While Airbnb, HomeAway, VRBO and others bring visitors (and their wallets) to the county’s restaurants, small businesses and recreational amenities, long-term residents have understandable questions about how to manage these new arrivals in our beautiful county.

New visitors mean new money and sometimes new complaints. After all, short-term rentals dropped in the middle of existing neighborhoods means that local residents have legitimate complaints about extra noise, garbage, added traffic and parking congestion. Meanwhile, honest investors and local property owners should still be able to profit from their vacant real estate investments and provide housing for economically benefiting events and tourism. So, the question is how to balance the positive financial impact of STRs — helping our small business owners, mom and pop restaurants, and ski industry thrive — while making sure our long-term residents and neighbors feel heard.

Over the past several years, Weber County residents have attended county commission meetings, written letters and phoned our offices. We listened. We read your emails. We appreciate your participation in local democracy. Weighing all sides of the issue, we came up with a solution that we believe is fair to all parties.

The answer is neither to ban short-term rentals outright, but to find a balance between the needs of the community, commerce, and the rights of homeowners and long-term residents. On Jan. 10, the Weber County Commission approved changes to the county code regarding short-term rentals. Our goal was to protect the rights of our residents and property owners, and we feel our solution has something for everyone.

To us, the issue has never been about STRs expanding into our community, but how this expansion can be governed with common sense rules, regulations and enforcement guidelines. In order to find a balanced approach to the issue, Weber County came up with these sensible fixes:

• Revenue the municipality receives from rentals will go directly into enforcement of STRs.
• We set up a 24/7 hotline enforcement.
• We hired an experienced independent company to enforce the rules we’ve set up.
• The company, Granicus, is here to enforce these rules for us. They are our community’s enforcement arm and can be reached 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• Current zoning does allow short-term rentals in designated areas.
• For the existing rental sites, we have added a licensing requirement to operate as a business in these areas.
• Owners of properties must have a reachable number that the community and municipality can call for emergencies.
• All short-term rentals must appoint a responsible agent to address complaints within 60 minutes of a call being made and are required to be responsible for property maintenance.
• All owners and renters must follow noise and parking regulations, and dispose of their trash correctly.

Additionally, STR owners must obtain a license for their rental property. We added new zoning regulations to make sure that our neighbors, friends and citizens know they’re our priority and that their local government is working for them.

As with all new things, there will be growing pains and lessons learned along the way. To please all stakeholders, it’s our job to propose the best, most sensible solution. Enforcement and accountability are the foundation to the existing ordinance. As your community leaders, it is our responsibility to listen to our constituents and small-business owners — accounting for the needs and interests of all parties. We see enforcement as a purposeful step to fulfilling these responsibilities, but know that in the future, more steps may need to be taken.

For the time being, we’re satisfied with these steps and look forward to studying the results and hearing from our constituents about what we expect will be positive outcomes.

Jim Harvey, Gage Froerer and Sharon Bolos make up the three-person Weber County Commission.