LAKE PLACID — The Lake Placid-North Elba Land Use Code Committee has developed a set of maps that show how the committee believes short-term vacation rentals in various areas around the town and village should be zoned.

The town and village boards last month imposed a six-month moratorium on issuing new STR permits as the boards consider changing their STR regulations. The land use code committee, which has worked for years to develop new zoning maps related to short-term rentals, has scheduled a virtual public information session on May 5 and two in-person public forums on May 13 and 14 to present its STR maps.

Committee member and North Elba Town Councilor Emily Kilburn Politi said the committee’s proposed changes are just that — proposals — and they were based on guiding principles created with past community input on STRs in mind, not with input from the town and village boards.

“The idea is that this is not a town and village presentation, it’s not the town and village boards that are putting out these ideas — it is the land use code committee who worked for over a year on these guidelines, and therefore the guidelines became maps,” she said.

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Making the maps

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Kilburn Politi said the committee has gone through a “very long and detailed” process while creating the maps that could define how STRs operate in certain areas. She said the committee started discussing the maps around two years ago.

The town and village boards didn’t make any major changes to its STR regulations for more than a year because of a lawsuit brought against the municipalities by a group of STR owners. The STR owners agreed to discontinue their lawsuit earlier this year. No longer facing a legal challenge, the town and village imposed the STR moratorium as they consider changes to the land use code.

Some of the town and village’s existing short term rental laws broadly tie back to certain zoning districts — STRs in the village center and gateway corridor can be rented an unlimited number of days per year, while some STRs in other areas have a set number of authorized occupancy days per year — but Kilburn Politi said the regulations aren’t tied to a map of the different zones.

She said the committee is proposing tying STR regulations to a map that can be overlaid on the town and village’s current land use code map. The map overlays will be available at the upcoming in-person forums, so people can see exactly how their neighborhood would be zoned.

The land use code committee started the maps by pulling out the town and village’s existing land use code maps, laying tracing paper on top and trying to determine which districts would be appropriate for different kinds of STRs. They quickly realized that they needed to define what Politi calls “guiding principles” for making the maps.

Politi said the committee considered past public feedback about STRs when creating their guiding principles. They considered where neighbors complained of high levels of STR disruption, how STRs financially benefit the community, and perceptions about unhosted and hosted rentals, among other comments.

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Virtual session, forums

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The virtual session, which the committee plans to record and make public after the event, is planned for 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 5. Community Development Director Haley Breen said that a link to the virtual information session will be available closer to the event.

The two in-person forums will be held from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Friday, May 13 and 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Saturday, May 14 at the Lake Placid Middle-High School. Community members will have the opportunity to talk to the land use code committee, ask questions and look at the proposed zoning maps of their neighborhoods.

Kilburn Politi said people should jot down their questions during the public information session and bring them to the open houses on May 13 and 14.

The land use code committee also plans to release a survey to get additional public feedback. The survey is expected to be made public later this month.

The committee wants to keep lines of communication about STR regulations open between the community, the land use code committee and governing boards in North Elba and Lake Placid, according to Kilburn Politi. Community feedback from the open house sessions could have the power to shape those regulations. The land use code committee and Community Development Commission, along with members of the town and village boards, are expected to attend the two forums and be available to answer questions from the community.

A public comment period on STR regulations is expected to open following the public information session and end around May 30. People will have the opportunity to submit questions and comments during the two forums, and Kilburn Politi said the committee would likely accept comments via email after that.

After the public comment period ends on May 30, the land use code committee plans to compile all the public feedback and reevaluate its proposal based on the comments. Then, the committee plans to organize a new proposal to present to the town and village boards sometime this summer; a tentative date is set for July 1. After that, town and village boards would have two more months left in the moratorium to hash out their new STR laws. A public hearing would be required to pass the laws.

North Elba town Supervisor Derek Doty asked Kilburn Politi last week if she thought the six-month moratorium would still be a sufficient amount of time to work out the new STR laws. She said that the land use code committee’s proposed timeline should give the boards enough time. Doty said he expects that the town will call for some special meetings to focus solely on the topic of STRs.