By James Pruitt
The practice of people renting out their homes while on vacation themselves is coming under review of the Sylvan Township Planning Commission.
The commission discussed the topic at its last meeting and it should be on the agenda at this month’s meeting. Zoning and Planning Officer Carol Konieczki will investigate the matter.
The arrangement is called an Air Bed and Breakfast and involves people renting out their homes to people while away or just renting an extra room.
“There’s a potential for homes to be rented out for the weekend and people are a little bit worried about that,” Trustee Roy Schmidt said during the Dec. 1 township board meeting.
Konieczki will review other township ordinances and how those communities are responding, Schmidt said.
“We do recognize Air B+B is a problem a lot of other municipalities are dealing with and we want to make sure we aren’t doing knee-jerk reactions,” he said.
Air B+Bs are homes that can be rented out online to anyone. The problem is that such uses conflict with zoning, Supervisor Scott Cooper said.
The commission wants to know how the practice fits in the township’s ordinance for rental dwellings. There was language proposed to amend the ordinance, but Schmidt said the commission didn’t feel comfortable with that without direction from the board.
The board will discuss Section 30-808 for rental dwellings in the zoning ordinance at its January meeting and will decide if the Planning Commission should address it.
Master plan woes
The commission discussed the Master Plan and its dealings with Carlisle Wortman. Many on the panel are frustrated they haven’t had much interaction with the firm, Schmidt says.
“We haven’t worked a lot together; we haven’t heard from them,” Schmidt said. “We are pushing up on that time budget.”
The commission received a basic document from Carlisle Wortman, but it wasn’t what the commission wanted, Schmidt said. Instead of taking the old document and improving it, the vendor submitted a completely new and very vague, high-level document.
“We are not even confident they did due diligence on it, other than possibly making cookie-cutter documents like this for all the townships,” Schmidt said.
In order to find out, the commission has asked for a meeting so members can ask “those hard questions.” The request stipulated the meeting should not be at the township’s expense, Schmidt said.
While Cooper asked where the disconnect was, Schmidt said it may be a case of the commission’s expectations not matching the work Carlisle Wortman did. The commission wanted to see a document that could be compared to the existing one and be able to compare what the firm recommended keeping and changing, he said.
Cooper said his understanding was that since the firm was doing other neighboring communities, the document would have a regional approach. The commission did not see that kind of detail at all, Schmidt said.
“It’s possible this is just their first step and there is going to be a lot more behind it,” Schmidt said. “I just would have expected that (early on). I may be wrong.”
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