CAPE ELIZABETH — Although the town council tabled approval of short-term rental amendments on March 8, this should not affect the implementation date for changes on July 1.
Councilors voted to table changes to short-term rental amendments in the town’s zoning ordinance, deferring the approval to an April agenda. Previously, the council had voted to table the decision in February after a public hearing involving a great number of residents, and work on the amendments has been ongoing.
Cape Elizabeth Town Council voted to table changes to short-term rental amendments in the town’s zoning ordinance during a March 8 meeting. Kelley Bouchard/Press Herald
Proposed amendments involve additional language about permit requirements each year, a requirement for a rental to be the operator’s primary residence unless the operator’s primary residence is abutting the property, and a limit to the number of days an unhosted and hosted rentals may operate during the year.
Councilor Penny Jordan, chair of the ordinance committee, proposed an additional amendment during the meeting that hosted short-term rentals, where the host is present during the tenant’s stay, have a maximum of two renters in a seven-day period. In this proposal, unhosted short-term rental operators would still have a maximum of one renter per seven days.
“As I start working through this and I started looking at this, it was the unhosted that was creating a barrier to hosted short-term rentals,” Jordan said. “Because we’ve acknowledged right up front hosted primary residences — we don’t see there to be a problem or minimum problems to non-existent.”
The council approved the amendment, 6-1.
Because of the wording, the change would impact the entire document and could affect non-hosted short-term rental amendments, said Town Planner Maureen O’Meara.
Council Chair Jamie Garvin said a section of the ordinance amendments should be in the perspective of the rental operator, not the tenant.
Jordan suggested tabling the approval of amendments to April because wordsmithing the proposed changes during the meeting would become “messy.”
Garvin asked the council to reach a level of consensus before any changes are made.
“We need to land on the language because we can’t have another meeting like this where we’re going into this level of minutia on these things and writing it on the fly,” he said. “It’s not a good practice.”
Councilors also discussed other changes to the ordinance they would like to see in an updated draft.
Garvin apologized to the public for not having voted on the amendments that evening and added that the council did good work to tighten the amendments.
“We’ve got some I dotting and T crossing to do to just make sure that all of the language is reconciled and reflects consistency through all these changes that have just been moved as amendments to the motion,” Garvin said. “I fully expect that at our April meeting, we will finalize this and with the effective date being July 1. So no impact to the implementation, but I personally would like to offer apologies for not having been able to complete this tonight.”
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