Committee Brainstorms

How To Regulate Rentals

With 9-Month Moratorium, Clock Ticking

On Cooperstown Tourist Accommodations

By JIM KEVLIN • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com

COOPERSTOWN – The village Tourist Accommodation Moratorium Committee met for the first time this morning, developed an agenda for the next three months, and brainstormed in a way that suggested there are adjustments to village law that can be made to slow the conversion of year-’round properties to seasonal rentals.

Longtime ZBA chair Sue Snell observed that perhaps such existing concepts as minimum lot size, regulations on apartments (limit 25 percent of units to short-term rentals, for instance) and differentiating between “major thoroughfares” and residential streets (say, Chestnut v. Eagle) might help guide changes to the local Tourist Accommodation Law.

Mayor Jeff Katz, committee chair, agreed.  “We have lot-size criteria,” he said. “We already have in our law what people over time have said:  This is an adequate amount of space.”   Committee member Richard Blabey reacted similarly: “There are rational reasons to say, if more people are on a piece of property you need a larger piece of property.”

While Village Attorney Martin Tillapaugh did not attend today’s meeting, Katz said he will be asked to attend as many as possible to ensure any adjustments in the law will survive any legal challenge.

The debate that led to the new committee’s formation goes back to April, when six proposed conversions of single-family properties for short-term rentals came before the ZBA, to much public concern that too many rentals will damage the village’s essentially residential character.  And concern continues: Public comment has taken up two hours in each of the last three ZBA meetings, Snell said.

Snell, who said she has been on the ZBA since the late 1980s, said, back then, conversions mostly involved turning large homes into B&Bs, to allow homeowners to continue to afford to maintain the properties.  Lately, they have been aimed at filling “all categories of short-term housing needs.”

“Do we even want a system that takes us from 5 percent (of houses in the village) to 20 percent?” Katz asked.  “I would think not.”  He noted that Cooperstown is not alone in its concern — 15 percent of the houses in the Village of Milford are being used for short-term rentals.  This has been a concern not only for residential character, but the lack of year-’round houses and apartments is preventing young families from moving in, and school enrollment is dropping.

The nine-month moratorium will pass quickly, the committee agreed, and Katz suggested the committee’s work be completed in three months, followed by a public forum and adjustments, so that the Village Board can revise the law, take it to public hearing, and have a new version in place by the time the moratorium expires next March.

Picking up on a quote from the public contained in ZBA minutes, Katz expressed concern that revisions target, say, Dreams Park families, while giving a pass to Glimmerglass Festival patrons:  They must be even-handed and apply to all equally, not to “‘good people’ who deserve one thing and ‘bad people’ who deserve another.”