Breckenridge Town Council Meeting September 14, 2021
Meeting Overview and Notes
Last night, despite more than five hours of public testimony with 80 speakers in opposition and only a handful in support, the Breckenridge Town Council voted unanimously to cap non-exempt short term rental licenses at 2,200, allowing for natural attrition to bring the current numbers down to that cap level. Exempt properties have 24-hour front desk staff, 24-hour security staff, and 24-hour phone.
The ordinance must go through a second reading and another vote on Tuesday, September 28 in order to be enacted and go into effect on November 2. Council did not direct staff to draft any edits to the proposed ordinance, so we can anticipate it will very likely be the same as yesterday’s version.
Read the staff memo and ordinance in full starting on page 13 of the agenda packet here >>
Note: This meeting was in addition to the Summit County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) meeting and the town of Frisco’s City Council meeting.
Read our recap of the BOCC meeting here | Frisco’s recap will be sent separately.
Stay tuned for more information, next steps for SAVRM members, and a summary from the SAVRM Board of Directors after our next meeting.
Detailed Meeting Notes
Short Term Rental Cap Discussion
FIRST READING OF COUNCIL BILLS, SERIES 2021
COUNCIL BILL NO.26, SERIES 2021 – AN ORDINANCE AMENDING CHAPTER 1 OF TITLE 4 OF THE BRECKENRIDGE TOWN CODE CONCERNING ACCOMMODATION UNIT LICENSES; PLACING A LIMIT ON THE NUMBER OF ACCOMMODATION UNIT LICENSES; AND MAKING MISCELLANEOUS AMENDMENTS RELATED THERETO
Agenda Packet – Page 13 – 20 Short Term Rental Limit Ordinance
Mayor Mamula thanks everyone for coming and engaging in the process tonight. We have read over 400 letters except for the ones that were submitted after 3 pm today. We appreciate hearing from all of you, this is a civil discourse, I will not accept any disrespectful behavior. This is simply a way to talk directly to council to share your opinion. Please understand that you cannot ask questions, we don’t have time to answer each person’s questions this is a comment period. After public comment we will discuss the ordinance, make a motion to approve, get a second and vote.
Mayor Mamula reads the proposed title and staff introduces the ordinance. There are two categories exempt and non-exempt from the fee. To be exempt from the fee, you must have 24-hour phone, security, and staffed front desk. The ordinance would change this exemption to include a requirement that security and front desk staff must be separate and both on-site. One establishes a cap of 2,200 on non-exempt properties. We currently have over that number and therefore will slowly allow for attrition down to the 2,200 limits over time and move to a waiting list for licenses. The last change would propose that with the sale of a house the new owner would be eligible to apply for a 6-month hold over period to allow for booked STR reservations to be honored.
Mayor Mamula opened the floor for public comment 76 people spoke in opposition and 6 spoke in support. Overwhelmingly opposition was made up of second homeowners who short term rent when they aren’t in town and local property management small businesses. Some of the second homeowners spoke to concerns on affordability without STR revenue, ability to pass the STR license down to their children, and the concern that exempt properties are all owned by big businesses like Vail Resorts and Breckenridge Grand. They suggested taking a more targeted approach exempting specific tourism core neighborhoods with unlimited STRs, tacking fees onto STRs to fund more affordable housing, making it a percentage cap instead of a number, doing more research and proposing a ballot initiative to the voters, limit new builds for time shares among others. Support for the ordinance changes were all locals who expressed their commitment to Breckenridge and their inability to afford to live there anymore. They note that their friends are being forced to move in droves, almost all of them shared anecdotes that they’ve lived in small homes with multiple roommates and even lived in garages. A full list of public comment is below.
Public comment is concluded.
Councilor Dick Carleton thanks everyone for coming and speaking noting how complex this issue is. We’ve spoken in the public forum about this for years. We started speaking about it more in-depth and hosted round table in the spring and many groups, restaurants, employees, non-profit group etc. did request it. There has been a lot of requests for more housing, we’ve done a lot with our housing helps deed restriction program, we’ve got incentives for ADUs, we’re waiving tap fees currently, we’ve hired Landing Locals an incentive program to move people from STR to LTR. We’re building 85, another 20 and future 120 behind them. The decision we’re facing was the data that 53% of all dwelling units have STR licenses. We’re losing LTR units faster than we can build them.
We’ve got options, we could follow the county and place a short-term moratorium on issuing licenses that would give us the time to look at all of this stuff. Do we continue to go backwards? We can pause but we can’t afford to keep going backwards. All of a sudden, we’ve got a new option of a moratorium to look at all these things.
Councilor Dennis Kuhn comments that this is a cap and we go to work, this isn’t a cap and we walk away.
Councilor Erin Gigliello notes that STRs are important, they are not the villain, they are a part of our community. They aren’t the whole community by any means. They are businesses, there is a place and amount, you can’t open a restaurant in residential neighborhoods. I appreciate the suggestions tonight; we are also enacting a lot of the suggestions tonight. This is a complex issue. We know that remote workers don’t take up the same amount of resources as short-term rentals do.
Councilor Carol Saade thanks everyone and says we are listening to you. You’ve brought excellent solutions and ideas; I want to stress again that we know this is a tourist economy. Our visitors and part time owners are part of our community. We are talking about balance and harmony, STRs are businesses in neighborhoods. They put pressure on our housing market, it impacts servers but also hospital workers, teachers etc. This is one arrow of the quiver, there are some inefficiencies we need to address like compliance, but we need to find the balance for folks who live here full time. This conversation has been on-going, and I look forward to continuing to explore these suggestions and options.
Councilor Kelly Owens regrets that this has become such a polarizing issue and hope that in the future we can come back together. The 2,200 isn’t going back to a sleepy mining town. It was derived from the non-exempt number from 3 years ago, we’ve had strong property values then too. We want to maintain the brand of Breckenridge. It is our responsibility to provide oversight on commercial and residential use, we need to provide that balance in our town. We know that STRs have a demand on our employment. I like all of you, want to maintain Breckenridge in the top ten list of places to visit and I hope we can work to maintain that in the future.
Councilor Jeff Bergeron comments that we have too many people visiting Breckenridge. We have cheapened our product, a lot of it has to do with STR. I don’t think your greedy, but 2,200 isn’t that limiting. Don’t look at one sign and think this is the opinion of everyone up here, you are part of the community we are trying to protect.
Mayor Mamula thanks the public for all of their comments. He apologizes for laughing about the number of people that signed up. I want to apologize for people who thought the last meeting was a bait and switch. I want to apologize because I think we have done a crappy job on PR for what we’ve done in the last ten years on housing issues. We spent $2.6M last week on housing buy downs, tonight it sounded like we’ve done nothing, yet we’ve built over 1,000 units in the last ten years. It feels like people who own here don’t know all the housing work we’ve done and it’s a shame. I also want to comment that none of us up here are in the pocket of big box interest. That really makes me super sad. I haven’t talked to one of my good friends for over a year because of the timeshare issue. We are not in the pocket of anyone, this is my parttime gig that is taking up way more time than I thought it would and I am not in the pocket of the big businesses.
We originally proposed a moratorium, we decided that was too quick and not enough. We felt the fair thing to do was to give everybody 65 days to get your house in order and your sale contracts signed etc. We’re losing too many long-term rentals to short term rentals daily. I’d like to build this cap and then in the early part of the year I think we need to address exemption areas such as Four O’clock area. The trash, noise etc are a problem, we’ve never followed through with 3 strikes and you’re out program.
At what point is the STR market so saturated that it starts to affect your ADR and occupancy rates? We are getting close to that. As we go through this, I think we should talk about zones and exemptions etc but also would be interested in understanding if STR tension keeps the market successful.
Jeff Bergeron moved to pass the ordinance on first reading, it was seconded it passed unanimously.
