The Bella Vista City Council left its Oct. 17 work session hoping it would hear the first of three readings regarding an ordinance regulating short-term rentals during its regular session held Monday night at the District Court Building.
However, after hearing from several residents and short-term rental owners, and discussion about setting up a committee of council members, citizens and STR owners, the Council voted to table the issue until its first meeting of 2023.
"We've heard a tremendous amount of discussion here tonight and I think there are a lot of issues that have not been resolved," said Councilman Jerry Snow. "We've got sales tax to consider, we've got A&P to consider, we've got property values to consider and property taxes and investment properties to consider ... I think there are a couple of things we need to explore. So I'm making the motion that all these short-term rental ordinances be tabled until we have an opportunity to do an impact study, and impact study on this septic system issue that keeps coming up."
Snow's motion encompassed the three ordinances pertaining to STRs on the meeting's agenda.
"I'm going to tell you, my vote will be 'No,'" said Councilman Doug Fowler. "We've spent an inordinate amount of time on this. Economic impact study ... I don't really know what that means or who's going to do that, quite frankly. Basically, I view (the motion) as ambiguous. We don't know where we're going with that. We've spent a year listening to feedback, doing homework, research, editing, massaging, listening to the City Council ... this is coming in like at the 23rd hour, at 11:59. This makes no sense to me. It's time to move forward with what we have."
Snow's motion to table the ordinances until January of 2023 passed with Larry Wilms, Jim Wozniak, Steven Bourke and Snow voting "Yes" and John Flynn and Fowler voting "No."
The ordinances that had been previously proposed to help bring short-term rentals under a regulatory umbrella as far as such topics as permitting, revocation of permits, occupancy limits, total number of STRs allowed and penalties for violations are concerned.
The final ordinance that was to be considered was proposed by Fowler with amendments the Council came up with during the work session.
"We'll be using Mr. (Doug) Fowler's submission," Mayor Peter Christie said after the work session. "Not his original one, though. (City attorney) Jason (Kelley) is going to put together an amendment that is going to include everything that everybody would like to see and put it into one so we're not going in and amending every one."
Various ordinances had been proposed and tabled regarding short-term leases (STRs) over the past couple of months. The Council decided to use this work session to compare and contrast the ordinances, working their way through each one to come up with agreed upon amendments that Kelley put together into something that was on the agenda for a first reading on Monday night.
It was to be the first of three required readings of the ordinance by the mayor in front of the Council. Unless there is a vote to suspend the rules and go directly to a third and final reading, the second reading would take place at the Council's November meeting and the third in December, thus paving the way for the new ordinance's arrival to coincide with the arrival of the new mayor and council members, which was a goal the Council had said it would like to reach when talks about STR ordinances began earlier this year.