Isle of Palms residents took another shot at convincing their elected leaders to place some type of cap on the number of short-term rental licenses on the island, voicing their opinions during the citizens’ comments portion of the City Council’s Feb. 28 meeting. Despite their impassioned appeals and veiled threats involving referendums and upcoming elections, their efforts fell short by a single vote.
After returning from just under 30 minutes in executive session, a divided Council delivered a 5-4 decision to ignore five other options and abstain from limiting short-term rentals, “but to continue to increase enforcement efforts and monitor trends and metrics at least semiannually,” according to a list of possible alternatives compiled by City Administrator Desiree Fragoso and her staff.
Voting for Rusty Streetman’s motion to choose the option that didn’t include a cap were Blair Hahn, Kevin Popson, Jimmy Ward and Mayor Phillip Pounds. Scott Pierce, John Bogosian, Katie Miars and Jan Anderson opposed the measure.
“I am not against caps per se,” Streetman commented. “If there’s runaway investments, we might want to do something different. If we see a problem, we can react to it. What I can’t get beyond personally is I think we are doing things that could affect peoples’ property rights.”
“We’ve run out of time, we’ve reached a tipping point where short-term rentals will outweigh residents,” Anderson responded. “If we put a cap on, we can always take it off. I firmly believe we need a cap. If we don’t cap now, we may not have another chance.”
“The property rights thing is a little bit of a bumper sticker quote,” Miars added.
Before they retreated behind closed doors, Council members sparred over both the feasability and the validity of the six options presented by city staff. Alternative no. 1 would have placed a cap only on single family homes taxed at the 6% rate. With a 33% cap, licenses in that category could have risen from the current total of 723 to 1,028.
Alternative no. 1A would have capped all 6% dwelling units, which, at 33% would have permitted 1,508 licenses, 62 below the number already issued.
Under Alternative no. 2, all dwelling units, those taxed at 4% and those taxed at 6%, outside the Front Beach commercial district would be capped at 33%, establishing a limit of 1,383. There already are 1,467 licenses in this category.
Alternative no. 3 would cap only 6% units outside the Front Beach commercial district, where 1,270 licenses have already been issued and another 113 would be available.
Alternative no. 4 would be similar to the plan established by the IOP Planning Commission. Under that plan, there would be no caps in oceanfront areas and for most condominiums, while a 10% increase would have been permitted in three other areas of the island.
Insisting that the numbers compiled by city staff were misleading, Pierce produced a graph showing that alternatives 1, 2 and 3 could potentially lead to the island becoming 54%, 34% and 39%, respectively, short-term rentals. His figures showed that under the Planning Commission’s recommendations, IOP could eventually be 80% short-term rentals and 100%, theoretically, without a cap.
Hahn said Pierce’s comparison “is not based on fact.”
According to Anderson, “the overwhelming majority of short-term rental licenses are held by nonresidents.”
“And the point is there aren’t a lot of people who live on this island who went out and bought short-term rental licenses when we started discussing it,” she said. “The people who have been buying the short-term rental licenses for the last year after we started talking about it are nonresidents. They may be second home owners, but they are not permanent residents.”
Bogosian presented a motion to vote on Alternative no. 3, calling it “a reasonable place to start.”
Ward, however, disagreed.
“It seems like to me this is a monster that’s been created. It will never end. It just feeds upon itself. I don’t remember a few years ago this being such a horrible discovery that we have a big problem,” he remarked. “What’s really scary to me is ‘this is a reasonable place to start.’ So what’s next? More restrictions? We started our own hysteria.”
Bogosian withdrew his motion after Miars insisted that the Council go into executive session to discuss the situation with City Attorney Mac McQuillin.
A few people spoke against caps on short-term rentals during the citizens’ comments portion of the meeting, including Michael Baily, who said the island has “a day-tripper issue, not a short-term rental issue.” Most speakers favored caps, including former Council Member Randy Bell, who correctly predicted that the majority of the city’s elected officials would not change their minds about limiting short-term rentals.
“This decision has already been made. There’s five votes sitting up here that will either do nothing or pass a cap that’s meaningless,” he said. “What is stunning to me is the lack of thoughtful debate amongst this Council for proposals that need to be discussed in front of the public and vetted for their accuracy.”
Tom Schmitt agreed that the Council would be unlikely to take meaningful action.
“The Council is being held hostage by five obstructionists,” he said. “After all this inaction, we’re not getting through, so we’re going to have to do the referendum and work on the next election to Council.”
Schmitt’s statement was an obvious reference to Folly Beach, where a petition circulated by local residents forced the Council to call an election on short-term rentals. The referendum passed, limiting the number of STR licenses that could be issued on the island.
