People running Airbnbs, VRBOs and other short-term rentals in Soldotna now have less bureaucracy to wade through. City council members Wednesday signed off on months of work by city officials to create a single permitting process for short-term rentals.
Council member Jordan Chilson sponsored the ordinance, which was introduced in January. Stakeholders at the time were concerned about various parts of the proposal.
Now, Chilson says those concerns have been addressed.
“We went back to the drawing board with really two primary goals on this: how can we simplify it, and how can we ease the administrative burden for short-term rental operators?” he said.
Tyson Cox helped weigh in on the revised policy. He owns rental units and a short-term rental unit in Soldotna, and is part of a group of similar business owners. He likes the new policy, but says he and others have lingering concerns about new limits on density.
“A couple people in our group still had a little bit of heartburn over that,” he said. “They didn’t like that it was being controlled at all, which I definitely understand. But I do think it was probably a fair compromise to come to.”
The new rules limit how many units in a multi-unit building can be used as short-term rentals. Now, short-term rentals can take up both units of a duplex, two units of a triplex and up to half of buildings with four or more units. The first version of the new policy capped the number of short-term rental units allowed in one building at five, regardless of the building capacity.
Ultimately, Cox says he is “very much in support” of the new policy, which he hopes makes it easier for short-term rental operators to understand and follow the city’s rules.
Other changes include removing a proposed cap on the number of guests in a unit and a new ban on parking on certain lawns. And council members passed a separate resolution removing the $50 fee for the permit Soldotna requires short-term rental operators to obtain.
And Chilson teased more work to come. Currently, operators need to register their short-term rental with the city, and register it again for the city’s lodging tax collection. Chilson says he’d like to streamline that into one registration.
“I'm proud of what we've been able to put together, and I do think it represents a good compromise and accomplishing the goals that I defined at the January hearing for this ordinance,” he said.
Council members unanimously passed both the new short-term rental policy and the elimination of the registration fee.
