After updating the ordinance governing short-term rental properties in Rockaway Beach in February, the city council approved a cap of 420 licenses for those properties on March 13.
However, with no mechanism in place to phase out current licenses, the city will rely on attrition to eventually reach that goal, with 517 licenses currently in use.
“I don’t want to turn the clock back on the current STR businesses,” said Mayor Charles McNeilly. “What I want the council to do and that’s what I think it’s doing tonight is to communicate to our community, our residents, our voters that we get the cost and impacts of STR businesses to our community, to our neighborhoods, that we don’t want to unnecessarily hollow out our neighborhoods.”
In addition to the cap, the council approved a $95 administrative fee for property owners to join the waitlist for new short-term rental (STR) licenses.
The update to the STR ordinance was triggered by a surge in the number of licenses sought in recent years and a desire to maintain a balance between the city’s tourist economy and livability for full-time residents. The updated ordinance gave the council the ability to set a cap on licenses through a resolution, which they exercised in March.
Discussion on the number of licenses to be allowed under the cap occurred at the work session preceding the council’s meeting. Councilors considered a range of possible caps between 420 licenses, representing around 20% of available dwellings in the city, and 530 licenses, or 25% of the housing stock.
McNeilly said that residents had told him that there had been a noticeable decline in the number of neighbors they had, with those residences being replaced by STRs populated by a rotating cast of strangers. “No one moved to Rockaway Beach to have businesses dropped next door and down the street in areas zoned for residences,” McNeilly said. “This is why we need to pick a cap that meets the need for enough STR businesses to support a vibrant overnight tourist trade but not one more.”
McNeilly stressed that he fully supported the tourism economy but said that historic crowd levels during last year’s Fourth of July week had proven capable of supporting it. Therefore, McNeilly said that he favored setting a cap near the 410 properties that had been operating during that week and letting the number of licenses decrease to that level through attrition.
Councilor Mary McGinnis noted that in four recent cases surrounding STRs in Oregon, including one in neighboring Lincoln County, judges had ruled that the properties were not private residences but businesses. “My concerns are we have allowed commercial businesses in residential zones that do not allow for commercial businesses,” McGinnis said.
McGinnis said that she favored taking a moderate approach and instituting a cap given those concerns while appeals to those rulings are heard by the Oregon Supreme Court. In that way, the city government would minimize corrective work needed to account for a ruling that might require rezoning or other action.
“I am thinking a cap that sincerely protects our business industry and our tourist lodging for those businesses but doesn’t add more nonconforming uses in more places where they’re not supposed to be,” McGinnis said.
Councilor Alesia Franken said that the addition of more than 100 licenses in the last year was alarming to her and that she also favored a cap close to the number of licenses in 2023.
City Manager Luke Shepard noted that while there were 517 licenses outstanding, a recent survey showed that only 465 rentals were actively listed for rent, suggesting that some number of licenses may have been obtained in anticipation of the new regulations.
McNeilly said that it was also important to consider the impact of STRs on long-term rental rates and availability, with other councilors agreeing.
As the conversation progressed, consensus emerged around the 420-license cap and the councilors agreed that they would vote to formalize that number in the ensuing meeting.
During the meeting, the councilors voted 5-0 in favor of the cap, with Councilor Kristine Hayes recusing herself from the vote.
The new ordinance also included a provision that the cap will be reevaluated annually and amended as necessary, with the first review set to come in October 2025.
Neah-Kah-Nie Update
During the meeting the council also received updates from Neah-Kah-Nie School District Superintendent Tyler Reed, Daniel Wear from Sustainable Northwest and Matt Del Moro from HBH engineering.
Reed briefed the council on his first year serving as the district superintendent and ongoing work to the district’s strategic plan. The district is currently gathering feedback from community members via an online survey and will host two listening sessions in April to help inform the plan’s development, before completing the planning process in the May and June.
Reed said that the plan will replace one that expired last spring and run for five years, helping to guide the district’s operations in accordance with the wishes of students, families, staff and business and community partners. Reed explained that the district’s board had hired an outside firm to guide the process to eliminate the possibility for bias and that there was a special focus on soliciting input from Spanish speaking and LGBTQIA+ community members.
Jetty Creek Work Group moves ahead
Wear updated the council on ongoing work in the Jetty Creek Working Group, of which Sustainable Northwest and the city are both members. The working group also includes Nuveen Natural Capital, one of the two forestry companies that own the land comprising the Jetty Creek watershed that provides drinking water to Rockaway Beach.
The working group was originally formed in 2020 to examine ways to protect the quality and quantity of the water available in the watershed in response to concerns over the impacts of timber harvesting.
Since 2020, Nuveen Capital, which owns 550 acres in the lower watershed, has stopped spraying pesticides. Officials from the company have also said that it is open to selling the land to the city or the North Coast Land Conservancy, another working group member, for protection under a conservation easement.
Wear said that Stimson Lumber, which owns the remaining 700+ acres of the watershed has also been participating in informal conversations about the watershed’s management.
Wear said that the next step for the working group and city is to develop a forest management plan for the watershed, which can be funded through an Oregon Health Authority grant. That plan would lay the groundwork to apply for other grants from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service to acquire or place the watershed into a conservation easement.
Streets Capital Improvement Plan approved
Del Moro gave a final presentation on the streets capital improvement plan that HBH Engineering has been helping the city to develop over the last year.
During that plan’s development, consultants constructed a street database and a prioritized list of projects for the city to focus on over the next three years.
Del Moro said that his firm’s review had showed that the streets in the city were aging with many in need of repair as salt deposits from the ocean air caused excessive wear and tear.
The new improvement plan places a focus on rehabilitating asphalt roads that are in the poorest condition and upgrading gravel roads that are in a good condition and can easily be paved. The top priority will be repaving North Pacific Street, for which the city has received a $250,000 allotment from the Oregon Department of Transportation.
The council unanimously approved the plan and comments will be accepted through April.
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