Assembly Works On Visitor Services Plan

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Created on Friday, 20 September 2024 15:26

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By ARIADNE WILL
Sentinel Staff Writer
    After lengthy discussion, the Planning Commission voted 3-2 Wednesday night to approve a conditional use permit for a short-term rental.
    The permit applies to a single-family home owned by John Dembs and Sara Hadad-Dembs at 1729 Edgecumbe Drive, in the R-1 single-family and duplex residential district.
    Hadad-Dembs said that she and her husband live in a cottage to the rear of the single-family house on the property, which they purchased last month.
    Most of Wednesday’s discussion was about the cottage. City Planning Director Amy Ainslie said that when it was constructed, the cottage was considered the second part of a duplex.
    Ainslie said that at the time, city planning staff termed all dwelling units connected by a breezeway, overlap in roof, or other related means as duplexes.
    In the case of the 1729 Edgecumbe property, the back porch of the single-family home overlaps slightly with the roof of the cottage.
    Accessory dwelling units often require conditional use permits of their own, and are not allowed to be rented short-term.
    While the cottage is not to be rented, Ainslie said the panel might want to discuss whether its use as a primary residence for the property owners violates code.
    She said that existing code “is silent” on cases where the primary structure is used as the short-term rental and the accessory structure is used as housing for the primary residents.
    The planning staff report recommended approval of the short-term rental permit as requested by the owners.
    The commission was split, with the majority taking into consideration that the cottage was considered part of a duplex — not an accessory dwelling unit — when it was built by previous owners.
    “I’m concerned about the precedent that this particular case seeks to create, because I see it as oppositional to ... code that’s written,” commission member Katie Riley said in the discussion Wednesday.
    Riley said she thought the permit would go against both code requirements for short-term rentals and accessory dwelling units. She asked if perhaps the applicants should request an additional conditional use permit to classify the cottage as an accessory dwelling unit.
    Commission member Robin Sherman disagreed, saying that requiring an additional permit for the accessory dwelling unit would be “highly problematic.”
    “There are two legal dwelling units on this property,” Sherman said. “Our code requires that for a conditional use permit for a short-term rental, the owner maintains a primary residence on the property. To me, the notion that somebody could not meet that requirement by living in a unit that they own on the property is absurd from a property rights perspective.”
    The panel received five public comments on the item, all opposed to the permit request.
    Commenters had concerns about noise and traffic, impacts to long-term housing, and questions about the applicants’ commitments to the community.
    Commission members Darrell Windsor, Stacy Mudry, and Robin Sherman voted in favor of the permit request. Wendy Alderson and Katie Riley voted against it.
    In response to comments on the relationship between short-term rentals and housing impacts, the commission plans to discuss policy and code concerns associated with short-term rentals at an October meeting.
    In other regular business, the commission unanimously approved a preliminary plat for a minor subdivision of a 35,895-square-foot lot owned by Paddy Hansen at 201 Price Street, in the C-2 general commercial mobile home district. One of the new lots would be 15,444 square feet and the other one 20,461 square feet. Hansen has told the commission that he plans to sell the smaller lot, which has a 6,000-square-foot building housing his boat repair business, and develop a mobile home park on the larger of the two lots created by the subdivision.

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