At a meeting of the Woodstock Selectboard on Tuesday, July 22, officials discussed a variety of issues, among them the recent concern with the town’s short-term rental (STR) policies.
This discussion continued years of deliberation over how to regulate STRs in the Town of Woodstock. The town’s most recent ordinance was rejected by the voters on July 30, 2024, with 316 votes in favor of discarding the new ordinance and 284 votes opposed. As a result, the town reverted back to its 2019 STR ordinance. Village voters, on the other hand, approved retaining the new ordinance.
The 2019 STR ordinance is treated as a conditional use permit to operate a business in a residential structure, according to Emily Collins, village land use coordinator and STR officer for the Town of Woodstock.
Eric Duffy, municipal manager, elaborated, “We require all STR owners to register their property with us, but we have no teeth if they do not register. The town has no way to enforce registration at this point.”
This inability to regulate rentals became a focal point in the STR discussion at last Tuesday’s selectboard meeting, as Susan Ford, vice chair of the selectboard, said, “I think we need to revisit [the STR ordinance proposal.] I’m concerned that we have no cap, and I’d like to at least get a cap [on the number of STR properties allowed] in place. I do not know what the numbers are reporting from the software, but my understanding is that we have a lot more [STRs] advertising within Woodstock than we have registered. I am concerned about safety and other issues.”
Duffy confirmed with the Standard that the town currently has approximately 40 registered STRs, but he suspects the actual number is much higher. He told the Standard, “We know of at least 75 overall STR properties, but we are pretty positive there are many more than that.”
Duffy and his staff are waiting for a new STR tracking software, recently purchased, to be up and running in the coming weeks and hopefully help track down some (if not all) of these unregistered STR properties.
The old software — GovOS for STR Registration — included an STR tracking feature, online registration, and payment system. That software cost $25,362 a year, with a 7% annual increase. The renewal date was scheduled for July 1, 2025, at which time the town and village both decided to pursue a different software system.
Duffy explained, “We are in the process of registering with the Rentalscape program by Deckard Technologies — the leading GovTech platform for managing short- and long-term rental business compliance.” This technology uses AI-powered solutions to analyze over 15 million listings from 10,000+ rental websites in real time, tracking listings, bookings, and rental activity. Duffy went on to say, “We found this system potentially more effective and also less expensive for the residents of our community.”
The board agreed to set time aside to hear from the public, reflect on what changes need to be made to the current ordinance, and invite residents to the next set of selectboard meetings to open a dialogue on how to proceed with STR regulations moving forward. The next selectboard meeting is scheduled for Aug. 19 at 6 p.m. All interested residents are encouraged to attend.
For more on this, please see our July 31 edition of the Vermont Standard.
