By Lauren Dorsey, Staff Writer
The Woodstock Village Board of Trustees, following consultations with attorneys, have decided to enforce the new short-term rental ordinance that voters upheld in last week’s election. “As of right now, the new ordinance that’s in place in the village will be enacted the way it’s written,” Eric Duffy, the Woodstock municipal manager, told the Standard this week. “The trustees have expressed interest in going back and at least cleaning up the language — there are things that say ‘town and village’ and they’ll edit it to make sure it just says ‘village’ — hopefully in the next couple of weeks.”
Despite village voters’ support for the ordinance, the path forward was thrown into confusion after Town of Woodstock voters discarded it. “The [original] plan was always that it was going to be a unified ordinance [over] both the village and town,” said Duffy.
The final tally for the town’s vote, which was by Australian ballot, was 316 votes to discard the new ordinance (“yes”) and 284 votes to keep it (“no”). At the village floor vote, 36 residents voted yes and 68 voted no.
Although both boards knew that a split vote was possible, they were advised by their attorneys at Stitzel, Page & Fletcher not to prematurely dig into what would happen under a hypothetical divide. “They recommended that we [not] spend the money on their research and time until we knew what was going to happen,” said Duffy.
STR operators in the town will remain under the same rules the town has had since 2019. “For the town, it’s very straightforward,” said Duffy. “Because the town approved the petition, they fell back automatically to the old ordinance that was in effect.”
The boards originally wanted to pass a joint ordinance because it would make enforcement much easier and increase the simplicity of the rules. “The whole point of having one ordinance was to make it more equitable,” said Laura Powell, a member of the Woodstock Selectboard and ex officio planning commission member. “We still have inequity and many different rules for many different parties and many different categories of operators. Anytime that that exists, it’s going to be complicated, it’s going to be confusing, and ultimately it’s going to be unfair. That’s unfortunate but that’s what we’re left with.”
However, Seton McIlroy, the chair of the village trustees is optimistic that even under the current circumstances, both the town and village will be able to improve on the old system. “On our part, as elected officials, every time there was a question of, ‘How many [STRs] are there?’ there was no good answer, and that’s because there hasn’t been a lot of compliance with the rules,” said McIlroy “[That’s] because we haven’t had the infrastructure, the resources, or the personnel. What you will see that will be a change from before, is despite having two ordinances, there will be a real focus on having people in compliance.”
McIlroy envisions this will happen in a few ways.
First, there will be significantly more communication about enrollment, permits, and how to get registered. “We have an overall goal of having better, more effective communication, and so this is one piece that’s going to fall within that,” said McIlroy.
Second, Powell says that the new software subscription that the town purchased should be able to help both the town and village increase the information they have about STR operators and streamline the time spent on paperwork. “Now that we have the software, we have a lot more information centralized, which will enable us to do more,” said Powell.
One major difference to come out of the split vote is a significant divergence in fees between the village and the town. Under the new setup, the village’s fees for STR operators are higher. McIlroy, however, feels that this will not disadvantage the village’s STR operators because the new ordinance simultaneously lifted the limit on how many times an operator could rent a year. “We really wanted to make sure that people had the ability to extract as much money from their STRs as possible and [we felt] that that made the fees okay,” said McIlroy. “I think it’s not a disadvantage for the village. I think it’s a disadvantage for the ability to bring people into compliance more broadly because there’s going to be less money to draw from [for that].”
McIlroy emphasized that nothing about the new arrangement is set in stone. “This is like everything else we do,” said McIlroy. “There is no final destination on this. We just keep adapting as we [need] to, to do the best that we can with the information that’s available — that’s numbers, that’s tax information, and obviously a big chunk of that is input that we get back from the public.”
For the town, Powell said that the board will be going back to the beginning, drawing up a new set of goals and priorities before deciding on the road ahead. “I was definitely disappointed by the outcome, but I think that it shows us where the work needs to be done,” said Powell. “Certainly, I think we’ve all learned many lessons and one of them is about how we need to communicate the changes that we’re seeking to make for the betterment of Woodstock.”
As the boards determine their next steps, Powell encourages everyone to get involved by attending meetings and making their voices heard in the upcoming conversations. “I would encourage people to please keep showing up to meetings or watching meetings,” said Powell. “All of our meetings are recorded, and now they’re available not only on our town website, on our Facebook, but many of them are on YouTube because of Woodstock Community Television.”