ST. PETE BEACH — City commissioners have set aside a proposal to register the island’s short-term rentals, saying the added layer of regulation could cost the city the grandfathered status that lets St. Pete Beach enforce tighter rental rules than most Florida communities.
Instead, commissioners agreed to concentrate on enforcing the ordinance already on the books, possibly with software that flags violators.
The idea came from Vice Mayor Lisa Robinson, who asked staff to look at whether a registration requirement could be folded into the city’s existing rules.
“We have concerns in the community with us becoming an Airbnb short-term rental community, and there are a lot of residents concerned with that,” she told fellow commissioners.
Assistant City Manager Adam Poirier said a previous legal team had warned the city off registration entirely, worried that new rules would undercut the ones already in place.
“We are a little better, a little more fortunate than some communities, because we had some regulations in place prior to the state coming down and basically restricting what you could do with short-term rentals,” he said.
The city’s new legal team takes a different view, Poirier said. Registration is possible, but only if the city treads carefully.
“We can’t do anything that kind of crosses the line into our current restrictions on short-term rentals,” he said. “If we go into that category, then we run the risk of losing our grandfathered status that we gained, because we had those regulations in place before the state basically capped those.”
The workload would be substantial, he said. Drafting an ordinance would take a decent amount of staff time, and administering the program would take considerably more.
“You have to have a program where you register each short-term rental, and then it triggers a bunch of other things such as building inspections, fire inspections, and you have to basically keep that up on a regular basis,” he said.
Registration fees could be spent only on running the program, Poirier added, and the city might need two or three more employees to handle it.
Robinson said the city could tailor the program to its own needs, and that the effort would carry a message beyond the paperwork.
“We want them to fit in, but within our guidelines for that,” she said. Requirements “could be as simple as providing emergency numbers and requiring turtle lighting, or it can go to extremes. It depends on how we want to organize that.”
Poirier cautioned that starting a program shifts responsibility onto the city.
“Once as a city we start a registration program, then the onus is on us to make sure we’re managing that program, managing the short-term rentals,” he said. “There’s a responsibility on us to make sure the buildings are safe, so that triggers that building inspection, fire inspection.”
Registration would most likely capture the good actors already following the rules, he said, not the operators the city is trying to reach.
Robinson said the current approach leaves residents paying the bill.
“But we’re not covering the costs on it. Taxpayers are paying for that, while others are making money off their Airbnbs,” she said. “It’s not fair to the residents that don’t want it, that aren’t renting their homes. We’re paying for it.”
She said the city could hire data mining companies to bring enforcement costs down.
“I mean, I’ve heard from every district about the concerns on short-term rentals,” she said.
Poirier said the city already pursues bad actors.
Commissioner Jon Maldonado said he would support registration only if the city could absorb it with current staff. Raising fees to cover the added work could punish responsible owners, he said, while the rest look for ways to “hack the system, exploit the vulnerabilities and not be held accountable.” He said he would rather see the city improve its enforcement software.
Commissioner Al Causey said he had not heard concerns about short-term rentals in his district. Poirier said the most common complaints involve rentals operating outside an allowable area or turning over more often than the ordinance permits.
Mayor Scott Tate said staff time is best spent on problems the city hasn’t already solved.
“It’s usually about what’s broken and what’s not covered by policies and procedures. I think we’ve got policies in place,” he said. “I’ve heard we’re very lucky compared to Treasure Island and some of the others.”
“For me, I’m a little leery of anything that might jeopardize our current grandfathered-in pieces, because my understanding is if we lose that grandfather, we are subject to daily short-term rentals.”
Poirier agreed.
“It is my biggest fear that we inadvertently do something in a new ordinance that would cause complications for our grandfathered ordinance,” he said. “We’re in a much better situation than most communities.”