The Empire Village Council has taken its next step in its creation of a short term rental ordinance and regulation.
The Council, during its regular meeting June 26 voted to see a legal review.
Trustee March Dye motioned quickly, once the topic of discussion started, to seek review from the village attorney Tim Figura of Mikah Myers Attorneys of Grand Rapids. One regulation and one registration ordinance were submitted by trustees Dye and Meg Walton of Empire’s short-term rental committee. Bob Chase and Carrie Ford represent a split in the committee, not supporting either potential ordinance.
“I think it’s important to send it to an attorney now before we go down on some path and realize it isn’t going to work at all. It’s not much different than the signed ordinance, more or less, because that came through planning,” Walton said. “I don’t expect this to just stop at the attorney ... We’ve not approved an ordinance. We’ve not approved a registration. We haven’t proceeded in any direction.”
The board sparred over whether it was necessary to send it to an attorney rather than sending the proposed documents to a planner.
“We hand something off to either a planner or an attorney, and their first question is going to be, what’s your goal?” Empire trustee Maggie Bacon said.
Bacon proposed several goals for the board to agree on. But they didn’t make a motion. Those goals would be to preserve the residential community character; to prevent neighbors from allowing loud parties strewing garbage around the neighborhood; controlling fireworks displays; not having travel trailers or tents placed on their property; and not having events that don’t have local contact information when difficulties occur. She also proposed to have a well documented process for reporting issues.
“Committee and the two folks who were on the planning commission. Don’t we owe it to our public to make sure that we are actually getting expert opinion or expert advice related to planning? Because whether we’re talking about zoning or police power, that’s where a planner can help us,” Bacon said.
The motion was made by Dye and second by Webb or Walton to send the rental ordinance and regulation ordinances to their attorney for their advice.
“When you have that number of 4/3 split votes in one meeting, that indicates a lack of leadership. It’s okay to disagree on issues. It was the feeling - in the audience that no one was listening to each other, no one had a plan of action for any of the issues: no goals, no accountability measures and no one willing to stop and do it right - to be productive,” Bacon said.
