Claim:
If the issue of short term rentals was on a ballot, then overwhelmingly, the residents of Park Township would vote it down.
Facts:
While there’s no way to know for sure without actually putting short term rentals on the ballot, this claim seems unlikely.
Why do we say that?
It’s simple. The input from residents township-wide strongly suggests otherwise. Multiple recent surveys show that the majority of Park Township residents do not want a short term rental ban.
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88 of the comments listed in Park Township’s Master Plan survey results related to the short term rental ban, with at least 80 responses directly mentioning short term rentals. 55% were in favor of short term rentals, 19% were neutral or unclear, and only 26% against.
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In an independent, township-wide survey conducted this past summer, 58% of respondents opposed the Board’s decision to ban residential property owners from renting out their property as vacation rentals for short-term stays.
- When the township asked Ottawa Beach neighborhood residents, “Restrict short-term rentals?” 70% said no, do not restrict them.
What happened?
In November 2022, the Park Township Board of Trustees unanimously voted to ban short-term rentals in residential zoning districts, likely believing they were fixing a “huge problem”.
However, not only was the extent of the problem exaggerated, the recent surveys show something different than what the board heard.
The truth is, the majority of residents want to continue to have a small number of residential short term rentals available for families, friends, and tourists to stay in.
Why the discrepancy between what the surveys show and what the board heard?
We suspect the difference had to do with how the information was obtained. And more importantly, with the kind of information and who they were hearing that information from.
Each month, the Board of Trustees receives a packet to review. Among other things, that packet contains the minutes of the Planning Commission meetings. Those minutes contain brief summaries of public comments.
And what did people comment on? Regulations. Because that’s what they were asked to comment on.
This makes sense, because prior to the township’s ban on short term rentals, the Planning Commission was tasked with creating regulations around them.
During public comment periods, the Planning Commission requested that public comment focus on the regulations they were working on. So comments focused on that, not on whether or not people were for or against short term rentals.
Who attended Planning Commission meetings?
The only people willing to take the time to attend month after month of exhausting, sometimes 5-hour long Planning Commission meetings were people who really, really, REALLY cared about short term rentals one way or another.
(And of course the planning commissioners!)
The majority of people are not bothered by vacation rentals, and therefore saw no need to attend or speak up.
That meant most people who spoke were either anti-STR, speaking about the things they disliked regarding vacation rentals, or short term rental owners (quite a few of whom were residents!) and others who spoke about regulations. The thing they were asked to comment on.
Delving into public comments
Each speaker was normally allowed up to two minutes to speak, and each speaker’s entire comment was then reduced to typically a 2-3 sentence summary in the Planning Commission meeting minutes. The minutes that are provided to the Board of Trustees packets.
That’s how often detailed and nuanced information was condensed, summarized, and delivered to the board. It’s understandable, but it can lead to misunderstandings.
So if you read the minutes, the public comments look like pretty much nothing but a long list of complaints. Even including, in many cases, the comments from short term rental owners. People we know absolutely want short term rentals to continue in Park Township.
And what the Board and Planning Commission didn’t hear were people saying “hey, we like the things the way they are, don’t ban short term rentals!”
Why? Because no one even considered that banning short term rentals was on the table.
We thought reasonable regulations and limits were under discussion, and comments from STR proponents focused on those, as requested.
The board was getting a skewed view of the scope and magnitude of issues with short term rentals, and reacted accordingly. It’s natural to want to help people you believe are presenting you with a problem.
From that perspective, it’s easy to see that the board might have looked at what appeared to be nothing but negative comments and thought, let’s ban ’em all, this is too much trouble.
Who commented during Planning Commission meetings?
The records show there were a total of 213 public comments, with 99 unique individuals who spoke about short term rentals at planning commission meetings between 2019-2022.
Of those, 47 people commented against short term rentals in some way. “Against” is interpreted very broadly here, and ranges from people who appeared to possibly dislike STRs to those who seemed to hate their very existence. Of those 47 anti-STR people, the majority were from the Chippewa or Algonquin neighborhoods. And just like with some of the pro-STR commenters, some of the people commenting against STRs lived out of state or out of the area.
45 of the people who commented were for short term rentals. (And not all of those people owned one!) If someone did mention owning one, it was frequently assumed that they were not residents, even though in many cases they were. Additionally, due to the request to keep comments focused on regulations, comments from people who were pro-STR could have appeared like they did not like short term rentals.
For example, one of PTN board member Jackie Beck’s comments was summarized as “She likes the 500 ft buffer.” It would be reasonable to read a comment like that and misconstrue it as wanting buffers and being against short term rentals.
In reality, neither of those things are true.
She was simply advocating for the smallest buffer on the table, since it appeared there were going to be buffers.
7 people had unclear/unknown stances.
The anti-STR contingent got a lot of visibility
Finally, it’s clear that the anti-STR contingent got a lot of visibility, particularly on social media. If anyone spoke up in favor of short term rentals online, in many cases they were bullied, doxxed, told to get out or hit the road, etc.
Unsurprisingly, this made people reluctant to speak their mind. (Especially in township meetings where people were generally required to publicly state their full name and address.)
One pro-STR commenter said she was “concerned about giving her name and address for fear of retaliation” and added that “Many short term owners don’t come to the PC meeting for fear of retaliation”.
While that may seem like hyperbole, an unknown person or persons from the anti-STR Algonquin neighborhood had sent a series of threatening postcards to a short term rental owner in the not-so-distant past.
All of the front sides looked like this:
While the backs changed:
(The family’s name and other potentially identifying information have been redacted by PTN.)
These particular threats stopped after the County Sheriff’s Office talked with some of the residents of the Algonquin neighborhood.
But their anti-STR fervor remained, and the complaints continue to roll in from that neighborhood — even though from 2019 to September 2023, only one complaint from the Algonquin neighborhood was listed as a violation.
That violation was the owner there parting out a car over a weekend, not a short term renter having a party or any other type of “nightmare” scenario.
PTN hopes the Park Township Board of Trustees will recognize that this strong anti-STR sentiment from one highly represented neighborhood does not represent the will of the people.
The survey results do.