Weber County officials identify short-term rentals as part of new focus
-
- The areas in green represent places where short-term rentals are allowed in the unincorporated part of the Ogden Valley. The areas in purple represent places where they’re allowed with a conditional-use permit.
-
- The areas in green represent places where short-term rentals are allowed in the unincorporated part of the Ogden Valley. The areas in purple represent places where they’re allowed with a conditional-use permit.
OGDEN — Weber County officials, aided by a contractor, are putting a new focus on short-term rentals in the Ogden Valley, a thorny subject as the area grows and keeps drawing visitors.
But the task — which, in part, entails tracking short-term rentals operating in areas where they aren’t allowed — will take a while. “It’s still a work in progress,” said Bill Cobabe, a planner in the Weber County Planning Division.
Short-term rentals — the sort of housing offered by firms like Airbnb and Vrbo — can lead to noise and traffic issues caused by the temporary tenants they draw, critics say. Some Ogden Valley residents — echoing apparent issues in Park City and other resort areas — say they’re an increasing problem as more visitors travel to the three ski resorts in the area, Pineview Reservoir and other nearby draws.
With that as the backdrop, Cobabe last week offered an update at an Ogden Valley Planning Commission work session on enforcement of rules governing short-term rentals and efforts to get a grasp on where they’re located. Weber County commissioners, who started debating the issue in 2020, approved an update to the rules earlier this year and hired a firm, Granicus of St. Paul, Minnesota, to help enforce them.
Granicus is also helping find them — a key prong of efforts — and as of June 2, Cobabe told the Standard-Examiner, the firm had pinpointed 515 short-term rentals in the unincorporated areas of the county, the vast majority in the Ogden Valley.
Of those, 116 were deemed to be compliant with county rules while 308 were deemed to be out of compliance. The status couldn’t be pinpointed on another 91 short-term rentals, according to the county numbers.
The 308 out-of-compliance short-term rentals includes properties in areas where they’re not allowed, meaning they’d have to stop operating. Others are in permissible areas but aren’t properly registered with the county.
Cobabe said the county had sent letters to 35 operators of short-term rentals in areas where they’re not allowed and 12 had shut down. The other 23 operators hadn’t responded.
The county sent letters to 86 operators of short-term rentals that aren’t registered though they’re in permissible areas and 23 of those subsequently came into compliance.
“We’re working with these people. We’re not trying to be hard or difficult to work with,” Cobabe said. Sometimes the issue is just a few “bad actors,” not the majority of short-term rental operators.
Jan Fuller, an Ogden Valley resident, has been closely involved in the debate — “Short-term rentals destroy communities,” she charges — and knows it will take time to address the issue. “The real work now is on enforcement,” she said.
But she offered kudos to Cobabe and Iris Hennon, the county employee tasked with enforcing codes governing short-term rentals. “They have had a heck of a job to do,” she said.
Weber County’s zoning rules limit short-term rentals to specific areas. “It’s where you would expect,” Cobabe said, around the three Weber County ski resorts — Powder Mountain, Nordic Valley and Snowbasin — and the Eden area.
The problem comes when they start operating in areas where they’re not allowed or result in disruptive traffic and noise issues.
Fuller lauded stiffer financial penalties short-term rental operators can face if they break the county’s rules — fines of up to 200% the advertised nightly rate for unlicensed operators. But she also worries the numbers of permissible short-term rentals could grow through rezone requests.