Legal questions delay zoning amendment vote

LACONIA — Members of the city’s planning board continued a discussion of a new short-term rental ordinance until next month to allow legal services time to review proposed changes.

“Legal would like some further time to review so they’ve asked us to continue it until next month,” Planning Director Rob Mora said Tuesday night.

The board held the scheduled public hearing during the Tuesday meeting and received input from two citizens.

Ward 3 Councilor Eric Hoffman read from a letter written by Marcia Hayward, resident of Laconia and member of the city's Zoning Board of Adjustment. Hayward noted the last four special exception requests for short-term lodging were advertised as waterfront properties to attract renters, and three of those four came from out of town to purchase a property as an investment — all argued receiving the special exception would help them pay for their investment.

“The granting of their request makes the property a commercial use in a residential zone. A commercial use that, in my opinion, that benefits the property owner and not the city,” Hayward wrote.

“With each request comes opposition from neighbors, either in person or written,” Hayward wrote. “The basic argument routinely presented was the neighbors want to maintain the character of their neighborhoods — not turn them into a commercial zone which requires them to police adherence to the ordinance.”

The city’s master plan cites a need for middle-income and year-round housing, Hayward noted.

“It’s my understanding that the rationale for creating this short-term rental ordinance was to maintain the housing stock, because many homes were being purchased by out-of-towners for second homes, thus removing them from the market for local, committed home buyers,” Hayward wrote. 

One aspect of the proposed ordinance amendment is the addition of a self-reported auditing system.

“The city will have no way of validating the information provided as accurate, just like the city has no way of validating the number of short-term rentals that are occurring,” Hayward wrote. “The proposed amendment does not go far enough — it needs to address compliance issues and it needs language to provide guidance to make a good case to deny applications where appropriate.”

Jon Hildreth of Laconia submitted a different concern to the planning board: how would grandfathering properties work? 

“Because a property was used in this manner — it had been rented short-term — then that property in a residential zone becomes a commercial property and basically a hotel in your neighborhood,” Hildreth said.

Mora told Hildreth that when the city originally adopted an ordinance on short-term lodging, it created a special exception: if you had been using a property in that manner for five years, then you met the requirement for the special exception. 

“In this update we have completely rewritten the ordinance and we have removed that,” Mora said. “We have put it back to the standard criteria for every other special exception to make sure that it’s in line with the neighborhood, it’s in line with the master plan and it’s not a burden to any city services.”

One purpose of that change is to give the zoning board more opportunity to ensure use is in line with the character of the neighborhood and, if not, to say so.

“You have to have a short-term lodging permit now. If you don’t have one now, and we change the ordinance, and you didn’t have one, then you’re out of luck,” Mora said. “If somebody got a special exception from the zoning board and they’ve been doing it now — and we adopt a new ordinance — now they would be considered pre-existing non-conforming.”

The short-term lodging use would run with a property but the permit with a discreet owner. If an owner with a permit sold a property, the new owner would need a new permit. If they don’t get a new permit, after 12 months they’d abandon the old permit and would have to return to the zoning board for a special exception.

“In the ordinance rewrite that we did, we tried to add in there that auditing process to give us a better ability to manage who was following the rules and who was not following the rules,” Mora said Tuesday. “All laws, unfortunately, do is keep honest people honest. If somebody lies on a report and submits it to us, I have no way of going out to validate that.”

“Well, the neighbors will be the eyes,” Charlie St. Clair said.