County Commission Halts Work on Rental Ordinance
By Lisa Neff
Manatee County won’t be adopting a short-term vacation rental ordinance anytime soon.
The board of county commissioners, meeting in Bradenton earlier in May, considered a motion to direct staff to create an ordinance on short-term vacation rentals but the vote was a 3-3 tie, and the motion failed.
Some municipalities in Manatee have short-term rental ordinances and the West Manatee Fire Rescue District runs a vacation rental inspection program, but the county does not.
In January, county commissioners directed staff to work on an ordinance that would address issues associated with vacation rentals, including noise, public safety and parking concerns and neighborhood integrity.
Commissioners, at a Jan. 28 meeting, discussed options, including the possibility of establishing a county-managed registration system to license rentals.
On May 6, Rob Wenzel, development services division manager, and Tom Wooten, code enforcement chief, along with Rodney Kwiatkowski, WMFR’s fire marshal, went before the board but presented PowerPoint slides, not a draft ordinance.
Wenzel said a draft ordinance existed but was not finalized because staff wanted the board’s direction.
Two key Florida statutes deal with vacation rentals.
One statute defines a vacation rental as “any unit or group of units in a condominium or cooperative or any individually or collectively owned single-family, two-family, three-family or four-family house or dwelling unit that is also a transient public lodging establishment but that is not timeshare project.”
“Transient,” Wenzel said, “is under 30 days.”
Another statute states that a local law, ordinance or regulation may not prohibit vacation rentals or regulate the duration or frequency of their rental — unless such a measure was adopted before June 1, 2011.
So, state law allows for local authorities to adopt regulations to register rentals, set registration fees, conduct safety and enforcement inspections, establish quiet hours, parking rules and occupancy limits and create a complaint system.
Wenzel reviewed how other local governments handle short-term rentals, including:
• Collier County, which established a one-time $50 registration fee and quiet hours.
• Anna Maria, which established a registration fee based on occupancy, set maximum occupancy at two people per bedroom, established quiet hours and annual inspections.
• Bradenton, which set an initial registration fee of $250 and an annual renewal fee of $150 and established quiet hours, parking limits, maximum occupancies and annual inspections.
• Sarasota, which set an initial registration fee of $500 and annual renewal of $350 and established parking, noise and occupancy rules.
Enforcement in those locales is conducted by full-time staff, along with the use of software-database systems that can track registration and scour online listings and ads for unregistered rentals, Wenzel said.
He also noted that short-term vacation rentals must be licensed by the state and pay taxes, including a tourist development tax. So, the state and the county tax collector, in some fashion, monitor rentals.
“At the end of the day, I see a lot of redundancy,” Wenzel said. “If you look at what the tax collector has, they have registration. West Manatee has registration. The city of Bradenton. Everybody has a registry. And doing the same thing. It would be nice if we weren’t so redundant. … It would be nice if we could pool it together as Manatee County.”
The final slide in the presentation listed steps in the process: board direction, draft ordinance, public outreach, board adoption.
Commissioner Tal Siddique motioned for staff to bring a draft ordinance to a June meeting.
“We have a fractured system,” he said.
Commissioner Amanda Ballard seconded the motion and Commission Chair George Kruse said he’d vote for it, but both expressed reservations.
“This is to direct staff to draft an ordinance,” Kruse said. “I’d like to see what that ordinance looks like and if there’s pieces of that could make sense.”
Commissioner Jason Bearden, meanwhile, emphatically opposed the motion.
“The real issue here is enforcement not regulation,” he said.
Commissioners Carol Ann Felts and Bob McCann also voted no.
With Mike Rahn absent, the motion failed on a 3-3 tie.
“We will not be writing this ordinance,” Kruse said. He added that he’d encourage continued “conversations to see if there are things we can do to improve situations.”