SARANAC LAKE — The village board and development board are discussing the rollout of brand-new short-term vacation rental permits under Saranac Lake’s STR law — the good, the bad and the changes they’re considering making.

Last week, the village board decided to hold a work session on implementing the law with the development board and community development department, after some trustees said it was clear there was confusion among these groups on several aspects of the law. The village board planned to have this work session at a meeting of the volunteer development board, but it is unclear if that will happen at tonight’s meeting. This meeting will include votes on two STR permits.

After grandfathering in all preexisting STRs in the village — 113 of them currently — the village opened up the opportunity for new STRs in January, capped at 10 new permits for this year. There are also caps for each of the 35 districts in the village — one district has two more allowable units, some have one more and most have zero new allowable units. Exemptions to these caps can be applied for on the grounds of things such as rehabilitating derelict housing or building new housing.

The village board is considering amendments to the STR law — taking out the “such as” portion of the exemption language to make it less broad, and adding an owner-occupied exemption from the caps. Development board members have opposed this amendment, taking issue with the idea of having exemptions at all. They also voiced issues with several other portions of the law as it stands.

The development board approved three of five STR applications before them at a meeting last month. They delayed votes on two of them — on Prospect Avenue and Virginia Street — to have more discussion on if STR density in neighborhoods should be considered as they vote on whether to approve new STRs. To read more about this meeting, go to tinyurl.com/4sen99f6. These two leftover applications are set to be voted on tonight.

Development board Chair Aggie Pelletieri will not be at the meeting tonight. Last week’s meeting was the last he’ll attend before his term is up. Village board members said they’ll have to ask someone to step up for tonight.

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‘Painful’

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Last week, Trustee Aurora White said the public hearing on the first STR permits was “painful” — in terms of length, frustration from the public and what she saw as the development board misunderstanding its authority on new STR permits.

“The development board has confusion over what their authority is and whether they’re just supposed to rubber stamp the new STR applications,” White said.

Village Mayor Jimmy Williams said he had spoken with several of the development board members.

“They might be wondering what they need to use as deciding factors, but none of the development board is under the impression that they have to approve STRs going forward,” he said.

White also felt that village staff are confused over the purpose of the application forms, and that a lot more information should have been attached to each of them before they were deemed complete.

“It’s apparent that it’s not understood by the people who are walking everybody through the process and making the decision,” White said. “The law … is not being followed.”

STR permits are issued through special use permits. White felt the community development department does not understand why special use permits were used for STR permits, and was not filling them out fully. SUPs were used to get public hearings on each application, but also to provide documentation on the plans.

White also said the development board’s public comment rules did not match the village board’s rules. Members of the public were held to a strict three-minute limit. At the village board, people can speak for five minutes and the timeline is a bit looser. Under village rules, time can be limited if there are a lot of people who attend. White said there weren’t a lot of people there for one single public hearing, but there were five public hearings. The meeting ran around 4.5 hours long. White said five hearings was too much at one meeting. These permit applications are different than the preexisting permits, where there was much less public comment because they were more of a rubber stamp than a true application.

Williams said he didn’t want to “micromanage” the development board and said the village should let them run their meetings.

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Owner-occupied definition

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The development board asked the village to redefine what an “owner-occupied” STR is.

Williams said “owner-occupied” can be multiple scenarios.

Pelletieri called the owner-occupied label “misleading.” Someone who meets the criteria of living in the house 183 days a year could still be away half of the year.

Development Board member Meg Cantwell-Jackson said they need to differentiate between people who rent out their home and people who live there part-time. The rest of board agreed.

Development Board member Rick Weber said he cares more about prioritizing offering exemptions to true owner-occupied applicants than exemptions for construction applicants. He said it was clear the community want hosts to live on the same property as their STR units when they rent them.

Williams said if someone rents out their entire property without being there, that’s not an owner-occupied STR. White said, under the current definitions in the law, it is. At the last development board meeting, the STR on Petrova Avenue was approved as an owner-occupied whole-house rental.

Development Board member Bill Domenico felt only one of the five properties pitched as “owner-occupied” on Tuesday was really owner-occupied — the Park Avenue application.

Weber said time is harder to regulate than space. Several development board members felt owner-occupied permits should be limited to having a second dwelling unit at the home which is rented as an STR — anything from a bedroom to an accessory dwelling unit.

STR applicant neighbor Deb Story suggested having two types of permits — present or not — and suggested they clarify the definition of a resident. She said she understands it’s hard to define or enforce, but that voter registration and drivers licenses are vague.

White said just accepting voter registration as owner-occupied evidence cannot guarantee the host will be present when they are renting.

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Caps and exemptions

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The development board did not support the village’s proposed amendment to create an exemption for owner-occupied STRs. Village Community Development Director Katrina Glynn said the amendment would essentially allow for unlimited owner-occupied STRs.

Development board members asked: “Why have exemptions at all?” They don’t see a reason for them and felt having exemptions contradicts the idea of a cap. White explained that the village wants exemptions to allow for people to invest in improving derelict housing stock with the hope that after its an STR it will become long-term housing. But Glynn doubted anyone will actually use the rehab or new build exemption — house flippers sell, they don’t rent, she said.

Domenico said his “big overarching gripe” with the law as a whole is that it does a very good job allowing for STRs, but does not offer much to residents who have concerns about STRs pricing them out of their houses or hurting their residential community feel. Having a cap with exemptions doesn’t appease them.

He proposed raising property taxes on STRs and lowering that tax on genuine homes, an idea that met with some friction.

“But a lot of people are renting out their house because they can’t afford it,” Glynn said.

Domenico said they can pass the cost on to customers. “Tariffs,” Development Board member Tim Jackson called them.

Pelletieri said that with only a fraction of village properties being STRs, there wouldn’t be much of a discount to pass on to homeowners spread throughout the village.

Jackson said there are better programs to support home buying.

Board members said the village shouldn’t over-complicate it. They said there should just be one villagewide cap, and maybe compromise by having that cap be larger than 10. They felt having multiple caps with multiple exemptions muddies things and creates gripes.

They want balance for the people who want to supplement their income with the people who still want neighbors.

Domenico said if people want to rehab a house or put an addition on it, they can do that and then apply for an STR permit when one comes up.

Under the current formula, if a district doesn’t have a preexisting STR, its cap is set at zero. STR applicant neighbor Charlie Story said this clusters STRs in areas where they already exist, amplifying the impact of each one on that neighborhood.

Pelletieri believes capping STRs in the village at 5% of the total housing stock is too low — it’s already past that — and that 10% is too high. So, his suggestion was to split it in the middle and cap STRs at 7.5% of the total housing stock, per district, to spread them out evenly throughout districts.

The development board meets tonight at 5 p.m. in the village board room on the second floor of the Harrietstown Town Hall. The meeting will also be streamed on Zoom at tinyurl.com/4huvfs38 or by using the meeting ID 518-491-9884 and the passcode 704556.