plan that was approved for the market, you can see the point of entrance here. There is a kitchen area here. This is a checkout counter. And then the only area that's going to be dedicated to alcohol display and sales is a 30-square-foot floor area here. This is a display shelf. And the rest of the market is going to be used for dry goods. There's also, if you read the staff report, it includes Mexican cuisine that's going to be prepared on site, and that's going to be available to Westside residents. In terms of the other findings that are applicable to this type of application, we do look at, again, nuisance, potential crime rate issues in the area. The police department did prepare a call for service list for the area that reviewed several years. At the block in general not just the specific location and just to say for this specific location There were no calls related to alcohol in the last few years and then there was also a local letter of public convenience was essentially just states that the establishment won't have or is beneficial to the area in terms of upkeep and operating characteristics STAFF EVALUATED THE MARKET USE AND FOUND THAT IT WOULD BE CONSISTENT WITH THE OVERALL CHARACTER OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD, WHICH IS COMMERCIAL RESTRICTED. SO I'LL SHOW THAT IN THE NEXT SLIDE. BUT THIS IS A COMMERCIAL CORRIDOR. THERE'S A MIX OF COMMERCIAL USES, WHICH YOU WOULD HAVE SEEN IN THE PHOTOS THAT I ALREADY SHOWED. AND THEN THERE'S ALSO SOME RESIDENTIAL USES, MOSTLY MULTIFAMILY IN THE GENERAL AREA. AND THEN THE BUSINESS OPERATION IS COMPATIBLE AGAIN WITH THOSE USES. So this just shows the general plan neighborhoods. So we're right in here on San Andres Street. This is Mitchell-Torino Street here. So you can see that's the commercial area. The general plan has policies which encourage a mix of land use. So again, the project would be consistent in that because it provides a market for the benefit of residents in the area as well as surrounding areas in the community. And then LG-15 is another policy. for sustainable neighborhood planning, which encourages providing opportunities for healthy living, so walkable areas as well as neighborhoods serving commercial uses, which a market would do so. In terms of consistency with the economy and fiscal element, this project does manage commercial growth by using a existing commercial building in the city and then local needs by encouraging enterprises that serve the local residents, which a market would do. In terms of the environmental review for this project, staff found it was consistent with the categorical exemption 15301, existing facilities, which allows licensing or minor alterations to private structures with negligible and no expansion of former use. And staff is recommending that the Planning Commission approve the Conditional Use Permit and affirm this equal determination. And that concludes my presentation. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Plummer. Before we go to the applicant presentation, did we have comments from ABR or PD? No? Okay. All right. Do we have staff here representing the applicant? Oh, yes. Please introduce yourself during the presentation, but the floor is yours.

Madam Chair, Commissioners, my name is Keith Nolan. I'm a representative of the project today. I would have to say, I mean, given what we're asking for right here, I think the staff did an excellent job presenting everything. I'm really here to more answer questions. So, and I don't really have a prepared presentation beyond that.

Okay. Thank you for making yourself available. That takes us to comments from members of the public pertaining to this specific item miss Carmen Do we have anyone in person or remote who would like to give a public comment on this item?

Thank You chair boss at this time I don't have any speaker slips for in-person public comment for this item though If anyone in the room would like to speak you can approach the podium at this time But I'm not seeing any movement towards the podium So I'll move to virtual participation if anyone online would like to speak under this item You can raise your hand at this time but I'm not seeing any raised hands, and we did not receive any written correspondence for this item, so I'll give it back to you.

Thank you. I'll open up to my fellow commissioners for questions, and I see Vice Chair DiLuccio.

Yeah, I have a basic question. So this is type 21, which is beer, wine, and it can be hot liquor too, right? Correct? Spirits?

Through the Chair, Commissioner DiLuccio, yes, that's correct, but I would point out that the applicant is voluntarily opting with this particular project to only sell wine and beer. Okay, so that is documented in our... That's documented in the applicant letter, and yes, so in the conditions of approval, it says what's on the plans and within the applicant letter, so they're restricted that way.

So if they wanted to sell our hard liquor in the future, they would have to go through a different review process?

We would send it back to the Planning Commission for consideration.

Okay, thank you.

All right, do we have any other questions from commissioners?

Commissioner Wiscombe. Did you say it's in the conditions of approval that this is only approval for beer and wine? Does it actually say that? Because if they go to spirits, there's restrictions on the bottle size of spirits, like no airline bottles and things like that. So I just think we should make sure that it's in the conditions of approval if this is what we're approving.

Correct. So let's see here.

I didn't see it because I had the same question. Why are we not restricting the spirit size containers too? So I didn't know that we were only

approving beer and wine so through the chair commissioner wiscum the applicant given that they have a type 21 they want to remain with a type 21 license which does technically allow for the cell of liquor but in their particular case they're only wanting to sell wine and beer with that so that's what staff evaluated for this particular project if they did want to sell liquor in the future that would be a change And again, that would be a different type of alcohol. So we would need to bring that back to the commission.

Okay. Well, I think that should be clear in the conditions of approval. Could we add that somewhere that I would fall under five C5?

So through the chair, um, Commissioner Wiscombe, we could include just the standards for liquor under, yes, C5. And then I would also say under B1, just to say that the approved development to allow with a type 21 license located at the address. And in addition to shown on the plans, as noted in the applicant letter, because in the applicant letter, they specifically define what they're proposing to sell.

Well, I didn't see it in the applicant letter either, but I think under B1, approved development, it should be clear that what the Planning Commission is approving is basically a Type 21 license, but without the sale of spirits. Correct. At this time, and if the sale of spirits is going to be considered in the future, that it must come back to the Planning Commission. So if you could just add that under approved development, I think that would be...

And to Madam Chair, we could also, this is just for the Planning Commission to consider, we can either say it can return to the Planning Commission or staff can evaluate a substantial conformance determination. That's up to the Commission.

Yeah. That's... I think, I mean, I know they usually come to us, but I think if we can eliminate a public meeting, that would be fine, yeah.

Through the chair, Commissioner Wiscombe, with that intention, then I think it's best to just have the conditions of approval reflect any restrictions for beer or alcohol. and we can clarify that their request is now for that, for just the beer and wine, but then if they were to return and within their right want to sell alcohol to, we could do a staff level review if it's included already in the conditions.

I think that's great, because we are doing a type 21. Correct, yes. And no one that I know is going to go back to the applicant letter to look and see. I didn't even see it in the applicant letter. So I was confused why we didn't have a bottle restriction on spirits. But OK. I think that that suffices. Thank you.

We'll make sure to make the conditions match those that have any inclusion of the liquor as well.

Great.

Thank you so much.

Any other questions from commissioners? OK. Then I'll stop to project the proposed actions. I think it was slide 18. Great. So I will open up the floor for a motion. I have Commissioner DiLuccio.

Yeah, I'll make a motion.

I also did notice, though, in one condition, if I can just interject, on page 11, under the litter, it says litter, you know, the business owner shall be responsible for keeping their premises clean of any litter or debris and shall provide adequate trash. Last time we had locked, we wanted to see that there were locked trash. It was an adequate locked trash in recycling area. if we can add the word locked in there, so it's not just exposed.

So the motion is to approve staff's recommendations with the change to B1 regarding spirits.

Yes, and number seven, I'd like to add the word unlocked trash and recycling receptacles.

So that is your motion?

That's my motion, and it's with these to approve the condition to permit with those revisions and also confirm that it is exempt from CEQA.

I'll second the motion.

Okay. Do we have any further discussion on the motion? Okay. Ms. Carbin, can we please have a roll call vote?

Thank you, Chair Baas. I'll begin with Commissioner Wiscom. Yes. Commissioner Peterson.

Yes.

Commissioner Bauke. Yes. Commissioner Wardlow. Yes. Vice Chair DeLuccio.

Yes.

And Chair Baas. Yes. Motion passes. Thank you.

Thank you. Before we move to item 3B, I believe we're going to take a brief recess. So we will return at 1.30. Thank you.

So, Thank you.

are going to reconvene and move on to item 3b municipal code and local coastal program amendments for short-term rental ordinances first a few announcements when we get to public comment on this item public comment can remain at the two minute time per person but we're asking that all speaker slips are submitted by 1 45 so about 12 minutes and if you are participating virtually please make sure that you have your hand raised for public comment also by 1.45. If you are a public commenter here and you intend to pool time with other public commenters, the total time can be no more than five minutes. Please avoid disruption such as cheering or booing. And if you have a sign, please make sure that you are not blocking anyone else's view. So moving on again on to item 3B, the proposed amendments to Title 30 and Title 28 intend to protect long-term housing by limiting the conversion of homes to visitor-serving uses and residential zones. A key goal of the ordinances is to create a reliable permit path for short-term rentals and home shares so that property owners, residents, and visitors know where short-term rentals and home shares are allowed and how they can be licensed and operated. We have a number of staff here to provide a presentation who will introduce themselves during the presentation. The floor is yours.

There we go. Good afternoon. My name is Laura Bradley. I'm a project planner assigned to this. It's definitely a team effort. And I want to thank to my right, Rosie Dysta, the principal planner for long range planning, as well as behind me, Brenda belts and Ellen Coquinda and our director, Alison to busk. It's definitely a team effort. The purpose of today's hearing is to just explain this short term rental ordinance and give you a little background. cover the ordinance overview and also respond to planning commission comments as to how we revise the ordinance based on that and then cover for next steps. First of all, why are we doing the ordinance? Well, clearly it's an element in the housing ordinance, housing element implementation Strategy of 1819 that mandates we actually develop a short-term rental framework and ordinance This effort has been around for some time and council has tried to launch it over the years So we're happy to finally have a law for you to consider today The goals of the ordinance are primarily to preserve long-term housing that has been discussed for a long time it's a high issue of import to both your Commission and the City Council and We also have program goals that include creating a straightforward and predictable process for both applicants as well as the staff to understand how to regulate these. We hope that the ordinance includes enough measures that address nuisance and neighborhood compatibility concerns and also provide tools for effective enforcement and compliance. It's also an important tool for us to enhance lower cost overnight accommodation choices mostly through the home share option in the program. Mentioned this last, well in December when we were before your commission the first time, the interdepartmental team that was created by the city is very thorough. It included community development, including everybody here, as well as the city attorney's office, the public works department and the finance department. So it's a very thorough vetting of this regulation we're bringing forward. Staff also met regularly with the California Coastal Commission because they have a significant interest in Title 28 amendments. And then we also had public hearings back in August of 2025 with the City Council and December 18th with your commission. i want to touch a little bit on the coastal commission coordination because they are an important stakeholder in this we had outreach of current ordinances started back in april 25. there had been prior discussions with them going back to 2016. but this is the first time that we had staff assigned and we had this housing element mandate to you know, put it forward. So the draft Title 28 was shared with the Coastal Commission after your Planning Commission hearing in December 18th, and that was very valuable because they could actually take a look at what we were proposing. Their preliminary feedback was fairly categorical. They said we're really concerned that you don't have enough short-term rentals or visitor serving uses closest to the coastal zone. So they recommended that we reevaluate whether we could include home shares to provide that option. Hang on, okay. Our continued outreach community-wide included community groups such as the Association of Realtors, the Mesa Improvement Association, which we went to last fall, the industry meetings with Vacation Rentals and Santa Barbara, Vacation Rentals of Santa Barbara, pardon me, and Paradise Retreats. And even in the last couple months, we had meetings with Expedia, VRBO, and Airbnb. And on top of that, we had lots of calls from individuals that are in these neighborhoods. So we've tried to cover both of it. Last year, we also went to cause and tenants union and rental property associations who we tried to cover as best we could. Just covering the short term terminology again, the short term rental is an unhosted vacation rental for 30 days or less. A home share is a portion of a house that would be rented with the primary resident uh, present and also for 30 consecutive days or less. Moving into the ordinance overview, I'm going to give you where they're allowed. Where they're allowed in the inland area is in exhibit A of your packet, but it's essentially where they're allowed is only in residentially permitted structures, and that's an important detail, in commercial zones that allow housing and mixed use purposes. In the coastal zone, they would be allowed only in residentially permitted structures as well. And also in the, um, only in the STR license area. So that's generally your multifamily and commercial zones in the coastal zone. Yes, we have a map of that. So the purple hatch area is the coastal zone license area. This was actually floated by a couple of city council people several years ago. This has been reviewed with the coastal commission and they were generally okay with that, but this has changed since the last time you saw it in that we removed the Santa Barbara city college. Polygon if you will and a couple other places that were hotels in that crosshatch area in the coastal zone other areas that are not included either don't allow residential uses or They're single and two family zones, so That's our license area in the coastal zone the magenta area is everything in the commercial zones that were listed as in a previous slide and that's going essentially down the downtown corridor. It drops the RMH zone and it includes the CG zone and a couple other commercial zones. I'm not going to try to cite all of them. For home shares, where those would be allowed, only in the commercial zones that allow housing or mixed use. Here they are. The office-restricted, office... I'm not going to... I don't know them well enough. There's your zones. But essentially commercial ones in the inland area. And then in the coastal, it would be in all residential and commercial zones that allow housing. Because, like, M1 does not allow housing, so that's not included. So that reflects the Coastal Commission's direction to welcome home shares... And here we have a map of that. So you can see that's a large swath of the coastal zone. Here we go to where they are not allowed. And I hope this is pleasing to most people that are concerned about this trend. They're not allowed in all the residential zones inland, all of them. So single family residential, two family residential, multi-family residential, and multi-family residential with hotels. That's every residential area in the inland area. They would not be allowed. In the coastal zone, again, because we're balancing with Coastal Act issues, they would be prohibited in all the single and two-family residential zones, but allowed in those commercial zones in the license area. Also, the ordinance has a lot of details in that there are some units that would be ineligible from the get-go, and those would include accessory dwelling units, such as home shares that are allowed only, except home shares would be allowed in a primary unit on a lot that has an ADU. So you couldn't rent out your ADU as a home share, but you could actually have a home share in your primary unit, because you're there, and then have your ADU be the ADU. Restricted units, including affordable housing or employee housing, live work units, manager caretaker units, And then, of course, non-habitable structures like garages, storage sheds, and also units without a final inspection. Just a minute. Wanted to touch here on license requirements, and the notes are that the license requirements are rigorous. If you had a chance to go through the ordinance, you understand that what we're trying to do is engineer compliance with these things from the get-go, from the license perspective, so we aren't facing enforcement headaches down the road. idea is that this will be an online screening and an online application. You would get kicked out automatically if you don't meet some of the standards like parking configuration or you don't have the primary owner's authorization or you don't have an indication that you have the right insurance. So there's a number of standards that would be caught right off the top from the license process. The other thing that we've written into the ordinance and primarily based on your feedback is that we are not including any discretionary hearing for the ordinance or home share license in both the coastal and inland areas. And we heard that fairly directly from your commission. Also, it includes a lot of tenant protection measures that relate to other parts of the city's code, including that none could be permitted in a unit that was occupied under a long-term rental agreement for the previous 24 months. That's intended to not have people rush to do this while they have tenancies intact. We included quite a few operational and performance measures, which is, again, once the license is issued, it's going to be based on some of these variables, like you can only have two guests per sleeping room. You could only have six people on site. This is for STR, occupancy limits, and an overnight limit of 10. And 10 rental guests for units in up to five bedrooms. It's probably not very clear, but the point is an STR you can have a maximum of two guests per sleeping room because what we were told by other experts in the field and other agencies is that a license could come in with a certain description and then when you look at it on Airbnb it's advertised and all of a sudden you have three beds in one bedroom and a day bed and then they have not been complying with what their application was. So we've written it into the ordinance so it's enforceable. Home share occupancy limits would have similar restrictions and that there would only be four rental guests allowed As well as the household of the owner or host and there again would have a maximum of two sleeping rooms in the unit And only six additional guests during the daytime Other operational and performance measures include Only one night, no hourly rentals, which didn't occur to us until we heard from some experts that that's a trend in some places. Quiet hours would be established from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. There would be no outdoor amplification allowed. Property manager or host and city enforcement contact would have to be posted inside and outside. The purpose of outside is so neighbors could go up and understand who is responsible for managing the unit. and inside so that the tenants have to face the fact that they're being monitored and there's a manager assigned to the unit. And that the property manager has to be able to respond within 30 minutes of a complaint. This slide talks about something that you may hear in public comment because we had several letters, and I spent some time with a few cases. Any short-term rental that was previously reviewed and approved under the conversion of use process, which is what the city has been using to cope with these uses in the last really 12 years, because we don't have a short-term rental permit path, people came in and said, I can meet some of these things, and they were allowed to do a conversion of use from a residential to a commercial use, but without having to go through the hotel conversion process formally. So we have a calculation of about 25 conversion of residential units to short-term rentals with current licenses and approvals on the books that are valid as a non-conforming use. Those uses, again, they got the right conversion permit, they're in good stead paying TOT, those would be considered legal non-conforming. They would be allowed to remain even if they're not in the license area or if there are minor changes to today's code, but they would be required to come in and get one of these STR licenses and do that within the six months that we've written in for any other application. That affected quite a few people that called in this week. Okay, responses to your planning commission's input. Generally, our tally was that you supported the SDR coastal zone license area, that concept of that polygon, and that you recommended prohibiting SDRs inland for the multi-unit zones, RM and RMH, and that's what we've written into the ordinance. FOR THE PERMIT PROCESS, YOU SUGGESTED THAT WE DON'T INCLUDE A CONDITIONAL USE PERMIT. YOUR WORDS WERE LOOK FOR SOMETHING SIMPLER. SO AFTER ALL THE CONSIDERATIONS OF THE RIGOROUS STANDARDS THAT WE'VE WRITTEN INTO THIS, WE'RE PROPOSING NOT TO HAVE ANY DISCRETIONARY HEARING FOR THESE. THESE WOULD BE AN ONLINE LICENSE PROCESS. regulate the use operation and front end it with applications that would only be permitted and therefore mitigate nuisances through that application process. On the home share matter, you recommended that we take a more restrictive approach citing enforcement concerns and we've heard this from members of the public and we certainly heard it from you. So our response in the ordinance was to, on the inland area, create significant reduction in allowable zones. They're no longer... Is this true? Home shares are no longer in simpler two unit zones? I'm just going to fully confess, this ordinance has probably changed eight times in six months. So I just had to double check with the experts. Okay, so in the inland area, the significant reduction would be in allowable zones in that home shares would no longer be allowed in single and two unit zones, only in the multifamily and commercial zones. which complies with the magenta map that I showed you earlier, sorry. And in the coastal zone, we had to maintain home shares in the single and two unit zones in that green hatch map because we were responding to what we heard from Coastal Commission since we met with your commission in December. We also asked you about license limitation and grace period and the limit of a license to only one per owner in the city. You concurred with that and that's what's been written into the ordinance. Also to provide a six month grace period for unpermitted and permitted vacation rental owners to submit the correct STR or home chair license application. The six month was intended to allow people that maybe already had bookings to stop booking them if they knew they weren't gonna make it and also just give people a chance to get in the process and get their paperwork in order. for parking requirements this was always always a key issue for most applications before you and You supported staffs recommendation to apply the same or more restrictive parking requirements as are required for a single-family zone or a single-family unit which would be two spaces per unit with four or fewer bedrooms and three spaces for five or more bedroom units and The ordinance specifically prohibits backing out from a driveway onto a public street for the unhosted STRs. That's consistent with how Transportation Division has evaluated these applications for many years, over a decade. But this allows for backing out for the home share units, and that's based on the presumption that you have the home owner there and more accountable for not only their behavior while they're in the house, but for their ability to negotiate the driveway and the street. The Commission talked about us looking into alternative permit structures, and we do have some information about that, but... Well, let me just... Get through the slide. You asked us about whether we considered doing a program that had, for example, a maximum number of licenses per geographic area, or maybe a maximum number of licenses per year, almost like a lottery system or some kind of a cap. And the report that we can give you is we did a lot of research with other agencies before we were even with you in December. We specifically looked at Palm Springs. I've talked to the City of Carpinteria, City of Goleta, County of Santa Barbara, County of Ventura, City of Ventura. All of them are very, very different, because they all have different economies, they have different goals in their city, but Palm Springs and City of Carpinteria, for example, have a lottery system where you can actually come and apply, and then once that's full, It's done. So Palm Springs right now, and Palm Springs and Carpinteria are both also defined by a geographic area. So you can only have X number of units within this portion of the city or that portion of the city. Both Palm Springs and the city of Carpinteria are full. So that means you have to wait until someone sells or discontinues their use to have another license come up. That's how those agencies have dealt with it. The city of Goleta looked at their program last year and they actually don't have nearly as many as we do. So they have a more relaxed system and they don't have a cap, but they don't also have an issue with so many trying to move into different areas. And again, in the city of Goleta, they don't have as much residential uses in the coastal zone. The County of Santa Barbara has had an update to their short-term rental ordinance on the books for about 10 years and it keeps on getting pushed out because their staff has to deal with other housing mandates. And the County of Ventura has a successful program that focuses mostly in the Ojai area. My point is saying we looked at a lot of other options. Staff talked about this extensively amongst the four departments that we have and the ordinance that we brought forward for you today we think is the best fit for Santa Barbara. The staff report also in your exhibit C does a general plan and local coastal plan consistency analysis. So we looked at this program in relation to the housing element, the land use element, The Coastal Land Use Plan, the Historic Resources Element, the Circulation Element, the Economy and Fiscal Health Element, and the Coastal Act, two sections of that. And we found it consistent with all those high level planning mandates. Similarly, we looked at the California Environmental Quality Act, and like other local agencies, we would find this exempt under Section 15061. That's a section of CEQA that says there's no possibility that the STR ordinance, because it's a law, it's not a physical development itself, would have a significant effect on the environment. So this will qualify for a notice of exemption upon council action. Our next steps were slated for the ordinance committee of city council in April of 26. That would follow quickly with the introduction and adoption in mid to late May at city council. PER THE COMMISSION'S GOOD POINTS, WE'RE GOING TO START EXTENSIVE EDUCATION OUTREACH TO THE EXISTING OPERATORS AT ABOUT THAT TIME. AND THEN AS SOON AS COUNCIL ACTS ON IT, WE WOULD BE SUBMITTING THIS TO THE COASTER COMMISSION, HOPEFULLY NO LATER THAN MIDDLE OF JUNE OF 2026. THEY TYPICALLY TAKE SIX TO 12 MONTHS. We'll see. So late 26 or 27 could be when we get it back from the Coastal Commission and then it would go into effect in the coastal zone. And we've explained this to the public and put it on our website that the inland area would go into effect within 30 days of the council adoption of the ordinance. However, the coastal zone would have to wait until after the Coastal Commission's actions. WE ALSO LAUNCHED A WEB PAGE. THERE'S A URL. AND DON'T MAKE FUN OF MY NAME. WE'RE THE SHORT-TERM RENTAL ORDINANCE DEVELOPMENT WEBSITE. SHORT-TERM RENTALS ALREADY HAD A WEBSITE THROUGH THE CITY ATTORNEY'S OFFICE. OUR ORDINANCE DEVELOPMENT IS STRODE. WE HAVE A DEDICATED EMAIL FOR PEOPLE TO sending questions and we've fielded a lot of those this week after the notice for the hearing today was out. I think that's it.

Thank you, Ms. Bradley and team. I'm going to repeat a couple of announcements that I made just as this item was beginning for folks who may have walked in after it began. We're going to go to public comment next. A reminder that public comment should not exceed two minutes. That's the regular time allotted. Receipt of speaker slips and raised hands for virtual participation closed at 1.45. So if you raised your hand or submitted a speaker slip after 1.45, It will not be included in today's public comment. If you intend to pool time with other public commenters, it should not exceed a total of five minutes, and all of the speakers who are listed in that pool will need to be present at the time of the comment. And finally, please avoid disruption, such as cheering or booing, and if you have a sign, please make sure you are not blocking anyone else's view. So that takes us to comments from members of the public pertaining to this item. Ms. Carmen, do we have anyone in person or remote who would like to make comment today?

Thank you, Chair Boss. Yes, we do have speaker slips for in-person public comment today. I'm going to begin with Theo Cracke, who has time donated by Wendy Altman. So Theo, you will have four minutes to speak. And you will be followed by Hilary Wells.

By the way, on your website, it says three minutes per speaker. You might want to change that if it's only two. I timed this before I did it, so luckily someone gave me their time.

Just for the public's edification, the chair has the authority to change the time, just in particular as we want to get through this.

Hopefully the timer hasn't started yet. Anyway, hi. My name is Theo Cracke. And my comments are as follows. The City of Santa Barbara's website for the new short-term rental ordinance identifies the reason for this ordinance is to regulate the location and permitting of vacation rentals to incentivize long-term housing over transitory use. This statement assumes that it is mainly because of vacation rentals that property owners do not offer their property as long-term housing. But this assumption begs many questions. Where is the proof that Vacation rentals disincentivize long-term housing. I'd like you to think about each of these questions, please. Why does the city not offer any statistical information on the actual impact of vacation rentals on long-term housing? And I'm zooming out here, you've got this regulation ready to go, but where's the whys? Number three, why does the city not offer any examples from other cities where highly restrictive short-term rental ordinances like this one have increased the availability of long-term housing? Number four, why does the city not consider the effect of this ordinance on the approximately $4 million per year in transient occupancy taxes that are currently being remitted by owners of short-term rentals that are permitted? And finally, why does the city think that the extreme reduction in lower-cost visitor accommodations caused by this proposed ordinance will be approved by the California Coastal Commission? And these are just a few of the simple questions that should be answered before this Planning Commission can approve this draft regulation of short-term rentals, which is actually a ban of short-term rentals disguised as regulation. I can understand that the city council may have political motivations to draft such a drastic ordinance. However, I would hope that this independent planning commission would draft an ordinance that relies on factual evidence and proven strategies that balance housing needs property rights, and affordable coastal access for all Californians. A few things I'd like to recommend the Planning Commission direct their staff to do before finalizing this regulation. Number one, use data-based reports, real research to identify exactly the impact of short-term rentals on long-term housing. In particular, identify how many short-term rentals would be converted to long-term housing if short-term rentals were prohibited. Number two, show examples from other cities where highly restrictive short-term rental regulations like this one have increased the availability of long-term housing. And number three, identify the estimated number of lower-cost visitor accommodation units that would be lost by this regulation currently written and explain how this drastic reduction would be acceptable to the California Coastal Commission. Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, we do have a question.

Mr. Cracke, if you could come back. I have a quick question for you. I appreciate your comments. They were very thorough. This is just public comment. It's not even including today's public comment. Your public comment is in here. But I just wanted to ask you, yes, the purpose of this is to preserve long-term housing. but it's also to preserve neighborhoods that are presently overburdened and negatively impacted by STRs. So I just wondered, how would you address that?

Well, I have extensive experience in that, luckily, because I used to own Paradise Retreats, world-class vacation rentals. Back when we first started that company in 2007, there was a very specific rule. Short-term rentals were allowed throughout the city, however, your short-term rental could get stopped. The only reason they could stop it is if your neighbors complained about the nuisances caused by that short-term rental. So I actually built my company with my wife Becky on the premise that we were going to make neighbors and property condition way more important than anyone guessed. And so we had extensive rules and regulations for guests. We implemented a very effective electronic strategy called Noise Aware, which was an automated decibel meter that went to me personally 24-7 and to my property manager, the property management director anyway. So we had a huge amount of stuff that was in place. And the Paradise Retreat's properties, with very few exceptions, of course, we had rules for the guests. And you can't control people, but you can put guardrails in and overall it was very, very successful. And we never had anyone shut down because of that.

Okay. Thank you very much for your comment.

So there is a solution to create neighborhood disturbances. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Yes. Hilary Wells is up next and then followed by Casey Williamson and Krista Pleiser.

Hi, my name's Hilary Wells. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak. I was at the last meeting and partly why I'm wanting to speak right now is to clarify that there seemed to be a lot of confusion about whether or not the Upper Mesa and specifically the area near Shoreland Park is considered currently part of the allowed area. So I want to share my experiences. Um, my husband and I purchased a tiny two bedroom house on the Mesa in 2020 during the pandemic. Uh, shortly after we moved in and shortly after that, our family expanded. And so we had to find a different place to live. We decided to keep our vacation rental, turned it into a vacation rental so we could have our family come visit so that we could go stay there sometimes so that we could offer it to families in the neighborhood that were looking for places. to be able to have their parents come and still be able to meet the grandkids outside, so on and so forth. To do so, I had to go and work very closely with the department right downstairs. They helped me get registered as a vacation rental. In order to qualify, I had to be in an area that was considered allowed, and that is the area of the Mesa. It's right by Shoreline Park. And I believe there's other areas, but specifically that's the one that affects me. We have since then been, we have taught license. We pay taught tens of thousands of dollars. We have been doing so for five years. I've just now renewed my brand new license, which came a couple of weeks ago. It requires that I put mine, have the name of the property on it, the vacation rental name. It specifies that it is a vacation rental in the coastal zone, and it requires that I post this so that anybody who's staying there understands that it is an allowed vacation rental. Thank you. That concludes your time. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up will be Casey Williamson, followed by Krista Pleiser and Tiffany Holler.

Good afternoon. I am Casey Williamson. I am also the husband of Hillary Wells. That's the chief explained part of our I will say that Hillary does an incredible job talking to people, and I help out as much as I can talking to people, making sure that they understand the constraints situation and remaining respectful of the neighbors and quiet. When I'm over there, I have to say I can't tell the difference between houses that are short-term rentals and regular homes in terms of noises, parking, anything like that. But I think that Hillary makes sure that that happens, and I, as I said, do whatever I can. I do want to address briefly some things that have been said about the previous – about supposed illegality has been the word used here illegality of the short-term rentals without the licenses and I having been a an attorney for 30 years I take a little umbrage at that because they are not illegal they may have been unlicensed but it is improper I would argue for the city to say okay here's a license and You pay the fee. You pay us that money all the time. So you're basically saying we're taking illegal money. In my business, that would have been called aiding and abetting illegal activity. Probably some would say, well, you know, maybe you should be paying that money back if it's so illegal. But nobody wants to do that, of course. I'm just making the point that these are people, we are people who have been following the law and the regulations all this time. I naturally did as much research as I could about this because I'm thinking, is it really true that places where there are more short-term rentals are louder and more disturbing than other areas? And it's quite interesting. The evidence, the research seems to show that there's not really a discernible difference. What Mr. Crackley said a few minutes ago about the evidence...

Thank you. That concludes your time.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up we'll have Krista Pleiser, followed by Tiffany Holler, followed by Anna Stern.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Boss and Commissioners. My name is Krista Pleiser. I'm the Chief Government Relations Officer for the Santa Barbara Association of Realtors, and we represent roughly 1,200 members across the South Coast. We appreciate the significant work that staff has done to translate council's direction into a draft ordinance. And we recognize that short-term rentals are, they raise legitimate concerns around neighborhood compatibility and enforcement. Our goal today is to offer several suggestions that could help strengthen the ordinance as it moves forward. First, the commission should evaluate whether a managed licensing framework could provide clearer regulatory control in the areas where STR is allowed. As mentioned in the staff presentation, other coastal communities have adopted capped STR programs that limit the total number of units while maintaining enforceability and transparency. For example, as was already spoken about, The City of Carpinteria uses a lottery-based system that caps and allows it to be a lottery system that other people have the opportunity to get. Second, the ordinance is complex and significant administration and enforcement needs to be looked at. And so we would like to request that what you should look at is doing an annual progress report to both the Planning Commission and the City Council in order to determine if it is meeting the requirements that is put forth. Also, what's interesting is that within the Coastal Act, it is for the visitor accommodations. I think one of the groups that has been taken out of thought is those that are families, multi-generation groups, but really kind of that missing middle lodging that is needed for folks that aren't necessarily into hotels, but they're not going into these huge estates. Finally, another thing that was brought up is the TOT regarding it, and currently it is 10 to 12% of the total TOT. Thank you.

Thank you, next up we'll have Tiffany Haller, and Kurt Haller has donated their time to Tiffany. Kurt, are you present? Perfect. Okay, so you'll have four minutes, and Anna Stern, you will follow.

Good afternoon, Commissioners. Can you hear me? Put that down a little. My name is Tiffany Haller. I've been here for over 16 years talking about this topic, and my husband and I are full-time residents on the Mesa. We own a property management company in Santa Barbara. Commissioner Wiscombe, you probably remember this was the hotel conversion we talked about with R4 back in 2016. I'm going to call this Hotel Conversion 2.0. I'm just really confused here. What exactly is the purpose of this ordinance? Is it to regulate them or is it to ban them? None of this is making sense. I'm gonna show you, here's just a illustration of the confusion. This I took this morning in West Beach. This is the sign on the street. Now, this new ordinance is requiring that three or less bedrooms would have to have two off-street parking spots. Do you see right here where it says hotel? Underneath it, it says that's for hotel guest parking. So hotels are allowed to park on the street, but you're asking in this ordinance that someone with three bedrooms or less to provide two. So a studio or a one bedroom needs to provide two parking spots off the street. Yeah, off street. A lot of these properties were built at the turn of the century. Some of them were carriage houses. I want to challenge all of you, if you would mind just coming down to West Beach, looking at these properties and realizing less than 10% that are legally operating with licenses and paying the TOT, they are wiped out. They cannot meet this. So this is the Hotel Conversion 2.0. The other challenge I have is I'm a Mesa resident. I travel on vacation with my family. Would anybody that owned a home want to share it with a guest, a family, while you're in the home? The answer is no. So that is a ban. There's a very small percentage of people that would travel with the owner in the home. As well, the owner does not want to be in the home when guests are there. I mean, can you imagine sharing the kitchen with the owner of the home and they're staying in the master bedroom? That's a ban. Here's the deal. Look, everybody deserves a seat at this table. The neighbors... the property managers, the owners, everybody. Can we just all get together and figure this out together? Because yes, I agree. I've come to these hearings and I am a neighbor. I have a neighbor that I can't do anything about. I live with that. And nobody wants to have neighbors that are upset. We all deserve quiet enjoyment of our properties. And so really, I've heard these speakers come up here. The city has told us, Property managers if you get one report that you are going to be shut down your license is gone but the city is allowing 20 calls and And it's still operating so I don't I don't understand are we just saying that we're enforcing But we're not enforcing and upsetting the neighborhood. I live in the neighborhood. I want this controlled so I think that the people on Lunetta Plaza and in Braemar that needs to be addressed by the city today and I also wanted to just basically end with saying, if the goal is to regulate these, we have decibel meters, we have all things, we do not have complaints, let's regulate it, let's work together. But if the goal is to ban them, we should be honest about that. Thank you.

Thank you, next up we'll have Anna Stern followed by Paul Stern and then Jarrett Gorin.

Hi. Anna Stern. I live up on the Mesa. I want to make a few points. We were running a short-term rental out of our ADU, which was shut down last spring. And I'll tell you, since it was shut down, we were paying prior to that, we ran it for about three years since we had bought the house, and you were getting $10,000 a year from us in TOT. We had about 12 to 18 guests a month, eating every single meal out, shopping on State Street. I found all the shopping bags, you know, going to the museums. It was an affordable way for people to visit Santa Barbara. And they actually probably spend more money locally because they're not spending all that money on hotel rooms. The other thing, we had hired a local person to clean. Because we had frequent guest changes, she was getting a few hundred dollars a week. And then that disappeared when you shut us down. We're in the process of trying to undo our ADU status. That ADU was never going to be used as permanent housing for anyone. We have four kids. We have nine grandchildren. We have lots of people that want to visit us. So we need that available. The other thing is, when I go to another city or country, I like to stay in an Airbnb away from the hotel zone. I want to feel like I'm living in the area. And since we have been doing this, in the three years, two older couples have said they're seriously considering retiring in Santa Barbara. And one of our guests has actually moved here from New York City after spending like two weeks on the Mesa. So, you know, you have to realize there were all these other benefits. And the other thing is, if you could get all the underground Airbnbs to pay their taxes, you could fill whatever gap in the budget you have. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up, we'll have Paul Stern, followed by Jarrett Gorin.

It's a hard act to follow.

plain and simple, the proposed ordinance are flawed, right? And they're going to lead to regrettable outcomes, not positive outcomes, negative outcomes. And one of those is criminalizing economic rational behavior, criminalizing market behavior, right? And on top of that, it's going to This ordinance, this ban on STRs, is going to create a $4 million hole in the city budget, and that wasn't mentioned once in any report. And where's that $4 million going to come from? Where are you going to raise the taxes to offset it? The fact that there are 1,200 illegal short-term rentals in Santa Barbara is proof that there's a market for this. People want STRs. And that's because other hospitality options don't offer the things that people need, especially young families. And SDRs also benefit property owners, all property owners, directly or indirectly through higher incomes and through property values. And higher property values translate into higher tax receipts. And I'm going to guess that every property owner and every politician who wants to shut down the SDRs and home shares has used Airbnb. This is hypocrisy. This is absolute hypocrisy. So this all or nothing economic policy that you're making, let's shut them down. Oh, you've got all these fancy charts that make it look like they're not. But they're really being shut down. is not a good solution. Good solutions are not black and white. They're not all or nothing. Get everybody together. Find a way where this can all work out, where everybody benefits. And don't create something that's going to cause people to have to disobey the law, to go illegal, to go underground, as my wife said.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next up we'll have Jarrett Gorin, and Peter Consos has donated his time to Jarrett. Peter, are you here? Perfect. So you'll have four minutes.

Hi, good afternoon. I'm Jarrett Gorin from Vanguard Planning, and I represent several different clients that have interest in this issue. So the city's been kicking this around since 2016, where it's the first time they really cracked down on STRs. And I've always wondered why an ordinance wasn't put forward a long time ago. I think it's because there's been a conflict between the Coastal Commission and the city of Santa Barbara. And to, I guess, oversimplify the conflict, it's that the Coastal Commission supports STRs, and the city basically would like STRs to go away forever, never come back. So there's a lot of daylight between those two positions. So the proposed ordinance that's being put forward right now, it's being presented as regulations on STRs, but it's effectively going to function as a ban. And for the past 10 years, the city's been avoiding updating the municipal code to address STRs. And instead, what they've done is they said, well, if you rent your house for 29 days, it's now a hotel. And that's how the city's then regulated them. They regulate them as if they're a hotel. Well, the Coastal Commission doesn't agree with the city that STRs are hotels. Their view is that it's licensing a residential use for short-term stays and that that therefore doesn't require approval of a coastal development permit. So that means that STRs aren't development or a change in the density of intensity of use. That's what triggers a CDP. So in this ordinance, the city is continuing to say that STRs are a commercial use, and that would be a change of use. And then the city uses that trigger to trigger the need for commercial development standards. And about 40 people or so have contacted me over the last 10 years wanting to do these. And we've actually done four total in 10 years. And the reason why is because Most people that call me, I just tell them their project's DOA. It's never going to work because it triggers this parking requirement for head out parking. And just about every lot that has homes on it or most development in Santa Barbara that's not full-blown commercial development, it doesn't have the geometry to accommodate head out parking. So it's just physically dead on arrival because you can't do even just that one standard. And there are other standards too. like having to have an accessible parking space. They also make you have that. And so where you might have room for three regular spaces, you only have room for two. And so guess what? Now you can't do it. So these things were basically rendered infeasible out of the gate. And I don't think that the Coastal Commission necessarily understands that yet, but they will. So the Coastal Commission says STRs don't require a CDP. And the city says then, well, hey, We're not requiring a CDP for STRs. We just require a CDP if any improvements they might trigger needs one. And that's every STR. So, like, you guys have found a way or the city has found a way to effectively require a CDP for a use that the Coastal Commission says doesn't require a CDP. And, you know, that's clever. But I think that the Coastal Commission is probably going to notice it. And I think they're also gonna figure out that these various standards you're requiring through the ordinance are basically impossible to comply with. And because of that, these regulations are a ban. They will function as a ban. So I think we need to have an actual ordinance. I wish we had addressed this years ago when the land use was sort of this new land use. But this ordinance in its current form, it's too restrictive and it unduly limits public recreational access opportunities inconsistent with the Coastal Act. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up we'll have Hans Hormann followed by Eve Leeds and then Jennifer Kinsella.

Hello, I'm Hans Hormann. Thank you for hearing me. One of the biggest things I have to say is that this is about regulation, not restriction. The regulation you currently have imposed, I've seen this happen in Ojai was mentioned by the city staff. Ojai has two permitted under their so restrictive order that basically it makes it so there's only two that will ever exist. Guess what? I operate a short-term rental management company in Ventura. You know how many guests that are staying in Ojai are now there? And also in Santa Barbara. I hear this all the time now from guests. They can't afford to stay here. Ojai is not improved yet. The housing prices have gone up, and when they put the effect in, the average night per hotel room night was like $100. No, not $100. It's like $200 to $300. Now it's about $600. So it effectively didn't improve the conditions for people to stay. And I have cousins that live in San Roque here. no one stays in Santa Barbara anymore. And with this effect, it'll really happen. What a lot of family does is either they get a place together, like a Airbnb, or they drive back to the Central Valley or go stay in Ventura. So I've seen what's happened across these different municipalities when something like this has been in effect, and it shows that. The other thing is there's 37,000 housing units available in the greater city of Santa Barbara. 17,000 of those are actual rental units. It doesn't matter if they're short-term or long-term. So let's say 400, give or take, are actually short-term rentals, active, year-round, do the whole thing. When those convert to non-short-term anymore, you know how many of those are just going to go to extended stay, 30-day stays? So we lost TOTs. There's still going to be a transient type of occupancy, or the owners are going to let it just sit. because it's their second home or family home they were raised in, that like many of my clients have. So thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next up, we'll have Eve Leeds, followed by Jennifer Kinsella, and then Rodney. I could not make out your last name, but you're the only Rodney that submitted a speaker slip, so you'll be after that.

Good afternoon. Thank you for letting me speak. I appreciate your time. So I live in the Braemar Yankee Farm area. It's in the coastal zone, and I'm surrounded by three vacation rentals, and there are many more nearby in that area. They go for $2,000 to $3,000 a night, so they are not affordable for people to be close to the beach. They host sometimes 15 to 30 people for parties. In the area where I live, it's a disaster. The result is loud music, strangers coming and going, litter, reckless driving, intoxicated guests, people throwing weed joints over the fence. Anyway, I have to represent the neighbors that cannot be here because the people that you're hearing from today and a lot of the letters that you're getting are from people who have invested into this business. I feel that you've got 1,200 of these short-term rentals, but there are 80,000 people in this community of Santa Barbara. The people who are here have a lot of motivation to come and speak, and they have the time, and they really need to do this so they can keep their business. Most of the residents that are not here today, because they have to care for their families or work, don't have the flexibility to come here and represent. So I am here representing them. The other thing is, as far as reducing short-term rentals so that you can get more homes to long-term housing, the houses that I live near were family homes until another buyer bought it and then ended up turning it into a short-term rental. I'm very nervous. Excuse me. So a lot of this is miscommunication between us, meaning me, the one that's just complaining about the noise and the disturbance, and the people who are running these businesses. All I want is to have peace in my quiet neighborhood, and I do not get it. And these people are saying that it doesn't have any effect on your living, but it does. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up we'll have Jennifer Kinsella, followed by Rodney, and then Bobby McGinnis.

Hi. Good afternoon, commissioners. My name is Jennifer Kinsella, and I'm a resident of Santa Barbara for 25 years and one of the co-owners of Wanderlust Luxury Rentals. We host hundreds of visitors each year, and I do want to address one of these biggest concerns that I'm hearing about short-term rentals, that they create parties and disturbances in the neighborhoods. In our experience at Wanderlust, this simply is not the case for us. The overwhelming majority of our guests are families and responsible travelers who come to Santa Barbara to enjoy the beaches, the restaurants, and its natural beauty. We have a very thorough guest vetting process. Prior to accepting a guest, we enforce a no party rule. And noise complaints and any issues are extremely rare and handled by our staff immediately. Short-term rentals also support a significant number of local jobs. Our homes are cleaned and maintained by local workers including housekeepers, maintenance professionals, and other small businesses including pest control, carpet and upholstery cleaning, HVAC techs, plumbers, electricians, who we engage with on a daily basis and rely on this work. These visitors also spend money throughout the community at restaurants, shops, and local businesses. I think it's really important to recognize the significant tax revenue generated by short-term rental guests. I support reasonable regulation that protects neighborhoods while allowing responsible short-term rentals to continue operating. However, blanket restrictions that eliminate unhosted stays will have real economic consequences for the local workers, small businesses, and the broader tourism economy. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you. Next up, we will have Rodney, followed by Bobby McGinnis, and then Craig Leeds.

Good afternoon.

My name is Rodney Ut, and I'm only concerned with a, I have a question about home shares. We would, we'd love to do a home share. What, why is it two bedrooms? Why are they only letting you rent two bedrooms on a home share? How'd you come up with that? Anybody know?

They can respond to your questions afterwards if they choose, but they can't respond while you're speaking.

Got it. Anyway, that's my question. Why two bedrooms for a home share? That's it. Thanks.

Thank you. I'll ask staff if you don't mind responding at the end of public comment. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up, we'll have Bobby McInnis, followed by Craig Leeds.

Hi, I'm a long-time resident here in Santa Barbara, long-time realtor. And I just wanted to share with you on the home share, you know, housing affordability in Santa Barbara has become a very big issue. And one of the ways in which I help first-time buyers get into their homes and stay here is home shares. So, for example, two teachers buy a home in the city. They take a bedroom, one of the bedrooms in their four-bedroom house, convert it to a hotel room, basically, run it as a short-term vacation rental. that income is able to pays for their property taxes, pays for their childcare, and helps them stay here in Santa Barbara rather than having to commute from Lawnpoker, Santa Maria. That's happened over and over again with my clients who are plumbers, nurses, sheriffs, fire department people. The home share opportunity is too restrictive in this ordinance. You need to expand it across the entire city because it's these different kinds of neighborhoods will make it possible for people to stay here and live in Santa Barbara. And I will also mention that it also makes it affordable for tenants. I had a tenant a few years ago who lived on Chapala Street, two bedroom apartment he rented from us, and he managed in the four years he lived there, not only to pay his tuition, but also to save up enough money to go buy a house in Lompoc after he graduated from college. So home share is something that can be appreciated enjoyed not just by landlords but also by tenants as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up we will have Craig Leeds followed by Patricia Stark.

Thank you and I want to say I'm definitely in favor of the short-term rental ordinance. We live in the Yankee Farm Braemar area and it's full of STRs. They're noisy. They're parties. They litter. They drive too fast. We have a nine-year-old granddaughter who lives with us. And we used to, with our children, they would walk to other friends' houses. Now, with our nine-year-old, we have to escort them to our friends' houses because it's not safe with the short-term rentals there. So they go on until sometimes two in the morning, karaoke outside. In the summertime, you... It blasts through the windows, or the windows are open or closed. For us, it changed from a quiet, beautiful neighborhood to a miserable neighborhood to live in, and we're considering moving out of Santa Barbara just because of it. I've lived here 50 years, and I really don't want to have to move just because of short-term rentals ruining my life. Sometimes we'll call the police, or we'll call the... not the owner because they don't give us their phone number, but the property management. And, you know, when it's 2 in the morning and there's karaoke going on or loud music, they don't answer the phone. There's nothing we can do. We call the police. They come. They give a warning. They come back. Maybe they'll come back at 4 in the morning. But, you know, we've already lost a night's sleep. If we had some way to truly have a complaint where the complaint is, acted upon where it's ever been acted upon before. It would be reasonable if the police actually came and stopped the parties. That would be reasonable. But I'd much prefer that it was safe to be in our neighborhood and we could enjoy life there like we used to. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next up we'll have Patricia Stark followed by, and forgive me if I mispronounce this, Phong Bui and then Louise Asbury.

Hello, I wrote a letter. I wasn't planning to speak, but numbers have impact, so I'm here speaking. I do support the staff recommendation in its entirety. There are many others who, along with me, do support this. They're not in this chamber, but that doesn't diminish the power of the pathos of their stories, of what they've experienced over the last few years. We've heard a lot today about money and finances and investments, but let me tell you, I paid a lot of money for my house, too. My mortgage for many years was more than I could afford. Every time we did a remodel, we put more into it, more property tax. And what I expect, because of this, the biggest financial investment I will ever make is a little peace and quiet in our neighborhood, and that's what we don't have. And please, we've heard a lot about let's regulate it, there's things on the books, whatever, whatever, but the failure of regulation over these past years is well documented with the city attorney's office and what has been said in these chambers. Even the best managed property, even the most respectful visitor is by his or her very nature temporary and neighborhoods are built on relationships. I'm not any tourist and I'm certainly not any property owner. I am simply asking you to protect those places where people actually live. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up we'll have Phuong Bui on behalf of the California Short-Term Rental Association, followed by Louise Asbury and Oscar Gonzalez.

Hello, my name is Fong Bui, speaking on behalf of CalSTRA and the Santa Barbara Short-Term Rental Alliance, which represents nearly 100 Santa Barbara homeowners, renters, property managers, and some repeat guests. We urge you not to move forward with this ordinance as is. This proposal would eliminate roughly 68% of overnight visitor capacity in the coastal zone without any quantitative analysis showing that the remaining supply can absorb the demand. and without evidence that less restrictive options were considered. In practical effect, this is a ban on the primary source of visitor-serving accommodations in the coastal zone, and this outcome is inconsistent with the Coastal Act. STRs is not a fringe use in Santa Barbara. According to CETO consulting market analysis in the record, SDRs account for 67% of total room inventory and 68% of overnight visitor capacity in the coastal zone in Santa Barbara, more than hotels combined. And if these units are removed, capacity drops from over 15,000 visitors to about 5,000. And hotels are already operating at high occupancy and cannot absorb the displacement. The result would not be a shift in visitors. It would actually be fewer people able to access the coast here. The ordinance bans all non-owner occupied STRs in single and two family zones, the majority of the coastal zone, and confines them to a narrow waterfront license area. And because nearly 88% of STRs are unhosted entire units, This geographic restriction effectively eliminates the vast majority of existing visitor capacity. And replacing them with home share is not really an adequate substitute, as most hosted rentals represent only a small fraction of the market and do not serve families or group in the same way. We think that forwarding this ordinance as is risks rejection and invites litigation. And so we ask you to pause and revise the ordinance to preserve adequate non-hosted SCR capacity. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up we'll have Louise Asbury followed by Oscar Gonzalez and then Kelly Ari.

Hi, good afternoon commissioners. My name is Louise Astbury and I'm the current general manager of paradise retreats. I was lucky enough to take over from Theo and Becky cracky. Um, I'm here not only representing a business, but also a small group of homeowners on the Mesa who have deep ties to the community. There seems to be this common thread that it's faceless investors who are flipping homes here. And that's just not the case. All of the homeowners who I deal with are deeply invested and they come and they use their home. The whole point of putting it in the program is so that they can offset some of the costs, but they really enjoy using it for themselves, for their families, and that is the purpose. These homes are going to sit vacant otherwise. them being there while people come and visit is absolutely never going to happen. It's crazy that that is even suggested. By mandating hosted only stays, it's a total ban. And these families who come and visit, they need a living room, they need a kitchen, and they're spending the money on the Mesa, in the local coffee shops, in the restaurants. With the city facing nearly a $6 million budget gap, this doesn't seem the time that we should be talking about eliminating transient occupancy tax that these homes would provide. Everybody who has stated the noise aware, the parking restrictions, we just turned down a group of six women because we thought they might be a bachelorette party even though they weren't going to have any parties there. We take a lot of pride in how well we vet guests with 3,000 stays every once in a while. I know 12 years ago the police were called My parents live on Yankee Farm Road. They live at the top of the road, and they have for 12 years. They've never complained. And when I'm there, sure, you might hear music that somebody's playing. You might hear somebody jumping in the pool. You might hear something. But that's in any neighborhood. Any homeowner would do that. There are a few grumpy people. Sure, that would happen anywhere. But I would urge you to just do what's right for everybody, and especially the property owners here.

Thank you. Next up, we'll have Oscar Gonzalez, followed by Kelly Arie.

Good afternoon. Oscar Gonzalez, homeowner at 410 Ruth Avenue. It's a couple blocks above the DMV going north. I am one of the 25 to 30 existing permitted short-term rentals. We took great strides, my wife and I did, to pull the permits, hiring a consultant. We take great pride in our unit. We've been in business now since our license was awarded in 2008. November 2019, so going on six years. I am very encouraged by the slide deck that I just saw that included how to deal with existing permitted STRs. I also appreciate that there will be outreach to existing operators. What I am hoping and what my request is is that the language get flushed out. I spent a lot of time working in government at the state and federal level. I'm actually a state commissioner dealing with enforcement arms here in California. But anytime you do not include clear language, whether it's going to be an online process or showing up at the planning desk, I could just see us 25 to 30 permitted, existing permitted units getting lost in the shuffle. I also believe that the 25 or so existing permitted units can serve as a building block. You know, I really believe the believability factor is going to be really important. So to make any believers going forward, you have to really take care of and safeguard those that are already in the mix. Again, I just want to say thanks to staff. They've been very responsive. And it's really good to be in a world-class city, world-class destination. But with that goes a lot of appeal. So you all have a very difficult job in front of you. So my hat's off to you, and best of luck.

Thank you. Next, we'll have Kelly Ari.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair and Council and Commissioners. I also had some of my questions initially answered by the presentation, so when I was going to speak, a lot of the answers were already there, so I appreciate that. But I'm here today as one of the very small numbers of inland property owners who did exactly what the city asked us to do. And in 2019, we went through the full vacation rental conversion process, and we obtained the zoning clearances for short-term rental, and we completed all the building and upgrades that needed to happen. We secured a business license, and we've been paying TOT tax on a regular basis. In other words, our property is intentionally permitted, converted, For the residential use to a commercial hotel Terms under the city's own program so we purchased it and improved the property with a reliance on those approvals from the city was very clear representation and And it was a lawful permanent use so our long-term plan was to use it for us Currently and then in long term be able to sell it off as an existing deal So I appreciate what you guys have put some thought process into it and it Sounds like we're on the same path, but I just wanted to make sure that because we've already gone through the legal process to do it the way the city asked that we take that into consideration and any changes that you make. Thank you.

Thank you. With that, I don't have any more speaker slips for in-person public comment. So I will move to virtual participation, of which we have two hands that were raised before the cutoff. So first, I'll have Sherry Colberg-Ox speak, and then followed by Jacques Habra. Sherry, I'm going to give you permission to speak. And you should be able to unmute at this time. Yes.

Thank you for the thought. Forgive me.

There's an echo on your.

We disagree with. Let me see if I can get some headphones. Sorry. Just a second. I think it's fine now.

I think you can keep going.

Okay. Is that better? Can you still hear me? Yes. Okay. Where we disagree with your proposals is that you've made it so that ADUs are just completely not eligible for anything. When we built ours, it was at significant cost, and it's an integrated part of our house. It shares everything. It shares water, trash, mail service, the alarm system for the house, the surveillance, everything. So it really was just built as an in-law suite that we plan to use mainly for friends and family. So even though it's a stated goal for the Coastal Commission to enhance the lower overnight cost accommodation choices, by eliminating the use of ADUs. When we live full-time in our house and would be here the whole time with our guests, we just don't think this is right, that this is not fair. I don't know how you go about undoing your ADU status, but homeowners like us should not be penalized for adding an ODU to our properties. The city's still going to buy... benefit financially from TOTs, even if it's just a home share option, which ours would be in the coastal zone. And we think you really should consider that any ADUs that meet the licensing requirements, that whatever you put forth for home shares that they should be allowed to be included in that as well and not excluded just from the basis there because they're designated an ADU and are in fact really an in-law suite and would be, we would always be here to supervise everybody who visits.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next we'll have Jacques.

Yes, can you hear me?

Yes.

Hear me?

Yes.

Okay. Dear Planning Commissioners, thank you for the opportunity to speak on this matter. I fully respect the work and research that staff has put into this report and really appreciate that the Commission is giving this careful analysis. I ask the Commission to really examine what's missing here. We've already heard some clear data points about what's really going on in the marketplace. In practical terms, this functions as a constructive ban on short-term rentals. The alternative of homestays is not going to realistically provide any meaningful public access to the coast. So right there, it's a hard stop. Can you imagine losing 67% of our available occupancy overnight? Demand for homestays is really limited. I mean, that's just not an option. There is a constructive solution here that's going to address all of the concerns that have been communicated and gradually and logically reduce the number of rentals over time. And that is to grandfather existing operators, only those who are already legally registered with the city and paying the TOT tax. These operators should remain fully subject to all the operational standards and enforcement provisions in the ordinance. If there are verified complaints or violations, then enforcement should be immediate and decisive. It's also important to recognize the role these rentals play in providing coastal access for families who would not otherwise visit Santa Barbara, people who would not stay in hotels and never participate in a homestay. Under a grandfathering approach, the permit should run with the operator, not with the property. When the property is sold, the short-term rental authorization would expire. This approach naturally reduces the number of rentals. Those have been paying good faith TOT and legally registered. Finally, consider the significant loss of TOT revenue when the city is already facing such a budget shortfall. For these reasons, I respectfully ask the Commission to allow existing compliant operators to continue through a grandfathering provision that is reasonable and thoughtful. Thank you.

Thank you. With that, I don't have any more virtual participants to speak, but I will acknowledge that we received written correspondence from Brandy Zender, Kelly Ari, Patricia Starks, Steve Johnson, Stacey Hahn, Brian Norling, Mary Watkins, David Sullins, Alex and Sarah, Rajiv Sabharwal, Mark and Jamie Mangiola, Oscar Gonzalez, Sherry Kohlberg-Ox, William Wolf, Ivana Rosenstein, Georgia Strickland, Nate and Deborah Luther, Lori Rafferty, Ilse Dawes, Eve Leeds, Diana Hooper, Walter Lewis, Mickey Gee, Elizabeth Bradley, Antonio Bistrin, Craig Leeds, Wendy Altman, Jennifer Berger, on behalf of the Santa Barbara Association of Realtors, Tiffany Holler, Leslie William, Cassie C. Schwartz, Mark Charlotte Warner, Theo Krakke, Dustin Hoyseth, on behalf of the Santa Barbara South Coast Chamber of Commerce, Anna Stern, Evie Flynn, Paul Stern, Bill Mackey, Ginger Rebsom, local resident, Mark David, Ted Kaplow, California Short-Term Rental Association and Santa Barbara Short-Term Rental Alliance, Andrew Roth, Aiden Williams, Sonia and Kevin Connors, John Bianchi, Nathan Luther, Joey Dudridge, Deirdre Black, Jennifer Kinsella, Louise Asbury, two submissions from Matthew Abbey and Bradley Vickers, and give it back to you.

Thank you for reading all 57 of the written public comment names. And thank you to the 21 who also made public comment today in person. Um, before we move into commissioner questions and, uh, followed by deliberations and comments, do we need a break? I'll ask staff and commissioners.

Okay.

I'm hearing a yes. Um, we will reconvene at is five minutes enough. Okay. Um, so at two 55.

Thank you. Thank you.

First, before I get into Commissioner questions, I want to turn it to staff. I believe there was a question about two bedrooms and home shares, if you can address that question.

Chair, boss, and the rest of the commission. So, yeah, the question was why limit home shares to two bedrooms. So we did look at what other communities are doing, sort of industry standard, and that seemed to be a very common number. I kind of view it as a subset of a short-term rental. You know, you might have a whole house, and then a home share is a smaller subset. a type of overnight accommodation, so we wanted to keep it at a sort of smaller scale for that reason.

Okay, thank you. All right, so now I will open it up to my fellow commissioners for questions, and I see Commissioner Bauke first.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I just got some very basic questions, and I'll reserve my other questions because I tend to HOG UP THE QUESTION PERIOD A LOT OF TIMES, SO I'M GOING TO JUST DO A FEW RIGHT OFF THE BAT. AND IF STAFF COULD WALK ME THROUGH WHAT, BECAUSE I SEE TWO DIFFERENT NUMBERS. I HEAR THERE'S 25 PERMITTED, AND I HEAR THAT THERE'S UP TO 1200 UNPERMITTED. AT LEAST THAT WAS SOME OF THE TESTIMONY WE RECEIVED. That's a great disconnect. So could you clearly explain to us how do you get a permit? Is it really true there's only 25? Where are the 25? Then of that, through this ordinance, is there going to be a vesting of these 25 that have permits? And they will be able to continue in the future? Will they be able to be transferred in the future? Or will they become nonconforming and have some kind of sunset clause? Could you just walk us through sort of that piece of things?

Commissioner Vauquen, through the chair, I will start with part of that question, and I may have to turn it over to my colleagues. So you had asked, where did we come up with a 25 number of the existing legally permitted short-term rentals? And we are often asked this number. It's really challenging data to find because we don't have a short-term rental ordinance right now or a license specific for short-term rentals. So what we did is looked at project descriptions where someone submitted an application to convert an existing residential unit to a short term rental. And so when you go through our permit system it came up with a whole list of projects that applied for that process. Then I looked through the list and some of them were a commercial use that was asking to convert let's say an office and maybe do three short term rentals. That we consider a hotel, so we do not count that as one of the 25. What we did count it was if someone had a residential unit and then applied and got a zoning clearance or a building permit for a change in use to a short term rental. Most of those, there would seem to be a big push for them in about 2017, 2018. There were a lot of permits around that time. Almost all of them are inland. AREAS, KIND OF SCATTERED CLOSE TO DOWNTOWN. SOME OF THEM WOULD BE IN OUR COMMERCIALLY ZONED AREAS. SOME ARE IN THE RESIDENTIAL MULTIUNIT AREAS. HOW YOU GET TO THOSE PERMITS, I WOULD LIKE TO TURN TO MY COLLEAGUE, BRENDA. SHE WOULD KNOW MORE ABOUT THE PROCESS FOR GETTING CHANGE IN USE, IF YOU STILL WANT TO KNOW THAT ANSWER.

I'D LIKE TO KNOW THAT, TOO. AND I'D LIKE TO ALSO UNDERSTAND, BECAUSE THERE'S 1,200 folks out there that think they have something that has some kind of vesting. We need to really clearly define.

Yeah, that's a different question, and I may need to turn to the city attorney to answer that one.

Commissioner Bauke. Okay, so the question is, how does one get a permit for a short-term rental? And the answer is, it's complicated. It's not an easy process, and that's part of the reason why we are creating this. license program to make it a simpler, more straightforward process, but it really depends on what zone you're in, what size building you have. Are you in the coastal zone? Does it need design review? Does it need a development plan? There's a whole bunch of questions and answers you have to answer to go from a residential use to a commercial hotel use under our current standards. So it's, there's not a one simple answer of how one gets a permit, but if you get a building permit or a zoning clearance, for your change of use, then you're considered legal. The confusion, I think, is people who are paying taxes or have a business license, they think that that is a permit to operate, but it's not a permit through the community development department to be a legal short-term rental.

So that's why we could have such a difference between 25 and 1200 is some people and I think that's one of the things I think we're going to need to really hone in and resolve because if I was somebody that is in paying the TOT here city here's my money and I'm operating within the rules as I know them to be and as they're publicly stated I'd be concerned if we come in and just now say, oh, you can't do that any longer. So I just want to make sure we are very, very clear as to what would be able to continue to.

Chair Voss and Commissioner Bauke, to be clear, if they've received a permit, an actual permit to convert to what we would generally call it a hotel use, then they will be considered grandfathered in and they will continue to be able to operate once the new ordinance is in place.

Okay. So then as to those who do have permits, how do we currently handle nuisance and neighborhood complaints and neighborhood capability issues?

The way the city handles any other complaint in a residential zone district. So if we don't have a license system, we don't have a program, so we can't. yank a license if we never issued a license. That's why we're so happy to bring this program forward. So if there's a nuisance kind of complaint, then the police are called and that's all we can do. We can't enforce on the land use inconsistency until we get this ordinance adopted.

It's at home. So, okay, then the next question I had was about the parking.

Commissioner Bauke, if I may, I think you had a question about a business license.

Yeah, because some people have got a business license and they've been paying the TOT.

There's a history to that.

Are they considered to have an illegal or legal STR?

Yeah, there's a history to that, and City Attorney Doymas can speak to it.

And here, John, I said I wasn't gonna drag you into this, but.

Thank you, Chair Boss, Commissioner Baalke. It's a very fair question. It's been a very confusing question over a decade. And I think first I'll start with the main premise of this ordinance is to provide clarity when many people feel there has not been clarity. So business license, really the legal term we use in the city is a business tax certificate. It is essentially a certificate for any business in the city, whether you're selling shoes to a vacation rental to whatever enterprise you have to pay $25, $30 to have a license. Now it's an online portal. You do that and it's a way you at least are able to be registered with the city. and to pay business taxes, like in this case, TOT. Imagine a world, you being planning commissioners, where you can have a total new land use for $25. That's basically, that's the assumption here. That is not the reality. It is just a mechanism to pay with TOT. It is not a regulatory issue, it is not act, that doesn't have an vested property right does not act at all in that manner. It's just a certificate, a certificate to be able to pay taxes. Those taxes are owed whether you do it legally or illegally. In fact, for criminal prosecution, those who have not done it, we still collect on the TOTs for that because you cannot profit off illegal activity. So just to make that clear. So that's all a business license does. So when you look at these numbers where the estimates sometimes people say 800, 900, 1,000, We're talking about those on platform companies. And it's hard to determine that number too. So there was questions about what is the impact in terms of removing this. Sometimes those numbers are duplicate vacation rentals on different sites and those can be brought into that. So it's very hard to have data on something that really is in some sense underground in terms of the legality because you're not talking permitted. The true permitted going through a conversion process through community development like Ms. Ostringer said. That is a permitted vested right through an actual land use permit, and those are protected through even the adoption of this ordinance. There are no protections in terms of a vested land use right for those who have not gone that. You cannot rely on a business tax certificate to give you that right. So I hope that addresses that question. Okay, thank you. Thank you.

So back to my parking question. How did we come up with our parking standards, and could you walk us through those? Sure. I'm quite confused as to how they actually work and what there's terms in there that don't make sense to me So could you walk just walk us through sort of?

the parking piece The initial concept was to make a short-term rental consistent with how a single-family Unit is regulated in terms of parking. So it's two covered spaces for the short-term rental The addition of home shares was going to allow cars that could back out from the driveway. And the existing parking standards for single-family homes has the requirement for a third stall to be required for larger-sized homes, five or more bedrooms. That's the start of it. Is there something Brenda wants to add?

That's the start. You had specific questions, though?

I'm starting to understand how we got to those numbers in the first place.

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Through the chair, Commissioner Bauke. And the concept was for a short-term rental, you have no residents there. So it's quid pro quo from what would have been required under a building permit for a new home.

Okay. I'll stop now and pass the baton to others.

All right. Next we'll go to Commissioner Wiscombe.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a bunch of questions. And these are in no particular order, so I apologize. You mentioned that did the Coastal Commission staff recommend home shares or did staff make that suggestion to them? What was the...

So we actually gave them a copy of the ordinance that you saw in December, and we told them what your feedback was, and they responded to that, but they are very guarded about what they would say. We asked repeatedly, well, do you think this would be able to get approved? And they said, well, we kind of have to see it, I kind of have to see it. What they expressed during the phone call was, we're really concerned that your license area is quite narrow, we know that there are visitor serving uses down there already, And without home shares, we are not seeing a balanced approach to visitor serving uses in the coastal zone. Because what the map looked like is the magenta colored hatch without the green hatch, right? Because we didn't have home shares in the coastal zone. So they said outright, if you had home shares in the coastal zone, we could get a little bit closer to coastal act consistency. Is that a fair summary? Rosie's the in-house coastal...

Um, I'll just add to that, um, through the chair that, um, they brought up the term, um, a balanced approach several times. Um, they acknowledge that no short-term rental ordinance is the same for any city in California, up and down the coast. They said every city has unique circumstances. They acknowledge we have a housing crisis as it's often called, um, in our area, and we have a big need for long-term housing, but they also acknowledge. Coastal Act priorities and public access and visitor serving services. So I think they felt that originally when we were limiting the area for whole house short term rentals and home shares to a pretty smaller area, sort of closer to East Beach and West Beach and a little bit of Coast Village Road, They felt like there was a whole area of the city by the coast that was missing a little bit. They mentioned some of the coastal access beaches, you know, Hendry's Beach and the stairs, Mesa Lane and Thousand Steps as being areas that people should be able to be a little bit closer to and stay overnight. So that was sort of the impetus for them to recommend that we consider broadening the areas where we would allow home shares. to those residential zones. OK.

So they didn't say broaden it to STRs. They said broaden it to . Not necessarily, no. They just wanted that as an option. And if you've already repeated this, I'm sorry, but what other jurisdictions have this home share model in their coastal zone?

almost all of them, but they don't have very many licenses. Like Aleta has an allowance for it, and the county does, and the city of Carpinteria does, and I think Ventura does, but they just don't issue very many licenses for that model. May I add something to what Ms. Dice said? The Coastal Commission also, this is interesting because having, when I started this going way back, you know, 12 years ago when this was starting, the Coastal Commission's approach to short-term rentals was more stronger. It was stronger. They wanted them harder. As every agency has adopted a housing element and has balanced the need to preserve housing. We asked the staff, I said, are you seeing a lot of these up and down the coast? And they said, oh, are we? We actually have a button on our website where you can look at them. Everyone's coming in. It's sort of a season where agencies are going back to the Coastal Commission to say we have to adjust our coastal zoning or our local coastal program to accommodate more housing, more housing mandates because your sister agency HCD is telling us we have to. So the approach from the Coastal Commission has really significantly changed in the last 10 or 12 years, and that might get to some of the public comments you heard, but that's another thing that came out of these conversations.

Okay. Thank you for that. And then why are ADUs not permitted to be STRs?

Through the chair, Commissioner Wiscombe. So that's actually in our accessory dwelling unit ordinance itself that you cannot rent an ADU for less than 30 days. It's something that the state allows jurisdictions to adopt as part of their ADU ordinance. And that's a policy choice that was made at the time we adopted ADU ordinances. So that's just a longstanding prohibition on using ADUs for short term rentals. It also kind of goes back to the original intent of accessory dwelling units being a rental unit in the single unit zones. And that's the intent of the state legislature. And property owners get significant concessions for putting in ADUs. They don't have to meet standards that they would if they were building a new single-family home. So that was the exchange. You get this extra unit, but it's intended to be used for housing, long-term housing.

Is there a process whereby someone who has an ADU, like someone here spoke today has an ADU, that they would like to rent that and live in their house, and then it's a home share situation? Is there any sort of, in that ordinance, Ms. Deisty, is there any sort of policy that would let you get an exception to the rental? No?

Not to the ADU, but if they live in the primary unit, they could do a home share in their primary unit.

I mean, if they live in their ADU, they can do a home share in their primary unit. Oh, I'm sorry. They're living in the ADU.

I'm sorry. I missed that nuance.

Okay. Sorry about that. Yeah. Okay. And what was the rationale behind allowing home share on the entire Mesa and the entire coastal zone? I mean, it's just one big hatch of green all the way across. I don't think there's any exceptions. It's all green. So what was the rationale, just to satisfy Coastal Commission?

It really was to address what we heard from the Coastal Commission. And I know it kind of hurts, but they are the big variable in this whole process. If we do all this work and get it through your commission and the Coastal and the council, and then they say this is not sufficient, we have to go all the way back through the process. So we're doing the best we can to try to work with them but they were fairly categorical about saying you need to have more. Or, remember, they weren't thrilled with the narrowness of our license area for short-term rental. So we're balancing what we can.

Well, is there a possibility to extend your license area in the, okay, full disclosure, I live on the Mesa. So is there an opportunity to expand the STRs on the Mesa but cap them? cap them by neighborhood? I mean, I have seven on my street, and it's a one-block street. And I know other people have neighbors that are impacted by their STRs. Is there a possibility of doing that and capping the STRs by neighborhood?

The staff looked at that concept early on, but I want to get straight to your question. You're thinking that if we show the Coastal Commission a larger STR area, possibly going into part of the Mesa, that would mean we'd have to have fewer home shares. But I want to remind us that home shares are a very, very low percentage of the market. You heard it today from public comment. I've heard it from other agencies. And with a primary resident there, we're thinking if that's what we can get out of the Costa Commission, that's better than having more short-term rentals in the single-family zone districts.

Yeah, I get the philosophy, but there's also the risks that they're going to come back and say, you know, there's not enough home shares, so, you know, not enough people that do home shares, so you're going to have to find more STRs on the Mesa.

You mean the Costa Commission's going to come back? Is that what you meant?

Yeah. Okay. I'm trying to anticipate what they might say in terms of that, that that if they were satisfied that there's more STRs but that they're capped so that, you know, Braemar doesn't get, you know, 10 of them in, you know, a small area and, you know, it might work better.

So, Commissioner Wiscombe, I may not have finished answering the question. Staff did look at a concept of having a geographic limit area like Palm Springs, like Carbonaria, and also a cap area. The challenge that the staff found was that there's so many that are unpermitted partially because of a lawsuit and partially because there's such confusion about because I pay TOT, I'm legal, right? It was going to be very challenging to set something about who is operating could be part of that license. Also, it's a fairly rigorous process to establish a lottery system. We haven't done, the city hasn't done that in a long time. So we were hoping that this was a better Santa Barbara right size fit by just having a license area. It's something that council really was excited about over the last couple of years. And then the home shares are part of that to address what we heard directly from coastal commission.

Okay. And then how, um, how do you, how do you, a staff, really regulate home shares. How is that going to work so that you know that the primary resident or designated resident or property owner is actually living there while people are staying there?

That's a really good question. And in the ordinance, there is detail about how the application has to include the owner's authorization. It has to include an affidavit that the applicant is actually going to live there. It includes reporting requirements and posting notifications. So it's a requirement to be sleeping there between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. And once it's in the ordinance, as Mr. Duyma said, then it's a law that we can enforce against. Now how we enforce it when we're talking about someone, whether they're sleeping there or not, You know, there are probably lots of other laws that we have on the books that might not be perfect to enforce against, but this at least is a start. Okay.

Chair Boss and Commissioner Wiscombe, with their on the books, as Ms. Bradley says, it may be difficult to enforce, but not impossible. And if this is the direction the council wants to go, then we will take that direction and we will find a way to enforce on them.

Okay. Oh, you know what? I have one more thing that we were all forgetting to mention. We learned during this process and thankfully with Mr. Dormus and Ms. Tavon and Ms. Osteringer on the team, a big way to enforce and confirm compliance is through the advertising platforms. So part of what we would require is having our license, listed on Airbnb or VRB or any hosting license. And if that's posted and it's only listed for one bedroom as a home chair, but then on that platform, they're advertising for a vacant rental for three weeks in June. That's enforceable legally. I hope I got that right. Right. Ms. Hostinger. So that was another reason why the city's anxious to get this on the books.

Okay. Thank you for that. Um, Okay, and then another question I have, the proposed two-year ban on an STR if the unit was previously rented long-term, it may have an effect on the owner not renting the unit long-term if they think, you know, in two years I'm going to want to switch it into an STR. You know, and I just, I'm just wondering if you can comment on that. seems kind of inflexible because people's plans change and people's families grow and all of a sudden they need the, you know, they need the unit.

I'm going to turn that over to Ms. Belts or Ms. Tice.

I'll start with that. So through the chair, you know, we needed to include some tenant protections. We felt that we needed some measure that would show that we weren't, uh, that proposed license. Appliers were not kicking out their tenants so they could start a short term rental. So that was, um, where we came up with the 24 month.

Doesn't don't we already have tenant protections in place in other ordinances? I, I, it's okay. You can drop it. I just think it's, I think it's really inflexible for, for property owner. Um, And it may stop someone from renting it long term if they think in two years they're going to be, you know, they're going to have a change of use and, you know, they need to make it into an STR. So that's going to be a comment I have. So and why is it a requirement to list the city as an additional insured on every STR policy?

It's quite conservative, isn't it? It's actually a standard in a lot of other agencies' programs. So we adopted it.

OK. OK. I buy that. OK. So on page seven of the staff report, you talk about enforcements under postings. I'm not actually on that page, but I'm just trying to understand how this works. OK. You talk about the city has enforcement hours. In other words, is there a city enforcement hotline that you can call 24-7?

So the enforcement in that case is through the SB Connect website or app that people have on their phones. OK.

So that's how the information is going to be listed then. If someone needs to enforce, you can.

I'm sorry, what was the rest of the question?

I think it's on page seven.

Page seven.

Oh, I have the wrong. No wonder I have the wrong. Postings and listings. So must include valid STR home share license and the number, blah, blah, blah. And there's something about, oh, outside postings with the property managers or host contact information and the city's enforcement contact information. That's what the outside posting has to have. So I'm just asking what that is. If someone really needed to.

So you're, um, sorry, you're referring to the first bullet here with the what's on the actual posting. That's the city's enforcement contact information. So that could be, um, the police for noise complaints or to go through SB connect. Okay.

So SB connect takes complaints. Yes. Oh, okay. I didn't know that. I thought it just was one way. Okay. And, um, let's see. Oh, you've got lots of references in, well, not only in the staff report, but also in the ordinance itself, the draft ordinance itself to valid STR slash home share license. Is this going to be the same license and you're going to check a box as to whether it's home share STR, or are you issuing different licenses for home share and STR?

Same. They'll be the same. Different box, same license process. Okay.

Okay. And there were some questions I had on page 16. These are more detailed questions, but let's see. I don't have it here. Oh, you talk, and I don't have the page here, but on page 16, you talk about current lease or rental agreement. Does this mean a lessee can get a home share license? And I don't have page 16. I don't know why I don't. I should. Thank you.

Um, that's correct. Actually, that was important to several people on city council, especially since we have a high rental population that, um, people who are renting could also apply for a home share license.

Okay. So if you have a lease, you can get a home share.

If you have the owner's authorization and you meet all the requirements. Yeah.

And then, um, I got a question from someone in the public about the city administrative penalties. Each day of a single violation constitutes a separate offense. Does this mean that on day two of the same violation, the fee goes up to as much as $3,000, or does it stay at the $1,000 because it's the same violation, but it's day two?

Commissioner Wiscombe, through the chair, could you repeat that question? I'm not sure I'm understanding it.

You have violation... and you have this sliding scale upward, $1,000, $3,000, $5,000, up to $1,000, $3,000, and $5,000. And then it says that each day of a single violation constitutes a separate offense. So does this mean on day two of violation number one, you're going to get up to a $3,000 fee? Yeah. Because it says constitutes a separate offense. So I'm just trying to make it clear. This was a question I got from someone.

Chair Bosc, Commissioner Wiskin. So the language is not unusual in our ordinance elsewhere or many cities. So municipal codes have what's continuing violation. So every day a violation exists is a separate new violation. And the reason is that, I'll give you the perfect example and then directly answer your question. Unless you have a dangerous condition on your property that's a code violation. Every day you allow it to exist as a separate and new violation to address the severity of it and to escalate it and to make sure it's addressed. So that's kind of the premise of why many cities have that. So to answer your question directly, if it's one day, then that's it. But yes, the next day is a brand new violation. So it does go up. Now there's eventually a cap within the highest level and that cap is for a whole year because it resets after 12 months, right, for everybody. Day two, it goes up. Day three, so it is part, so each new day you do that illegally is a separate new violation.

Yeah, that wasn't quite clear, so I just, thank you.

And then just to answer quickly earlier, since I'm up here, your enforcement question. So, yes, we have the, you know, we don't have like 24-hour staff to do that, but we do have like SB Connect, other resources that eventually get funneled TO CODE ENFORCEMENT STAFF TO DO FOLLOWING UP AND EVERYTHING ELSE ON THAT. I HOPE THAT ANSWERS THAT QUESTION.

IT SEEMED LIKE WE HAD PUBLIC COMMENTERS THAT ARE REALLY FRUSTRATED BY, YOU KNOW, LOUD NOISE, KARAOKE MUSIC OR WHATEVER AND, YOU KNOW, NOTHING IS.

AND THAT'S SPLIT. SO FOR EXAMPLE, IF YOU HAVE LOUD NOISE OR PARTY, JUST BECAUSE IT'S A VACATION RENTAL DOESN'T MEAN THAT IT'S A DIFFERENT makes a violation any different. That would normally sometimes be handled by the police department, and they wouldn't look at the issue of vacation rental operating. They would just look at the noise issue and does it violate the noise ordinance. So that would go separately to, for example, a police department. If it's a land use issue on an STR issue, that would go to the code enforcement staff or STR staff to address that violation.

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Thomas. Appreciate it.

Okay. And then... Another question. In the proposed ordinance, have you considered a shorter grace period for STRs in the coastal zone? Just because this is going to be a much longer process. And I think, you know, it's fair to coastal zone residents who have, you know, who are subject to neighborhoods that have STRs. It seems like maybe a three-month grace period or something or rather than the six month, rather than the hundred, you have 180 days, right?

Right. Yeah. So we talked about a range of options and the six months was seen as a reasonable and fairly conservative grace period because there are operators that are paying TOT that may not comply with the licensure and they're going to have to forfeit entirely, but they've already booked guests. six months ahead, so we didn't want to necessarily ruin that for people that are booking them seemingly on available sites. But within six months, if they don't get their permit, then they will have to seize operations. So the importance of that public outreach to the operators that are not legally permitted and are just paying TOT and they think they're legal, That's going to be very critical, and that will be the message we send. So six months was seen as, you know, we started out with a two-year, and then we started out with one month. And because it's a new program and starting this licensure online and seeing how it goes, we need to make sure that we can handle it too. We settled on six months.

Okay. That's great. Thank you for that. And then my last question, I'm sure everyone will be glad it's my last question. There was a letter from the California Short-Term Rental Association that cites a market analysis prepared by Seto Consulting. And has staff examined that? And do you have any comments on that? Because that was the pretty big, bulky part of their comments.

Yes, Commissioner, which has come through the chair. I just saw the letter today and asked staff if a study had been submitted, but it hasn't. So we have not seen it yet. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you. That's all my questions. Thank you, Madam Chair.

That's it? Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Wardlow. Thank you, and thank you so much, staff. I know this is a major effort. So first, so this ordinance is taking a zoning-based approach instead of a regulatory program that would utilize tools like a cap and a required management and anti-concentration tools. And I just want to understand, and I know you've touched on this a little bit, but why we landed on this, and did we look at other cities that have taken a zoning-based approach as opposed to a cap and these kind of regulatory program tools? Or are we the only city doing a zoning-based approach?

So Commissioner Wardlow, through the chair, we did look at other cities, as Ms. Bresley has mentioned. And we find some cities take both approaches, a zoning-based approach and a cap. I don't know the answer if there's other cities that are strictly doing a zoning-based approach. Again, she mentioned cities near us that are doing caps and home shares and STRs. So I don't have the answer if other cities are only doing it as a zoning-based approach.

Okay. So we haven't found, like, an example city that we're trying to emulate. We're trying to create our own, which is very... We are trying to create our own, yes. But when we look at, you know, I know there's a lot of focus on the Coastal Commission in this discussion, and I'm looking at some cities that have recently gotten their STR ordinances approved by the Coastal Commission, so a city like Del Mar that I think could be comparable in some ways. Did we look at those types of cities where they did a cap and... I just am not really understanding why we didn't pursue the cap-based approach, because I do have some concerns about this approach.

I'll go ahead and start and see if anyone else wants to weigh in. But again, when we looked at the geographic cap, we had concerns about fairness, because as we've mentioned, we know there's Let's just take the Mesa, for example. There's a significant number of people operating there now. And so what number would we choose that would be fair for that area of the city versus say somewhere inland or a different part of the coastal zone? Also, we were trying to administer a program we could handle with existing staff. We're having, as you know, budget issues with the city and having that cap and lottery system would require potentially additional staff to manage it and control it. It's just a harder system to run on existing staff and resources.

Okay. That's helpful. So we've all talked a lot about the number here. How many STRs do we think roughly right now in the coastal zone, legal, non-legal, whatever, do we have? What's the ballpark number that we're talking about? Because I see in the staff report we noted 1,500 as of September 2022, but I don't see an updated number. And of those, there were only 19 that were considered licensed. So what's a ballpark of where we're at in the coastal zone?

Well, as we've mentioned previously, so we did an inventory of change and use permits, found 2,500. properties that have gone through that process. And then there's a couple of pending projects as well. All those change in use permit, you know, the ones we're calling the legally permitted are inland. I think there's one pending in the coastal zone. I'm not going to comment on the ones operating with a business license and a TOT because we don't count, you know, the uses that are not legally allowed. The number's been mentioned in several reports, but that's based on some of the work that the city attorney does on their enforcement end.

But just a ballpark, like coastal zone, how many are we dealing with? We have no idea.

Commissioner Wardlow, through the chair, they're illegal, and so it's not possible to really get a quantifiable number because there's some that are paying TOTs, and we can go through and maybe see those. But there's illegal ones. There's ones that are not even on the platforms. So to give you a ballpark, we could give you an inaccurate number.

OK. All right, I'll move on. Okay, so we don't have that number. Do we have an idea of based on the current approach that we're taking in this ordinance with the zoning-based approach, how many properties would be eligible in the coastal zone for this program based on the parking requirements and all the different things that you guys have laid out here? Like how many units are we talking about? I was hoping to have the other number to compare, but...

I think that Ms. Dice took it. So in the license area for short-term rentals, correct?

In the coastal zone. So I'm sorry, are you looking for the number of STRs in the license area or the entire coastal zone?

How many buildings units would be eligible for this program based on the zoning, like roughly?

Oh, just based on the zoning. We have some numbers, but they don't take into account. into account the parking. We didn't look at each parcel. We just know how many residential units there are.

I assume that when we tried to evaluate whether to do a cap or not, we would have looked at how many roughly are in the coastal zone.

There's roughly about 4,000 residential units that could be home shares in the coastal zone.

Sorry, not home shares, the STRs.

Oh, the STRs. Just a sec.

And then coastal...

Potentially about 500 or so residential units, but that's not taking into account, like you said, the parking restrictions and those things. That's just the number of residential units who could potentially apply.

Okay.

Yeah, in the license area.

Okay. Okay. Great. I'll go back to this later. OK, switching gears a little bit. So we're obviously in a budget shortfall. What is the current TOT we are collecting from STRs as of now? And I understand that there's discrepancies over people paying TOT that may not actually be licensed or official. But just what's the rough number that we're currently generating from this versus what we expect to receive under this proposed ordinance?

I wish I could give you that ballpark, but it is not clear because of finance has a spreadsheet, but because they're not here, I'm reluctant to share what they've said because it's varied also over the years. So I'd say it's under $2 million, but I don't want to be held to that because we really need the finance department to explain that. And we didn't put a lot of emphasis in today's presentation about finances because that's really going to be council's headache. We're looking for you to be honing in on the land use and the permitting system. I know it's hard to separate them too.

I appreciate that. Has the finance committee reviewed this most recent draft ordinance and weighed in on this already?

Yes, but she hasn't run numbers to say, oh, this might cause a blank, you know, drop in TOT. We don't have that number yet.

Okay. Because we, okay.

But she will, by the time it gets to council, yeah, yeah, by ordinance committee, for sure.

Okay, so we'll have that information by the time we go to council, and that's why you're focusing the conversation there. Okay. I appreciate that answer. I understand that some of the short-term rental platforms have offered to collect the TOT and remit it back to the city. So has the city discussed this as an opportunity for tax compliance, like working directly with the platforms?

Yes, we had that conversation with Airbnb and also Expedia, and they would be willing to do that.

Okay, I think that's something that's important. Switching a little bit to I know I've had a couple conversations about this, and I just want to clarify. In the ordinance, it's asking about that there's only one STR allowed per complex, like apartment complex. When we're talking about an area like El Escorial that's in the current zoning that's proposed, those are condos is my understanding, right? But there's the individual kind of standalones on one side, and then there's what feels like an apartment complex on the other side. The El Escorial is on the left. Is that going to be subject to the one per complex or no because they're individually owned? I know we talked about this earlier.

So the El Escorial would be a not restricted to the one per complex because those are individually created small lots. When I looked up that, and I know you're referring to an apartment complex, I didn't see that. I saw everything in that area listed for sale in the million. So if it's listed for sale, it's not an apartment as an individual unit. So I presume that they're all... condominiums just named differently okay and so that so the whole one per complex does not apply to that whole area right and remember I you know I appreciate that you did the research and you say gosh there's all these listed on there and well guess what they're in the coastal zone so we've been hands off you know yeah okay um

Another question, I've heard a lot about grandfathering and I just want to get a little bit of clarity because I want to be cognizant of, you know, this is all quite confusing and I'm sure for folks that have invested a lot of money into properties and plan for this. These changes are significant. So, but it sounds like we only have like maybe 25 folks that have figured out how to do this the right way. And so those are the folks that would get grandfathered in. Is that correct?

Correct.

And then all these folks that are paying TOT tax, thinking they're doing it the right way, but they're not doing it the right way. Those are not going to be grandfathered in.

Correct.

And that's where we're giving the six month grace period to help them understand and make sure that they understand that they can't move forward with this anymore.

Well, they may succeed, but they have to start the process because right now they don't have that protection of being a nonconforming use under our conversion of use process. Okay.

Okay. So on home shares, you mentioned this a little bit. So the ADU, if you're a house on, since this current version now says that home shares can be anywhere in the coastal zone, If you have a house on the Mesa and you have an ADU, are you saying that you can use the home share program if you stay in the ADU and somebody stays in your house? Is that, because I was looking. The opposite.

The opposite, right? You have to be in the main house to be the primary resident, to be accountable for your guest, and the ADU is not rentable under a short-term basis.

This seems complicated in an enforcement perspective, but okay. No, she said she can't. That's why I wanted to clarify. So I think there was some confusion that we thought previously that you had said if you were doing a home share program, the person could stay in the ADU and the primary owner be on site in the ADU and then rent out the home. But you're saying no, right? Because that was my understanding, but I just wanted to make sure for the commission.

Previously in the hearing, you mentioned that.

That's correct, what you just said. What I said. Okay.

I think maybe because we're talking about home share versus short-term rentals. Only home share. I'm just talking about home share.

So in the home share program, it is not allowed that the primary person would stay in an ADU and then rent out their home.

Okay. Well, because that wouldn't be a home share because you wouldn't be living in the same unit. If the owner's in the ADU and you have a guest in the primary resident, that's not a home share. That would be an unhosted short-term rental.

Right. Okay. Just wanted to make sure we're all on the same page about that.

Chair, boss, Commissioner Ward, if I can just kind of clarify one more time. So it's because with the home share, the owner needs to be living in the house and you're sharing your home. So you're in the house and you have a short-term guest. That's who's allowed to be the hotel person, if you will. Your ADU cannot be a hotel guest. That has to be a long-term rental as well. So you have to have a resident in the house and a resident in the ADU. Your hotel guest is only sharing your house with you. Does that?

Yes, that makes sense. That's loud and clear to me. I just want to make sure because it was a little confusing earlier. So did you have a follow up? I know. That's why I'm asking.

We feel your pain.

We're just trying to get everyone on the same page. I do want to clarify for myself again. So if I am a homeowner, I have a house that I live in and I have an ADU. If I am in the coastal zone and I am participating in home share, I would need to be staying in my regular primary residence with the short-term guests, the ADU would need to be empty unless it's rented out to somebody in long-term. Okay.

Long-term, right.

Okay. Thank you for clarifying.

The intent, just to clarify again what the staff had said in the presentation, and that at this time, ADUs are intended to be protected for long-term residential housing only. So the idea is that hotel guests are not staying in ADUs, and that home shares, the reason why there's that comfort level there is that the resident is still living there in their house, and they're just sharing their house. So it is very tricky, but I wanted to make sure we were all clear.

Got it. Okay. I think there's a lot of concern about the home share. As we just discussed, this seems very difficult to enforce. I'm concerned that this is not the right approach based on the enforceability options that we have. Can you comment on the enforceability of home shares? How are we going to ensure someone will be present at the homes to manage the rental? Are there any better approaches that limit short-term rentals on places like the Mesa but have more enforceable regulations? I'm concerned that by the approach of hyper regulating the zoning from a zoning perspective that we are setting ourselves up for failure with this home share program because as you've explained in the jurisdictions that we're comparing ourselves to or that there was analysis done the demand here is so significant and we can't even apparently come up with a baseline number of how many of these are existing in the coastal zone so there's 4,000 right and we're talking about a zone of 500 are folks really just going to take the home share program and abuse that because And I'll let you answer the question of how are we going to enforce the home share program.

Chair Wardlow, we've built into the home share ordinance specific mechanisms that are to help with the enforcement, such as the owner has to sign. Yes, it's an affidavit, but it might be difficult, but it's not impossible.

I like your optimism.

And there's a renewal process every year. And if there's three complaints, they aren't eligible to be renewed. And there's the SP Connect. And we built in as much as we could.

And in reading the ordinance, I think it's very robust. I'm still concerned that because of the demand on the MESA that we're going to end up with home shares being abused in this way. Okay, I feel like I'm taking up way too much time. I'm going to try and go faster. Switching gears to the inland. So in the last hearing, we had all discussed that you had to be in a historic building to do an STR. Now we're not talking about that right now. That's gone. So now we're just saying in the inland, in the commercial, in the map that you've shared, which I appreciate you guys combining the maps. Thank you. That's gone away. We're just doing the commercial areas.

Correct. OK.

And what was the rationale for that? Because I don't remember that directional change in the last hearing.

to be to be honest with you we looked at all the rigorous requirements for short-term rentals in the inland area and Realized that not a lot of places are going to meet the mark and to restrict it to only historic homes Or historic structures that was going to be such a slight slight market that we didn't think that was necessary Okay, and then I assume that that's taking into account what we're trying to do with parking right the parking restrictions because when you look at the parking restrictions on top of the historic, okay and Right. I'm sorry. The parking restriction is going to be a tough wall to climb.

So when we look at somewhere like El Escorial, and I grew up like El Escorial, right? If we're requiring that there's two parking spaces per unit.

Right. They're out. because only every unit has one stall assigned. So there are lots of restrictions within this once you start thinking about an example of what you could do.

And I grew up as a renter in Alice Quarry also. And I've heard a lot of home shares or STRs in this area. Okay on the on another question on the parking it seems like we're concerned about tandem parking and I assume that has to do With specific like why why are we so concerned about that? And why do we have different it doesn't really make sense to me that we would have different requirements for Sorry, I'll just stick with that. Why are we concerned about the tandem parking?

well, we were trying to find a way for home shares to a Be successful in the application process and if the resident is already Living in the home and renting out one bedroom then the two stalls if they're compliant with today's codes Are there for the residents? You know the the primary residents and so it's okay to allow them to park in there in the driveway Like ad use may to I mean a lot of us were talking about this when we were drafting and saying well you know, look at what we have to do for ADUs. I mean, they're parking in the driveway. So this was just one way to try to make it possible for home shares. Okay.

This has been really helpful. I want to give my other commissioners a chance to weigh in, but I understand the schedule that you've presented. If there are additional changes, obviously, I think I'm very concerned about this home share aspect. There's various things. If we do have additional changes, can we bring this back to Planning Commission for review and recommendations before it goes to council?

The city administrator and council, oh yeah, we'll have Mr. Busk answer that.

Thank you. Um, commissioner Ward though. Yes, of course. That's always at the discretion of the planning commission. If, if you feel this is not ready to move on, then you would continue it to the planning commission. Um, this is a high priority for city council. So if there are comments that you could make that could be forwarded to ordinance committee, I think we would prefer that as a way to keep this moving. But, um, it really depends on the scope and breadth of the types of comments that you would be making.

I really appreciate that. Okay, that's the remainder of my questions for now. Thank you. We'll move to Commissioner Peterson.

Thank you, Madam Chair. A lot of my questions have already been addressed, but just to go over a couple things. By the time this gets to council, will we know how much we're slated to lose in TOT if this goes through?

Yes.

Okay. Okay. And it's under $2 million. Some folks were saying it's higher than $2 million.

Don't hold me to that, please, because it's really finance department's data. And so they're going to be crunching the numbers in preparation for the council hearings.

Okay. And then just to clarify, the reason why home shares are included in the coastal zone is because of our interactions with Coastal Commission. Correct. And that's their feedback. And they're saying... It's getting us closer to Coastal Act compliance. Is that a good indication that it's going to go through, or we don't know?

We're hopeful. Yeah, I would say we're hopeful, but they wouldn't commit to any particular direction, just talking staff to staff. And they never know how. They may have a recommendation, but then the Coastal Commissioners themselves may have a different one. So it's hard to predict for sure.

Okay. Thank you. I'm switching gears here, but I'm thinking about enforcement. And I know we don't know how many are listed. There's a lot of figures out there. But I did a search for next month, second week, and there's over 1,000 listed in the city. And that's not how many are permitted. So to what extent have we worked with short-term rental platforms in the past to help us enforce our current ordinances?

Commissioner, this is kind of outside the scope of what we need to talk about. We're really more focusing on the land use right now. And what we do, we'll figure out the enforcement later. And as Ms. Bradley said, we have had conversations with regards to this ordinance and working with the platforms.

But enforcement is in the ordinance and specifically related to Senate Bill 346. Correct. That was passed. And so since we're going to be adopting, I just have some questions on... Let me try to pivot and try to ask what's appropriate here. Have the platforms been receptive to, does 346 allow us to ask platforms to take listings down or can we only find folks?

Oh, we could ask them to take it down.

And are they required to do that?

I'll have City Attorney doing this.

Yes, Chair Boss, Commissioner Peterson, they would. And if they wouldn't, we would obviously take legal action, whether it's enforcement, whether it's getting an injunction. And I think Ms. Austringer's point about the enforcement mechanism, you know, we have time here to really focus. Our comments is important to get the land use particulars of what's going on. I hate having the THE PLATFORM COMPANIES DRIVING THE POLICY. BUT I WILL SAY THIS, AT LEAST IN TERMS OF PLATFORM COMPANIES, OVER THE DECADE, THERE HAVE BEEN CONVERSATIONS IN THE PAST WHERE THEY SAID, WE'LL COLLECT THE TOTS, BUT WE'RE NOT GOING TO SHARE WITH YOU THE LISTS OF ALL THE VACATION RENTALS. SO WE WANT A WALL BETWEEN THE FINANCE DEPARTMENT AND THE CITY ATTORNEY'S OFFICE. THOSE ARE REQUESTS WE'VE GOTTEN A DECADE AGO. The temperature may have changed. In my experience, the more lenient you are, the more cooperative they are. But that's why I'm saying why policy really shouldn't be dictated in terms of how they operate or what their preference is. The ordinance does contain mechanisms in there that would allow us to now enforce in the platform companies. Because what has been missing all these years is not only clarity on having a vacation rental ordinance, not only giving that clarity to the public that seems to have needed it, but there's nothing also holding the facilitator of it responsible. And so whatever policy is decided by city council, that's such an important tool because it's not just on the backs of individual people. You can go to the source of what is really promoting this issue. And so that's where a lot of focus can be on enforcement as well.

So what I'm curious about is, we have our intent and what's on paper in this land use policy and then what may actually happen. And we have a lot of folks underground right now are not permitted, you know, what I can see. And so if this goes through, do we feel confident that we have the ability to actually implement the land use policy and have it be effective?

I think Ms. Ostringer said it best. It will be difficult but not impossible. And, you know, there are a lot of ordinances we have that have a strong policy goal in mind for the betterment of the community. Some of them are very difficult to enforce, but we don't use that as a barometer in terms of whether we go through it. So I think we are acknowledging the difficulty of it. for sure. What this ordinance is supposed to do is give us even more tools to enforce. So I think your question highlighting the platform companies is important because it's much more difficult to go after a thousand individuals versus five or six companies doing that, that advertise it. It gives us an ability to narrow down and have even a greater focus. So that's part of the goal of accomplishing this ordinance, to give those tools.

And I know it was mentioned earlier in a different context, but we've found these companies to be cooperative with our efforts as we're drafting this ordinance. We've been in touch with them.

I have not. I don't know if staff has, so I'll let staff answer that question.

I've had several meetings with them, and they didn't comment on today's hearing, but we've actually talked about the schedule with them. I think they tried to reach some members on city council and that was not very open, so they're probably not putting a lot of effort into tracking this. But they haven't represented that they're gonna fight us and again, we have no public comment from them for today's hearing. But we have contact places and one of them actually gave us a whole bunch of code examples or standards of operation that was helpful, so they're trying.

So you wouldn't have concerns with their cooperation right now? No. Okay. Those are my questions for now, and I'll say more in comment later.

Thank you. We'll go to Vice Chair DiLugio.

I'm not going to say too much. I'm going to go on more comments, but I just have a couple of questions. I'm still trying to figure out the cap situation. You went to the Coastal Commission. I understand that they said it needed to be more broad geography and a balanced approach. You made that comment. So what is CARP? CARP is also in the coastal zone, and they have a cap. So what is that all about? How does that work? Have we looked at that as a possibility for this regulation here?

So Carpinteria's ordinance was adopted a while ago, and the entire city is in the coastal zone for Carpinteria. So they've had this on the books for a long time. And it took them a while to get this off the ground. They also had pre-existing operators before they had a license program. I am not sure exactly how many years they've had it, but when I talked to Nick Bobroff over there, they said it's actually achieved equilibrium. So they have a certain number in each geographic area, and everybody knows who they are, and it's kind of reached a happy place. It's very, very stable. People don't give them up and people don't turn them over. And the neighbors sort of accepted them, but it is capped. I don't know off the top of my head what number per area it is. That's just their system.

It doesn't seem like it's broad-based. You're saying that the reason we're putting so many home shares is to balance it out and make it more broad-based. I'm not hearing CARP is broad-based, their approach. And that's the input you got from the Coastal Commission.

I believe their system has their STR zones closest to the beach, but again, their whole city is in the coastal zone, so it's citywide.

So it sounds like they are regulating it. Yes. Okay. So next question is, um, just real quick before we move on.

Um, I did want to comment that part of the reason why we were leaning into home shares more than allowing a few STR sprinkled throughout the coastal zone has to do with the lower cost visitor accommodation. Home share is a different model, but it's one that is naturally a lower cost. And so we feel like that played into those policies. better than a whole home short-term rental.

Right, and I'm in agreement with that. Yeah, that's good. I like that. I would just, but I did feel like they found a way to regulate it in a very limited way. So the next question, I'm not going to belabor on this, but I, of course, red flags, red flags. It's like how much, we have $4 million right now supposedly in TOT from this, and what will it be later? I know that's more of a council needs to look at that, but I hope you will bring that to the council's attention If it's $4 million now, what would it be then? And then the next question I have to raise is we have our own enforcement mechanism, I understand, here right now to do enforcement. Maybe you can help me with this. So how are we collecting all this business tax? Is it business taxes being enforcement looking at business taxes, or are they also looking at the platforms to do enforcement?

So... Chair, boss, Commissioner DeLucio, the enforcement takes a look at it from a holistic point of view. So if you have one that is operating impermissibly, they not only enforce on the land use aspect to cease operations, but any back tax, oh, they do that as well. I know we've kind of talked about it, so let me give you the kind of, when it comes to taxes, let me give you probably the best analogy, probably a good one considering it's 4 o'clock. So let's say I open up a bar, right? And I get my business tax certificate that says, my kind of business outlook for the city that says I'm a bar, right? But getting that doesn't necessarily make me a bar to sell alcohol. I need an ABC license. I know I've had it before, dealt with that, right? And so... If I don't have the ABC license and selling drinks, I'd be operating illegally, even if I'm paying my taxes. Paying the taxes does not somehow legalize such use. Same thing when it comes to this issue. You have the business tax certificate, but then you need the land use permit to be able to have that done, the conversion. So whether you pay your taxes or not does not create the legality of such an action. It is whether you follow the legal process, which For a bar, it would be an ABC license. For this issue, it would be the land use conversion permit. So when we're looking at enforcement, though, we don't just forgive TOTs because it was done impermissibly. So for enforcing on it, if they have paid it, then great. We won't enforce on that. That would not be a cause of action to enforce on. But if they've done both, not paid TOT, operating illegally, there you have, to explain it in a simple way, then you have two kind of causes of actions. So that's how enforcement would be. So it all depends on what the facts are on that particular situation or case. Okay, thank you.

You know, I'm going to save mine for comments, and I'll just spare you with more questions at this time.

All right. Thank you. Um, I think my remaining questions, a lot of them have already been asked, but I have a few more getting into the weeds. So apologize in advance. Um, in terms of enforcement at the front end, um, the ordinance, uh, specifies, uh, inspections. And I understand that the building official would be building and safety staff. Um, I'm thinking about implementation of this and hundreds of units, um, seeking to get an inspection and a six month period. How many how will that what will that look like as far as staffing and getting all that done in a short period of time?

chair boss We are allowed to charge a fee or a license fee Permit fee for total cost recovery. So at this point, I don't know what that is But that is how we would cover it.

I understand. I mean do we have the staff and Are we prepared to have the staff, even assuming the cost is covered?

Alison, you know, there's been thinking on that.

Chair, boss, I do think that we'll have the staff available to do that. I don't expect there to be hundreds within a one-week period that are looking to get their permits, so I think that it's something that our existing building staff can accommodate. Okay, that's reassuring.

I appreciate that. And then as far as enforcement for home shares or short-term rentals that are operating once they have the license, I understand that there will be signage outside. I'm thinking about waking up to loud music at 1 a.m. Am I going to walk half a block down in my pajamas and, you know, read the sign and then make a phone call? Or am I going to be submitting the SB Connect document

Complaint or concern right at that time and is somebody going to respond right then so I'm thinking about how this will play out in my neighborhood So so one of the requirements is that the property manager has to respond within 30 minutes so that's you know call number one also when the licenses are there's a mail notification to neighbors within 300 feet, I think, is that correct? So some people will have advanced notice about it and tuck it in your important numbers to list and then the SB connect and that's kind of the best we could figure out for a new program.

Thank you, I appreciate you reminding me about the mailing. I think that will be helpful. All right, other questions about So I wanted to clarify, I think it may have been slide 26. There was some comment about limited parking like hotel zones. I appreciate that the ordinance had a lot of detail about parking and thank you for diving into it more during the presentation. I think I am still a little confused or concerned about locations. We're using Ella score Yale because that's a heavily used short-term rental area right now. So each unit could be a short-term rental if they had more parking, but they don't have more parking. So that means all of those are, none of those will be able to be a short-term rental.

I think that's the way it's going to shape up, honestly. Okay. And I think you're referring to Ms. Haller's comments about the prohibition on street parking and that hotels can get on street parking allowances. This ordinance actually prohibits any ADU, any short-term rental in the license area from being eligible for the residential parking permit program. Awesome. So the program comes down pretty hard on parking.

Yeah, understood. Okay. And then as far as a report a few years down the line, what does reporting look like as far as, I know that we'd have annual TOT and quarterly TOT reports, but about this program, I'm curious what the reporting looks like to either Planning Commission or City Council as far as how is compliance and enforcement going? What have the impacts of TOT been? And then because the intention of this is to preserve long-term housing, what changes are we seeing in long-term housing availability? So can you talk about reporting back?

There's already a nice standard where city attorney comes and talks about their program and your enforcement. And this year in August of 25 community development was right behind them at the same report to city council as an update on their ordinance development. So we could, continue that if City Attorney will have us partner. And whether that includes TO2, it could be considered in that report to Council. The question about housing preservation as a result of this, I would...

Since that's the primary goal.

It is, and I would turn to Ms. Dice here, or actually we'd have to think about that.

Well, Chair Buss and... Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know if we'll be able to come up with numbers of like, we don't really collect information from property owners if their unit's vacant, if they're renting it, if they're living in it. we'll have to think about how we can look at metrics to report on that. There is census data that gives us numbers of vacant homes, but that's imperfect data and it's every five years or so. But that's the kind of data we'll have to rely on.

So absent of having a rental registry, then we would look at how many units were operating a short-term rental before this ordinance went into place compared to after. Compared to what's now. ideally make an assumption, but not necessarily have the data.

There may be special studies we can work on with the help of a consultant, but we'll have to look into that.

Okay, thank you. Those are all of my remaining questions. Any other questions from commissioners? Commissioner Bauke.

I have one question. This, I think, is probably to legal counsel about the transferability of folks when they get one of these permits. If they sell their property, do they lose the right to continue to use it as an STR, or does it carry with the property? Because, I mean, definitely it would have a material effect as to the value. I wasn't sure exactly what the intent of the language on transferability is.

Commissioner Bauke, through the chair, I will defer to Ms. Belt, but it's not transferable to another property. And I believe it's in the ordinance that once the property is sold, the, the STR program goes away or the non-conforming use. Is that correct? Ms. Belts?

That's correct. They're non-transferable except for the, those few that are the non-conforming ones that got a permit to operate under the current standards.

Like the 25, right? Right.

Those can continue as long as they continue to get their license, pay all their taxes, and comply with the operational standards, like the performance standards.

So what's the thought process of them not being transferable? I mean, I'm trying to understand because, you know, there's a lot of money invested and there's a different value. from a real estate standpoint, to an STR than it would be for something that isn't an STR, if it's a single-family house, for example, because just the cash flows are different.

Sorry, you're asking why are they non-transferable? Yeah.

Why have we made that policy, or you're proposing this policy choice of not making them transferable? If you've established an STR through this, and I'm thinking this program exists, okay?

Yeah. It's a one-year license.

Why are we not allowing it to be transferable?

It's a one-year license, and it's issued to a specific person because they have to meet certain criteria about being a host or a property owner. Looks like Ms. DeBusk has something to add.

Commissioner Bauke, just to follow on what Ms. Beltz just said, there's a standard that each owner can only have one, and so that's why the license can't just transfer. They could apply for a new license, and if they meet the criteria, they would be issued the license, but it's not going to automatically transfer to a new owner.

Okay and that leads me to a question I already had is if somebody already has more than one STR is any of the 25 owned by more than one by one party they have more than one?

We don't know the answer to that but if they are non-conforming now and they have a permit they will be allowed to continue.

Okay so if somebody this is hypothetical but if somebody did own more than one are they going to have to dispose of properties until they get to one, so they'd have to, like, spin them off to other LLCs or sell them to other parties.

Commissioner Bauke, there's two situations. One are the 25 that have gone through the process. Those can continue in perpetuity because they've been vested. For ones that do not have those permits, then, yes, they're going to need to make those financial decisions of what to do if they own more than one.

Okay. Thank you.

Also, I think it's an important Chair, boss, Commissioner, that's an important point you raised too. Staff already alluded to the main point. When looking at the 25 or under number that has gone through the conversion process, they have a permit. A permit is a much more distinct... legal document has different legal recognition than a license. And so licenses can be or cannot be transverbal. In this situation, the ordinance is done as more from a contractual basis, a license to be able to do that. And it's based, predicated on the person to agreeing to all the rules of the ordinance. So it does not have the same weight as a permit would. So the other ones that have been permitted through the land use process, they already have that entitlement. through the land use, and that is why that is different. That is vested. So you could have multiple owners over the years. That property can still stay and has that value. A license doesn't vest that way. It can be revoked, right, where a permit has a different, whole different kind of when you're talking about revocation. So that's why there's a huge distinction between the two. I hope that answers my question.

Commissioner Wiscom.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just had one last question. So in the coastal zone where the STRs are permitted, we're not talking home share, we're talking STR, you know, there's a lot of older properties. So have you considered a parking requirement waiver on any of the, including El Escorial, to be able to do an STR there? Do you have a process or did you consider a process for that?

Well, the ordinance is written to categorically disallow that. I'm sorry? The ordinance is written to categorically not allow that. So they can't request a parking modification, they can't carry forward a non-conforming parking situation, and that's the draft that you have. It's conservative.

Okay, because I'm not sure why those areas are hatched, like Ella Scorial would be hatched, if it has one parking space per unit and they're not going to be able to have an STR.

Commissioner Wiscombe, this was one of the questions that we asked Planning Commission in December for feedback, putting forth that requiring two spaces is a conservative approach. It could be even more conservative or it could be less conservative. And the feedback was, yes, we think they should have two spaces generally. So that's why I you know, we went with that. But if, you know, there could have been a decision if a property is non-conforming to that parking, then that's acceptable. But that wasn't the direction that we were given. So just as some background to why it's the two spaces.

Okay. Thank you.

Commissioner DiLuccio.

Wouldn't the HOAs play into this also, the homeowners associations? If you can come up with anything you want, and it's going to also be, if you have, I don't know, you're talking about all these condos, and say there's 100 units, the HOA can regulate that they do not want short-term rentals or X number can be. Is that correct? That's correct. Have you reached out to the Homeowner Association? Maybe it's kind of late in the game, but maybe that was another stakeholder you should have perhaps reached out to. It sounds like there's a good number of those.

I haven't had any conversations about that. I mean, we talked about it amongst the team and the conclusion from everybody's experience is that generally condo associations are not going to favor these conversions. So we just sort of let it lie. Yeah.

I'm going to move into deliberations and being aware of time. I am going to ask staff if you can project proposed actions, and then I want to quickly summarize what I'm hearing so far. If the ordinance were to move forward to ordinance committee and then to council, it sounds like we wanted more discussion on waivers, particularly for parking, TOT impact analysis, Enforcement details and assurances, specifically concerns about home shares. Firm plans for regular reporting, including TOT enforcement or compliance and housing impact. So that's kind of the feedback that I'm hearing that came from the questions. But we'll shift now into deliberations. And again, if staff can, if you have proposed actions or recommended actions for us, I think that would be helpful to guide the conversation as well. Begin with Commissioner Bauke.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Honestly, after reviewing all this, and first of all, staff's done a lot of work and a good job of bringing this to us. I'm unfortunately uneasy with where we're at. It's really clear that we have this disparity and a very strong, large disparity between that that is permitted and that that's operational out there. And I don't. currently see a very clear path to getting to this ordinance unless we have some kind of really clear structure of either a lottery system or a density by area system to take what we have operating, whether it's legal or not, into a format that would then able to proceed either whether it's a zoning base or density base i just i'm just not there yet so i'm just going to put that on the table uh we definitely i think this use is something that you know is we're a coastal town okay we're going to have visitors and the hotels in this town are very expensive There's no question about that. I know a lot of times, my daughter held her wedding here this year, and the big complaint from people that weren't from California was, wow, Jesus Christ, we're only going to stay here a day and leave to go to Ventura or somewhere else because it's so expensive. Or they went to doing some kind of Airbnb or something else. So that's just the reality that's out there. And having something between the hotels is something that I think from a market standpoint makes a lot of sense. The problem is, and the folks that live in residential neighborhoods definitely bought their property. And I didn't tell my talk to anybody about this issue. It's like, well, what about my quiet enjoyment of my property? And I know that this like basic party houses next door all the time. So that issue is, is what drives the resistance to, short-term rentals in this community. It's not about providing places for people to come and stay and enjoy our community, because I think this is very much a tourist-friendly town. So I'm not ready, but I think we need to really think about how we can transition from what we are currently operating in this non-permitted or semi-permitted world to a permitted world, and I really think doing THE DENSITY BASE THING MAY BE THE BETTER ANSWER OR SOME KIND OF LOTTERY SYSTEM WITH A DENSITY BASE TO GET THERE BECAUSE I DON'T THINK WE CAN JUMP TO WHAT WE'RE PROPOSING WITHOUT SOME KIND OF TRANSITIONAL PROCESS. THAT'S MY COMMENT.

THANK YOU. VICE CHAIR DELUCCIO.

I TEND TO AGREE THAT THIS IS REALLY PRETTY DRASTIC FROM 25 AND THEN I'M HEARING FROM THE BUSINESS TAXES THAT ARE BEING COLLECTED THAT WE MAY BE TALKING ABOUT THOUSANDS OF STRs right now. I think I would have liked to have seen something even plotted out. We know from those business taxes that were coming in where these STRs are. I think I would have liked to have seen a situation analysis where it would have showed me where these STRs are laid out and then again an analysis which I guess council needs to go to on how much we are talking about in TO2. We know how much we're talking about right now from this and how much we've been losing. Overall, I am concerned about the quality of life and the compatibility within residential neighborhoods with these short-term rentals. I do want to put that on the record. That is a concern to me. But I feel like this is really a drastic jump from what we have now, which is pretty much nothing, to what we are going to enforce. I want to thank, first of all, everybody for coming out. And I do want to thank staff, whether we agree or not, they did do a lot of work on this. But I just feel like I just don't have, I mean, if we had to send this on, which I hope we don't today, fine. But I really don't know how this will be successful the way it's laid out right now. And also the other thing about the home share, which doesn't make any sense to me, I feel like if we do have home shares and you have ADUs, Sometimes an ADU is connected to the actual living, the home. But either way, if you have a home share and you live in the home share, I don't see why you cannot use your ADU for guests. So anyway, that's what I have to say right now.

Commissioner Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Boss. So, you know, I understand that we're here after, almost a decade trying to figure out how to implement the policy of prioritizing our housing stock for long-term residents. But I think based on what my questions were, I'm concerned about this being so restrictive that we end up pushing folks underground and that we have the opposite effect of what we're actually trying to achieve. So with our limited staff capacity, I'm still not sure about the path to enforcement. I like the idea of figuring out how determining like perhaps like a cap or a lottery system. Um, and I do think despite, or, you know, no matter what the law is having being proactive and working with, um, these platform companies on how they're going to actively implement and robustly implement whatever ordinance we end up eventually passing. Um, I'd like to figure out how to make it an attractive prospect for folks to become licensed. And then trying to work with these companies to figure out how we take down ones quickly who are unlicensed, which is the most effective way to implement this ordinance. So I still think it's an open question of how we're going to enforce it. And I'm worried we may end up actually with more of the same of what we have now because it's so restrictive, that huge jump. And I like what Commissioner Bauke said about either some kind of lottery or cap system. And those are my comments.

Thank you. Commissioner Wiscombe.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to thank you. You've worked so hard on this for so long. I'm uneasy also about it. I think that... The, as commissioner about, he said the disparity between the permitted and the operational is, is something that we need to explore. And, um, we need to understand that before we actually create an ordinance. Um, and I liked, um, commissioner about keys, um, recommendation of maybe a density, uh, based lottery. Um, I think that's a possibility. Um, I don't appreciate having things like Ellis scoria included in the STR thing when they can't do it. So unless there's some sort of a, a waiver that they could apply for and staff could review, um, on a case by case basis, maybe up to a cap, um, in that area. Um, and I'm also very concerned about which for a very different reason about the coastal commission seeing. the map of the coastal zone swathed in green for home shares. To me, I think as a coastal commissioner, if I were on the coastal commission, I think that might be a red flag. They're not gonna get well used, so let's just paint the whole coastal zone in that. It may indicate to them that it wasn't well thought out. and I'm not trying to be disrespectful, but just looking at that map, that's what it looks like. And I'm very, as Commissioner DiLuccio said, and I agree, I'm very concerned with STRs in neighborhoods. They are highly impactful when you get, you know, three, five, seven, whatever, and excuse me, a number of people, and they bring dogs, and the dogs are off-leash because they're on vacation, and that's the way it works, It's really difficult, so I think from that standpoint, I appreciated the residential areas being excluded, but I think that that punishes a lot of people that have STRs in the residential areas. So that's why the disparity between the permitted and the operational, I think, needs to be looked at. Because that's really where the meat of this is, these people that sit in here that have operated these STRs. And I'm sure most of them are fine. And it's just, you know, but you get impactful when you have 15 people in one. On my street, I had a big, huge tour of us one day. And they had to back down the street because they couldn't turn around. So things like that happen. And it wasn't the end of the world, but it's things like that that I think really need to be thought out when we look at a system. So I'm not ready to move this forward either, I think. I think that we need more work done and maybe even a switch so that there is a lottery system, a density-based lottery system with a cap that might be better than just a selection of areas. Because I think when you look at the Mesa and you look at the residential zones, That's where the STRs are going to be. And, you know, you've, I don't want to cut off my nose by my face, but you basically excluded them from that area. So I think there must be a fair system to do this. So those are my thoughts. Thank you.

Thank you. Commissioner Wardlow.

Thank you and thank you very much to staff for the enormous amount of work. I know this has not been an easy feat and that everyone has collectively been working on this for over a decade. So I do believe that as a commission, as a city, that we're all aligned on the importance of really prioritizing and protecting our neighborhoods, our rental housing, and developing a really clear and streamlined path for the limited STR program that we eventually pursue. I am concerned, like my fellow commissioners, and I'm a little uneasy in the direction that we're going. I'm concerned that the over concentration from a zoning perspective could lead to unintended consequences and abuse of the home share program, as well as, you know, to Commissioner Wiscombe's point, you know, an area like El Escorial, if we're instituting parking requirements, which I understand why, but if that's not really going to work from a, you know, actual eligible perspective, then maybe that doesn't make sense. And I also don't want to see a concentration of STRs in areas like El Escorial, which are prime rental housing. I mean, I grew up living in that rental, as a rental. And then when we're looking at just the overall STR zones, because it's so limited, it could just be too much in one area. And so I do think we should consider, and many of my commissioners have mentioned this as I led on in my questions, a potential CAP program and a lottery base and some of what Commissioner Bauke had mentioned around density. If we go in this direction where we're allowing home shares everywhere, and I do understand that many cities allow for home shares everywhere and that that's not an issue, but because of the significant demand coupled with the significant restriction from a zoning perspective, I am nervous that that's going to be abused. I do think that from an enforceability perspective, that is going to be a nightmare for the city to address. And I want to ensure that if we're doing this and we've taken 10 years to do this, let's do it right. We've already spent all this time on trying to get a program in place that, you know, so far, you know, we're clearly seeing a lot of problems with it and there is a lot of confusion. I do want to talk about some of the things I do like in the ordinance. I do really appreciate the effort to limit it to one for one person or one entity. for one STR. I think that's really important that we keep that in. I like that we've moved away from a CUP process to more of a licensing process. I think that's really positive. And I do really think this grace period is important because I think there is so much significant confusion around this program that we need to give folks the time to figure this out. And I think that we as a city need to really evaluate, you know, if we do this zoning based approach versus, you know, especially since there's apparently no other cities that have taken strictly a zoning-based approach. Does it make more sense that we do a cap-based approach where we're ensuring that these are geographically dispersed to an extent? I do like what we've done in the inland areas because a lot of this, I think we're all aware that this is really being written in a way to address the Coastal Commission's concerns. And so where we're at in the inland, I'm more comfortable with that. I'm coming to terms with it. But I think on the coastal side, there's a lot of questions that we still need answered. I mean, I think especially before this goes to council, we definitely need to understand how many are we actually talking about. Like if there's 4,000 people that are doing this right now in the coastal zone, and we're talking about limiting it to 500 in a very concentrated area, like we just need to be really realistic about what we're talking about and the impact obviously on finances. and all of those things. So I think I stand with my fellow commissioners in that I'm uneasy in where we are today, and I would like us to kind of consider this cap-based approach, though it pains me because I know that that means more time for everyone. But I think that's where I'm at. So thank you again to staff. Really, I know this has been a significant lift. So thank you. And thank you to the public. I know this has been a long process and complicated. And so I appreciate everyone spending the time. And we're just trying to get this right. So thank you.

Thank you. I think I was and still am actually ready to move this forward to at least ordinance committee with comments. But I'm not hearing that from others. So I want to. work on the consensus so I understand I think the ask that I'll make and see if I have consensus is to move is to request that staff come back by June if that is reasonable with some of the comments that I shared earlier and I'll reread them and let me know if I'm missing anything that we're asking Um, so under, well, um, ask you to consider waivers specifically for parking and allow home share owners to stay in the accessory dwelling unit, come back with TOT analysis. So we fully understand what the impacts would be. I understand that the finance team is working on that. would be helpful for for us to hear you'll need to do you would have needed to do that i think for council already enforcement details and assurances specifically to address concerns about home shares in particular and or short-term rentals going underground and wanting to avoid that and also assurance from platform companies firm plans for regular reporting again on tot enforcement, compliance, and housing impact. And finally, the one that will probably be the most time-consuming, more analysis and reconsideration from zoning to either cap, density, or lottery system. I think those were the comments that were, or the answers that we're looking for today. What did I miss?

Commissioner Wardlow. Did you get... The disparity between permitted and operational, more research being done on that.

I did not. Can you elaborate? I'm sorry.

Well, what's been permitted, what, 25 versus operational, which are still, which are paying TOT, but do not have a permit to operate. That's where the big disparity is, and I think that needs to be analyzed and

And I'd suggest some kind of process because from what's out there to permitted, we need to have some clear guidance of how that's going to happen. And that was one of my main points.

Commissioner Wardlow. I just wanted to clarify. So I'm not comfortable moving the home share program to allow for folks to be in an ADU and then have the home share. Like, I'm not comfortable. So just if we're going to do like a straw poll kind of thing, I'm not comfortable with that because it's allowed everywhere in the coastal zone right now. And then on the parking standards, if we move to a cap-based approach, then I'm open to reevaluating the parking standards. But if we do not move to a cap-based approach and we continue with the zoning-based approach, then I'm not comfortable moving away from the parking standards. So other than that, I agree with you on all the other points.

Okay. That's helpful feedback. Appreciate that. Commissioner Bauke?

That was my comment.

Okay. Vice Chair DiLuccio.

Let me just clarify something. So for ADUs... I made a comment about how if you have a home share that you can live in the main unit and short-term rent out the ADU. Do you disagree with that?

That would not be allowable under the ADU ordinance. So we would have to completely change the ADU ordinance.

Oh, so that would be very complicated.

Yes.

Okay.

So I'll withdraw my comment about allowing a home share owner to stay.

That also includes revoking covenants because people sign a covenant.

Next one.

I'm going to remove.

So basically we're going to get more analysis on disparity. We're saying there's 25 that are legal right now and there could be thousands out there that are not. They're paying business taxes. So we want to find out they're paying T.O.T., through a business license permit. So we want to figure out where are these, a better idea of where they are. And that would help us flesh out a cap, et cetera, I guess. And the final thing is you mentioned a local, you said something about looking at a local ordinance-based ordinance or something? What was the comment?

I think I was just saying that we should be looking at other cities that have gotten through Coastal Commission recently with a very limited approach because clearly our community wants a limited approach to SDRs where we're prioritizing neighborhoods and our rental market. So let's look at this cap-based approach that have been successful in passing through the Coastal Commission because it feels that a lot of this is being written in the direction of how do we get through Coastal Commission. So that was my- Thank you.

That's a really important point. Thank you.

And to your point on the studying, I think that that is important to then how do we actually get to a number around the cap, right? Because when we don't know how many are operating, whether people think they're operating compliantly or not, we're going to have to address that, and I think that's going to be a significant effort, and to Bauke's point that we make a very clear process for folks depending on where they are in their level of compliance or lack of. I think that's going to be really important because this is going to be a big transition. I think we can do it, but I don't want folks to be kind of hung out to dry with no clarity because, you know, clearly this has been complicated. City Attorney.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair, Boss, Commission. I do want to address one thing. First of all, I heard the month June, and what's being asked here with all these things is not realistic. I just have to say that. First of all, none of us are economists to be able to do such data analysis, and it's just complex, and I'll just speak on one issue. When we talk about lost TOT, right? A lot of that's based on our enforcement when we recover. It doesn't necessarily mean that then those guests who are still boarding STRs won't go to hotels. So if you want true accurate, you would need to get economists to look at that. Who would assist us also is finance. They're in the middle of the budget season, which is their busiest time of the year. So if you're looking for this kind of information, I'm just going to be very transparent and frank with you. June is completely out of the question to be able to do all these studies. all this, and then essentially in a lot of ways going back to the drawing board and looking at the analysis. Like I said, this is policy or input. I'm just trying to state the deadline is just unrealistic. The other point, just again for your consideration, whether you may or not be aware, is while we're looking to do all this stuff, it would drastically push back the deadline. City Council did want and gave us direction to have an ordinance come in May to them. May or June, right, Allison? Something like that. Obviously, all that then, that's not realistic because you're looking several, several months to do what's being asked for today, which then delays that process several, several months. So that's just my point up here to raise those two important points. But at least in terms of just being, again, just to state clearly what we're hearing, I mean, it could be done. It's just that deadline is not attainable. So I just want to be honest with you.

Thank you. So I think that's why I'm suggesting that we come back with those answers so that we have them for council. I have a couple other comments. Commissioner Bosco.

Chair Bosco, can I ask a point of clarification too? When you talk about the cap and the density and stuff, are you only speaking of the coastal zone? That's what I need to know. Okay.

No. No. No. Okay. I think... A cap is something that's definitely germane to both inland and coastal. It's really, really going to be important in the coastal.

We also need to clarify what zones you're talking about. Residential zone cap for whole house short-term rentals. Is that what you mean? We need a little more guidance.

I was thinking that the STRs could get spread over peppered. in a wider area of the city, including maybe residential, especially in the coastal zone.

Well, they're already allowed in non-residential zones. I know, but... You're talking residential zones.

Yeah, but if they're capped and you're not going to get seven on one street or a five-bedroom house that has...

I don't know if we can do it by street.

It would probably be... No, I understand that. I don't know. If you could do it, I can't go back to the local coastal program and tell you if you could do it by those zones, but you might be able to do it by those zones. I don't know. At any rate, what I was going to suggest is we kind of have the laundry list, and maybe what we should do, just a suggestion, is to forward this, our laundry list, with the proposed or the ordinance as proposed to the ordinance committee and see where they stand.

That was my intent. Okay. But I understood from comments from others that others were not comfortable doing that. So my personal goal here was to recommend that this move forward to the ordinance committee with answers to our laundry list of questions. Do we have consensus on that?

That's what Mr. Durham is saying is going to take too much time, or going to take a lot of time. So I was just thinking maybe if ordinance committee is, you know, okay with how it is, then...

I think to help Chair Boss, Commissioner Wiscombe, I think to help I think your idea is at least take the ordinance, take the laundry list, see where the interest level lies, not necessarily doing the work on that laundry list, but just at least take the laundry list.

Yes.

And then when you get a consensus of the ordinance committee in terms of that, and they're saying, yeah, pursue these laundry lists, and they will understand it will take time as well. So the issue is my concern was coming back here to the commission with all this settled by June. But if you're asking for us to take the list, with the ordinance and hearing the input. That's totally different.

I think that would be favorable is to take it to ordinance committee with our input.

I'm going to move forward with the folks who have their hands raised and ask you to comment on if you're comfortable moving this to ordinance committee with our recommendations for the laundry list. So start with Commissioner Peterson.

We've spent 10 years on this. And I think however long it takes to get the answers to these questions to come back won't be that long. I would be fine with having staff look at this more than coming back to us and not moving it forward to ordinance committee.

Okay. So you prefer that staff comes back to planning commission rather than taking our requests to the ordinance committee?

Yes.

Okay.

Um, next I have commissioner Wardlow.

Um, Again, thank you, everyone. I am comfortable with it going to ordinance committee and assuming that it will come back to planning commission as well. I think that, you know, we're substantially changing the direction of this based on this hearing. And so I do think it makes sense to go to ordinance committee and see where they're at based on all of these types of questions that I do acknowledge a lot of them will take a lot of time to get these answers. At some point, we're going to have to get these answers, but I think going to ordinance committee makes sense to me. I do want to specify that the focus of my comments are really on the coastal zone and not the inland, because at this point where we are with inland, I am more comfortable with, because it is significantly limited SCRs. We don't have them in single-family communities. And I think those are really important steps that we've already made. But when we're talking about the coastal zone and coupling it with the home share program that would be allowed everywhere, that's where I'm having more concern and think that we should really consider a cap. I think all of that should be brought to the ordinance committee to discuss if it makes more sense to do a citywide cap. But my comments were specific to the coastal zone.

Chair, boss, if I could interject. Just so it's clear, if it goes, it can go to the ordinance committee with the suggestions, and that's perfectly fine. I think that's actually a good idea if I'm allowed to give my opinion. But if it's significant, if the ordinance committee then says, yes, we like whatever the changes, the cap, the lottery, and that's what we want to consider, it's going to come back to you. Because if there's significant changes to what you're seeing now, It can't move forward and be considered by the council until it's considered by you per our ordinance.

But to clarify, if they say if the ordinance committee declines our request, then it would move straight to council as is, correct? That's correct. Right. Thank you. Next, I have Commissioner DiLuccio.

Yeah, I'm leaning to an ordinance committee also. We're taking that gamble that if they may just pass it on to council. and chances are they probably will. I don't know. I should be more optimistic. But we're taking the gamble and we'll come back here. But at this point, I would lean toward seeing what the ordinance committee has to say.

Thank you. I'll ask Commissioner Bauke to comment.

I would prefer to go back to the commission and let us hash this out more before we go to the ordinance committee. But if I'm the minority, that's okay, too.

Okay. And I have Commissioner Wiscombe.

Yeah, I think going to ordinance committee is the right thing to do, I think. seen council members in here today and I don't know. Um, and I, I just wanted to say, I. Most of the commenters in here today were talking about the Mesa or the coastal zone, I think. Um, so I'm, I'm with commissioner Wardlow on that's where I think the main effort needs to be is in the coastal zone. I think that's where the majority of us on the commission and the majority of the public commenters had the concern.

So then I think for our purposes of like the quasi straw poll that I think we're good with kind of how things are in the inland as of now but the coastal zone is where we're wondering if a cap is a better solution and then if we do or don't go forward with a cap that would change aspects of other parts of the ordinance. Commissioner Peterson.

So I disagree with that because of the considerations that I care about in terms of pushing people underground, that's applicable citywide, not just in the coastal zone. And so, yes, there are different considerations for both areas, but in the stuff that we brought up, it's applicable to both areas.

But in the inland, we don't have the issue of the home shares in the same way. I think you're talking about just in general, like an underground market around FCRs, not the abuse of home shares.

Right, although council... there was a discrepancy about home shares between council and the last planning commission meeting. And so, and we're just based on this. Yeah, I understand.

Um, I'm also supportive of moving this forward to the ordinance committee, um, with this, um, list of, uh, requests or recommendations. Um, does staff have what you need from us today?

Uh, chair boss.

Yeah. When someone makes a motion, you're going to have to put the laundry list up. Okay. I'm, Happy to give that laundry list? OK. I'll move that we move this to ordinance committee with a number of requests, including waivers, particularly for parking, TOT analysis, enforcement details and assurances, specifically concerns about home shares in particular or short-term rentals going underground in coastal and inland, and assurances from platform committees. Firm plans for regular reporting, specifically TOT, enforcement compliance, and housing impact, and an analysis of both inland and coastal, applying the ordinance by zoning versus cap versus density versus lottery, and analyzing the disparity between permitted versus operational. Okay. And I know there's... I'll second. Okay.

I'm sorry. Can I ask for clarification? What did you mean, Chair Boss, about permanent versus... Is that your last point?

Disparity between permitted versus operational. Commissioner Wiscombe, can you clarify that, please?

Yeah. Actually, I think Commissioner Bauke could... There's about 25 permitted... STRs, right? But there are many, many more operational ones. So we need to find out where those are, what the problem is, and try to...

Okay, I see. It's a numerical thing. I thought you said permanent. Oh, no, permitted.

So, and that's going to guide, I think, if we go to some sort of system by area for capping how many STRs... that's going to go a long way to telling us where these are.

So I think that's a big key to the puzzle. And my only clarification to what Commissioner Wissop says is I'm concerned about some transitional process because we have that, you know, what's our mechanism? Are we going to have a lottery? Are we going to, you know, go to each of these folks that have been operating and discern whether they want to continue or There's got to be a way, and I'm not going to come up with a plan on the fly here, but there's got to be a way that we can get from, as my other commissioner talks about, this underground versus permitted difference to something that is just a permitted program that you're either in or you're totally illegal and the platforms kick you off and you just don't get to operate in our town. That's my goal is to get... that permit to be on your Airbnb or AirBO. I have a permit. It's legit, and there's no question. And the rest of them, they can go after.

We have a motion and a second. Is there further discussion? Okay, so let's use our buttons. We have Commissioner Wiscombe first and then Commissioner Wardlow.

I just wanted to say to those of you that have stayed and those of you that are property managers of these STRs, that you talked about cooperation. This would be a really good opportunity to cooperate with city staff and, you know, where your units are and how they're managed and are they permitted and, you know, but, oh, we pay the TOT, but, you know, we haven't gone through that. I just think it's a real opportunity for us to work together on it. Thank you.

Thank you. Commissioner Wardlow. Okay, any further discussion on the motion second? Hey, if not miss Carmen, can we please do a roll call vote?

Thank you chair boss. I'll begin with Commissioner Wardlow Yes, Commissioner whisking yes Commissioner bauke No Commissioner Peterson no commission vice chair de Lucia. Yes and chair boss. Yes. I Commissioner Bauke, do you want to provide?

I just think this should be coming back to us before it goes to the ordinance committee.

And Commissioner Peterson?

Same.

Simply process, not policy.

Motion passes. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll give folks a moment to clear the room unless you'd like to stick around for the administrative agenda items.

There you go.

All right, so we've closed that item, and we'll move now on to our administrative portion of our agenda, beginning with committee and liaison reports, beginning with the staff hearing officer liaison report.

I think I'll put that off until next week.

Okay. Any other committee or liaison reports?

I do want to note that the Finance Committee did have a discussion on infrastructure finance districts at its last meeting. I'm sorry, can you repeat the? The Finance Committee on its February 24th meeting had a discussion about infrastructure finance districts. And there's a very good staff report and an analysis done by the city's consultant on it. which I would recommend my fellow commissioners to pull down and have a chance to look at it. It'll probably have more discussion, but the take of the recommendation by the city manager's office was to come up with some other alternatives other than doing an infrastructure finance district. But that's the current status, and that's what the finance committee's thoughts were at the time.

Thank you. Any other committee or liaison reports? Any discussion on subcommittees and workshops? If not, we will adjourn at 4.58 p.m. Thank you. Our next meeting is tentatively scheduled for Thursday, March 12th.

Thank you.