Well, as we were all aware, the Summit County Board of County Commissioners passed their Short Term Rental restriction ordinances on February 15, 2023. After about 5 hours of comment, with the overwhelming majority of it being against their regulations, they passed it anyway. I’m including an article from the Summit Daily News, which doesn’t, at all, characterize the opposing sentiment of the crowd. I’m also including the data sheet that was provided by the Summit County staff for this meeting which is, in my opinion, a piece of propaganda to silence opposing opinions before they were even spoken.

Two items that I found particularly disturbing: First, any changes to licenses were supposed to take place in 2025 according to the BOCC when they first started tinkering with license types and nightly rental caps. Existing STR license holders believed that they would be able to continue to operate as they have been until at least 2025. The BOCC instead decided that all of their new changes will be effective in September 2023 when licenses renew. This means that ALL existing licenses are now subject to their 35 bo oking limit, whereas they were previously unlimited until 2025. This moving of the goalpost also eliminated the Type 3 license as of September 2023, which allowed large properties to operate with increased occupancy given their size. Now, after September, there won’t even be a Type 3 license as the BOCC eliminated it (for administrative ease) and these property owners now automatically convert to a Type 2 license with a 35 reservation booking cap.

Oy vey. To add insult to injury, on February 17, just two days after they passed these regulations, a very well-planned email went out to all STR license holders with graphics, videos, and more! To think that they put together this information in 2 days with their self-proclaimed staff shortages is laughable. You can see the content of that email which summarizes their new rules here. Bottom line: They had this planned all along and public comment was a ruse that they engaged in to follow governmental procedure.

One other item to add insult to injury – the Summit Daily News last week put out a reader survey to see what people thought about the BOCC rules. Despite the fact that the BOCC used their own survey data to say that the community overwhelmingly wanted STR restrictions, the SDN survey was markedly different. I screen shotted the survey on the morning of February 27, 2023. As of February 28, 2023, the survey was taken down.

Want to join the fight against STR regulations?

I have talked to countless property owners like you who are concerned about these new regulations across the county and across the country. They reduce property values and take away important constitutional property rights. I am part of a group organizing to bring litigation against governmental entities in an attempt to overturn these regulations. Reach out to me directly if you want more information, or stay tuned for my April newsletter where I will provide you with a way you can become involved by financially supporting our cause.