Some attendees encouraged town board members to rethink their cap on hosted rental permits in the town’s residential areas, while others theorized that the proposed law could decrease property values and homeowners’ rights in residential areas. Several residents stressed the importance of enforcing any new STR regulations and asked that the STR complaint line be streamlined. A couple of people asked the town and village to consider using revenue from occupancy taxes collected on STR stays to incentivize people to move to the area through grants, or to fund local emergency services. But more than a third of Tuesday night’s 29 speakers expressed concerns about the town’s proposal to rezone Deerwood Hills from a “Rural Countryside” district to a “Town Residential” district. As a result of their concerns, the town council has since dropped its proposal to rezone Deerwood.

More than 60 people attended the hearing in person, while more than 70 people tuned in virtually. The town and village boards have not yet adopted the proposed new STR regulations. This hearing was required before the boards could schedule a meeting to vote on the changes. Town Supervisor Derek Doty has said that changes to the regulations could be made based on feedback. The proposed law is available online at tinyurl.com/bdcnbubm.

The town and village will continue to accept public comments about their proposed STR law via email through end of business this Friday, Dec. 2. People with comments about the village’s portion of the proposed changes can email village Clerk Anita Estling at lpclerk@villageoflakeplacid.ny.gov. People who want to comment about the town’s STR changes can email town Clerk Laurie Dudley at ldudley@northelba.org. People who are unsure whether their comment pertains to the town or village can email both clerks.

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Unhosted changes

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Lake Placid village resident Peter Roland Jr., who’s the chair of the Lake Placid-North Elba Community Development Commission’s Joint Community Housing Committee, supported the village’s proposal to prohibit new unhosted STR permits in village residential districts at the STR public hearing. As a Hillcrest Avenue resident since 1984, Roland said he’s had a “front-row seat” to the increased STR presence there, which he said has contributed to rising home prices that middle-class locals can no longer afford.

“This is a social issue,” he said. “When shopkeepers, and health care professionals, school teachers and other residents that make up a community can no longer afford to live in that community, that community is in danger of losing its soul.”

Nina Armstrong, another Hillcrest resident and a Lake Placid native, encouraged the village to reconsider its proposal to allow existing unhosted STR owners in residential areas to keep their permits until there’s a change in ownership of their property. A couple of people with unhosted permits in residential areas also asked the boards to allow them to pass their permits on to their children.

In the current proposal, unhosted permit-holders in residential areas wouldn’t be able to pass on permits with a change in ownership, including passing on permits on to children.

A couple of unhosted permit-holders in residential areas asked board members to distinguish between LLCs who run unhosted STRs for profit and second homeowners who run unhosted STRs on their properties to afford a full-time future in Lake Placid.

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Deerwood

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Eleven of the 29 people who spoke at Tuesday’s public hearing said they lived in the Deerwood Hills area. During the hearing, many of the Deerwood residents didn’t focus on the proposed STR law itself — most of them said there was only a handful of STRs in their neighborhoods, with only one causing “problems.” Some residents said they were glad the town wanted to prohibit unhosted rentals there, but all of the residents were against rezoning Deerwood Hills as a way to accomplish that. Residents there received an anonymous letter in the mail informing them that the town planned to rezone Deerwood to Town Residential, and the neighbors attended the hearing to voice their opposition to the proposal.

Most of the Deerwood residents said they were concerned that rezoning their neighborhood would allow people to subdivide their lots and build more homes in Deerwood, increasing the density of houses there and potentially straining sewer systems. Rural Countryside and Town Residential zones have different qualifications for minimum lot sizes. While a property in the Town Residential district can have a lot as small as half an acre, a lot in the Rural Countryside district can’t be smaller than one acre.

Doty and town Councilor Kilburn Politi spoke at length with a group of Deerwood residents that had gathered after the hearing, and town councilors held a follow-up meeting the next night to address their concerns. After the hearing on Tuesday and at the town council’s special meeting on Wednesday, town Councilor Emily Kilburn Politi explained that rezoning Deerwood wouldn’t affect housing density in the neighborhood. While minimum lot sizes in the Town Residential district are smaller than in the Rural Countryside, the Adirondack Park Agency has more strict jurisdiction over lot sizes at Deerwood, and the APA’s rules would supersede the town’s requirements.

Most of Deerwood is classified for resource management use, with a minimum lot size of 42.7 acres, per APA standards; the rest of the properties are classified for low-intensity use, with a minimum lot size of 3.2 acres. If the town did decide to rezone Deerwood, lot sizes couldn’t be significantly reduced without a variance from the APA, according to Kilburn Politi, and those variances would have to be supported by the town.

Councilors on Tuesday and Wednesday assured Deerwood residents they were trying to protect their neighborhood by rezoning it. They said they didn’t want Deerwood to become like Hillcrest Avenue, a residential neighborhood which has become known for having a high prevalence of unhosted STRs.

But some Deerwood residents felt local officials hadn’t been transparent in their decision to rezone their neighborhood — residents at Tuesday’s public hearing said they found out about the rezoning from an anonymous letter they received in the mail. Doty said the town had opted not to send letters out to residents alerting them about the rezoning because councilors were told they didn’t legally need to.

By the end of Wednesday’s follow-up meeting, however, Doty said he felt that residents understood that housing density in Deerwood Hills wouldn’t change with the rezoning and that councilors’ intentions with the measure had been good. He said he learned a lesson in communication this week.

“If I had to do anything different, I wouldn’t have just followed state rules in changing zoning. I would’ve notified each property owner from this town of North Elba,” he said. “I feel that was probably a big mistake on our part, and I took full responsibility for it.”

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Next steps

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The town council and village board will now move forward with voting on their proposed STR law without the rezoning proposal. However, removing the rezoning from the town and village’s proposed STR regulations is such a significant change that the municipalities are required to hold another public hearing on the updated proposal, according to town Supervisor Derek Doty. The town and village will hold the second STR public hearing on the revised law at 6 p.m. on Dec. 16 in the North Elba Town Hall’s first-floor meeting room. People can attend the meeting virtually at meet.goto.com/lpv, or by calling 1-872-240-3212 and entering the code 690-687-301. The amended local law is available online at tinyurl.com/4j48uva5.

Additionally, the village wants to extend its moratorium on the issuance of new STR permits — which is currently set to end on Dec. 31 — through Jan. 31, 2023 so the boards have time to hold the additional public hearing and file the new STR law with the county and state. A moratorium extension also requires a public hearing. The village will hold a hearing on its moratorium extension at 4:45 p.m. on Dec. 19, ahead of the village’s regular board meeting at 5 p.m. in the North Elba Town Hall.

The town and village want to file their new STR law before their STR moratoriums end. While the village’s moratorium is currently set to end on Dec. 31, the town already extended its moratorium through Jan. 31, 2023.

The town and village have also scheduled a joint meeting at 5:30 p.m. on Dec. 20 to discuss the environmental impacts of the new STR law as required by the state’s Environmental Quality Review Act. Kilburn Politi on Tuesday, Dec. 6 said the town and village might take a vote on the new STR law at the Dec. 20 meeting.

Meanwhile, the town council has asked Deerwood residents to take a poll amongst themselves on whether or not they want to be rezoned and report their results to the town council within two weeks. If a majority of 80% or more residents in Deerwood say they want to be rezoned to a Town Residential district, the town council would rezone Deerwood with an amendment to the new STR law.

Town and village boards put in hours of work through special meetings, conversations with town and village attorneys, and town hall-style meetings over the last several months to create the current proposed STR regulations presented on Tuesday. And before the village and town initiated a moratorium on new STR permits in March to focus on reworking STR regulations, the North Elba-Lake Placid Land Use Code Committee studied the effect of STRs in the town and village for years. Kilburn Politi on Tuesday called the committee’s work the “backbone” of the town and village’s proposed STR regulations. All of the proposed changes are based on the town and village’s base districts as identified in the 2011 land use code.

Discussions over STR regulations — and the pros and cons of STR growth in the community — have been ongoing for several years. The village and town adopted their first STR law in 2020 after years of discussions, meetings and public hearings.