The Salida City Council (SCC) Work Session on December 18 featured two training workshops for the new Council as well as a discussion of Short-Term Rental (STR) fees.
Image Courtesy YourHub/Denver Post
Randi Snead, Regional Manager for the Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) gave a presentation on the rights and responsibilities of elected officials, with an emphasis on how the role of Trustees and other elected officials differed from those of staff and volunteer members of advisory boards.
“It’s important to keep in mind what Board roles vs. city manager roles are,” she told the Council, emphasizing that elected officials are entrusted with the public interest, and their role is to set policy, while the staff’s role is to implement that policy.
Image courtesy of the Colorado Department of Local Affairs
“Your staff has to do really hard stuff – they have to implement policy that may not be popular, they may have to deal with angry people,” Snead said, the underlying message being: “so appreciate them.”
Appreciation includes getting along as a Council and with staff, including such seeming basics of behavior as not threatening or undermining them, either in public or private.
Sneed reminded those assembled that dealing with citizens is also part of a Trustee’s job as well as staff’s, and praised the SCC for “making citizens feel heard,” with techniques such as reflective listening during citizen comment. Snead also emphasized the importance, when dealing with the public, of not feeling pressured to act immediately on a hot issue . Instead, she stressed, take the time to make decisions thoughtfully and with the best interest of the public in mind.
The difference between Legislative and Quasi-Judicial Action. Image courtesy of the City of Salida
City Attorney Nina Williams followed with a presentation on the difference between the Council’s acting in a legislative mode – e.g., passing ordinances – and a quasi-judicial mode, “where you’re applying existing laws to a specific set of facts,” and being asked to make decisions about a course of action in a specific set of circumstances.
Williams went over such items as handling “ex parte” communications, meaning discussion of issues with individual constituents, and urged steering such communications towards the whole Council. She also defined pre-judgment and bias, as well as conflict of interest (such as a personal relationship with a person seeking a license or bid for government services) and how to deal with it, either by disclosure on the record or recusal from a vote.
Basically, said Williams, “You want to make sure that nothing you do reflects badly on Council as a whole. Follow the process set out in code. Deliberation is important in public hearings – think out loud about your process” to get it on the record.
“And if you’re in doubt,” concluded Williams, “call me.”
After the workshops, the SCC turned its attention to short-term rentals (STRs). Interim City Administrator Christy Doon went through the history of the 2A and 2B ballot questions, passed in the November, 2022 election. She reported that the city is “on track to collect about $800,000 in (STR) fees and taxes.” These funds are earmarked for the support of affordable and workforce housing projects within the City limits.
Doon then went through the citizen ordinance effort to repeal and replace these taxes and fees. This citizen ordinance question on the ballot “was rejected by voters by a 60-40 margin” in the November 2023 election,” she reported. This leaves the current tax and fee structure intact.
Doon then identified the three projects set to receive the city’s affordable housing funds over the next several years:
- The First and D Workforce Housing project, estimated to cost approximately $8 million;
- The South Arkansas Neighborhood – infrastructure and housing approximately $14 million;
- A “Potential Low-income Tax Credit/Senior Living Project”, with the purchase of land valued at approximately $350,000.
“Staff were instructed by council to come up with different tax structure scenarios,” in the wake of the citizen initiative to overturn the current fee structure, and to specify how much revenue for the affordable housing fund each scenario would yield.
Alternate STR Tax Structure Scenarios. Image courtesy of the City of Salida
“Virtually every other community of our size is a home rule structure [rather than a statutory city],” said Mayor Dan Shore, addressing the issue of the potentially unconstitutional fee structure that the citizen ordinance proposed.
“We could differentiate as a home rule city between resident and non-resident owners,” added Shore. “I have gone over this with people, and I am still seeing misinformation online and in the papers – if they put some of that effort that went into the ballot initiative into voting for home rule, they could potentially have what they wanted.”
“We certainly need the revenue, but people don’t like being taxed on rooms that aren’t being occupied,” said Council member Alisa Pappenfort: “I think that’s the fairness issue … that does put a burden on staff, [but] I would like to see us take it back to occupied rooms.”
“Why are we even sitting here discussing this when we decided this [fee structure] a little over a year ago?” asked Council member Harald Kasper. “For me it’s because of workforce housing issues. I thought property owners would vote for [Ballot Question] 6A – they didn’t. STR owners are carrying more of the load [for affordable housing funds]. I would love to support Alisa on just occupied rooms – but I have no idea how we would enforce that.”
Doon expressed the concern that there was no way for staff to monitor how many rooms in an STR were actually being occupied, and so the straight “per room per night” rental reporting was the only reliable way to collect the revenue. There have been problems for years with enforcing ‘occupied rooms’ policy,” she added.
“I think we throw this challenge out to the STR owners,” said Shore. “Take that money and passion [spent on the ballot initiative and apply it to home rule.”
Mayor Pro-Tem Justin Critelli brought up what he deemed unfair tactics prior to the election. “T tactics that the STR owners used,” such as “mailers that used photos of my colleagues and friends,” as a suboptimal reason to revisit the question of STR fee and permit structure: “This is a bargaining chip – this redirection sends the message that we are responding to bullying tactics.”
“We had people leading this effort who were aligned with the most anti-home-rule factions,” said Shore. “But I would just implore people – if you really want us to be able to do something, you have to start a grass-roots effort at home rule.”
“I think we have to be careful not to include all STR owners in that group,” cautioned Kasper.
Both Pappenfort and Shore expressed support for some of the alternative structures, such as reducing the per-room rental to $10 per night from $15.
Doon outlined the process for an ordinance, including the public hearings, and said that as a result, any changes passed “probably wouldn’t be able to go into effect until July 1.”
