CAPE CHARLES, Va. — The Cape Charles Town Manager is working with staff to develop draft ordinances for short-term rentals (STRs). This process involves translating concepts from a recent Council work session into practical and structurally sound code provisions.
In addition to drafting these ordinances, the Town Manager and staff are exploring various parking solutions to accommodate the increased demand associated with STRs. These parking options are still in the brainstorming phase and will require further vetting and feedback from all relevant parties.
Once the draft ordinances and parking solutions are finalized, they will undergo review by a dedicated committee for input. Following this review, the proposed ordinances will be presented to the Town Council for further consideration and approval.
For further information, contact the Cape Charles Town Manager’s Office.
I think for sustainability of locals tax reliefs should be put in place on three levels or three tiers 1st tier locals who are residents here should be taxed less and deserves tax breaks . This will attract visitors and will entice them to become residents. The 2nd tiers are folks who have a house here but a home elsewhere and may want to become residents here abd are littering on edge. The third tier the highest taxed would be those who are renting out these STRs and they would be the most heavily taxed. They can afford the heavier tax load for they own more than one home and are making a profit from a home that could be used for someone who would be a resident. This would encourage more people to become locals and would entice folks to stay.
I often use here the term community. The operative word used in the word community is UNITY and if we had a school PREK to 12 that had offered families a better education than a 2 then we could probably retain some of these visitors as we would be taken more seriously than just a vacationers paradise. We used to have a community when we had CAPE CHARLES COMBINED SCHOOL DISTRICT AND THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM WAS A 9 . CAPE CHARLES HIGH WAS A COLLEGE PREPATORY SCHOOL. WE SENT STUDENTS OFF TO COLLEGE SO THEY COULD Excell as wonderful students and grow up to become productive professional citizens of other towns and cities and states. À few stayed but the many who graduated and left have made a very positive impact on the United States and the world.
Let us join hands to build a better town and build and plant more than flowers….let’s plant brighter futures and offer more than FRIDAY NIGHT MUSIC . How about some Friday Night Lights and and a park that offers more than pickle and tennis and soccer …..and cornhole….We used to have music in the park called Cape Charles football field and the music was played by Cape Charles HIGH SCHOOL Marching Band….go Indians. So I challenge you Néw young vibrant Town Council members and Manager to bring the NEW CC to fight for old CC.You will lose a town if you don’t have a future bright with youth and fertile intellectual minds . I challenge you to put as much effort in to regaining a school district and annexation of Cape Charles from the bridge tunnel all the way up to Eyre HALL. We have enough Police officers to cover each regional sectors and maintain a good community . That would provide us with enough children and as for school we could have a stadium style school build around the old school that you know as CENTRAL PARK BUT I KNOW IT AS CAPE CHARLES FOOTBALL FIELD. I see that you spent over $317,000 per year keeping Central Park prestigious and perfect but you didn’t want to invest in your own children for $250,000 per year to renovate Cape Charles City Schools…..It is all about the visitors . THIS TOO SHALL PASS . When the visitors have faded and they come not as many as they do how will the town sustain itself financially? Cape Charles, Virginia….MY HOME TOWN was built on and gone itself. We had everything in our town and never needed NORTHAMPTON COUNTY FOR ANYTHING.Aw what a backwards step we are takimg under our great leaders of today.
No ordinances should be voted on by the current town council….but watch…the TM aka ‘staff’ will push to get these ordinances in place and to the current council before the Jan 1, when a new (and improved) council is in place.
Grab the popcorn….
“Saratoga Springs considers short-term rental regulations – Residents tired of endless parties in their neighborhoods”
By Wendy Liberatore, Staff Writer, Albany, New York Times Union
July 6, 2024
Residents throughout the city are losing patience with short-term rentals.
In a number of interviews conducted by the Times Union, residents have complained of renters who defecated and urinated in yards, blocked driveways with cars, tormented dogs and screamed at neighbors who called police.
Yet long before the internet, and web-based rental platforms AirBnB or VRBO were conceived, short-term renting was an institution in the city.
Hundreds of homeowners rented out their houses for the duration of the Saratoga Race Course meet or, at one time, even the classical performance season at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.
But the current year-round churn of guests staying in residential neighborhoods is changing attitudes about the city’s well-established practice because many of the homes used for short-term rentals are no longer owned or lived in by city residents.
“Technology enters the fray and the one-time rental, a person-to-person deal with a handshake, has turned into rentals that are de facto mini-hotels,” city Commissioner of Accounts Dillon Moran said.
To rein in the growing market, Moran is proposing legislation he hopes to have passed this summer to ensure that the quiet enjoyment of residents’ homes is not infringed by nearby renters and also that the rental properties are safe.
The proposed legislation, currently in draft form, would require all short-term rentals to be registered with the state and licensed with some fees, Moran said.
More importantly to residents, the law would require all short-term rentals to be owner-occupied and would restrict the number of rental days depending on the license that is selected.”
“You cannot rent out 365 days a year and call it your home,” Moran said.
A 2022 report, “Municipal Short-Term Rental Policies: Analysis and Recommendations for Adirondack Communities,” concluded that municipalities must “manage STRs and ensure they do not overwhelm local housing markets.”
The report also concluded that communities must “mitigate the contribution of STRs to the region-wide housing crisis and best serve all its residents’ housing needs.”
Mayor John Safford stands behind the legislation, saying it is necessary as rentals do not always comply with fire or building codes.
And sometimes, he said, they are not insured for liability.
He said these health and safety issues would be addressed in the legislation.
“Safety is very important to the city,” Safford said.
“Kudos to Commissioner Moran for doing this.”
According to the previously mentioned report, Lake George restricted the number of short-term rentals in residentially zoned neighborhoods.
In Queensbury, the town restricted how many days such properties may be rented out, 120 total days in the calendar year.
Furthermore, between May 15 and Sept. 15, short-term rentals must only be offered to those staying five days or more.
North Elba and its village of Lake Placid, the report noted, has the most short-term rentals in the Adirondacks.
Last year, the town approved short-term rental legislation that, the Lake Placid News reported, would ban new unhosted short-term rentals from residential areas, cap the number of permits that would be issued and establish a waitlist for new rentals.
“It’s reasonable and what the community wants,” Moran said.
“No one wants to come home to a bachelorette party every day.”
“We don’t want (short-term rentals) to ruin the experience for neighbors.”
“Unfortunately, what we have now is a free-for-all.”
Everyone has a home that they come from. If you leave your home and move to someone else’s home, how can it be yours?
Come-Heres will ultimately ruin The Eastern Shore of Virginia. They desperately want to make it like their homes that they left.
Sad.
It is an interesting phenomena not limited to either Cape Charles or the Eastern Shore that for whatever reasons, people leave some place where they have been, and move to someplace they have never been, and know nothing about, and seemingly the next day, they are down at town hall bitching because the new place doesn’t have this they want, and doesn’t have that, that they want, and so, the lives of all those who have been in that place all their lives have to be disrupted to give these new people who just got there all these things that they want and say they need, like, say, a park for their dogs to be able to meet other dogs, all at the expense of those who have been there all their lives and have no need of such things, so taxes have to go up to accommodate these people who just arrived yesterday.
The new place they have never been to is never good enough for them, it seems, which makes one wonder why they left where they were before.
Another example is people moving to a place they have never been before, and buying themselves a postage-stamp sized lot, and then there they are, down to town hall, bitching that their kids have no place on their postage stamp lot to play and ride their dirt bikes and four wheelers, so the town has to create a special park for their kids to play in and ride their dirt bikes and four wheelers, all at the expense of those who were living there peacefully and in harmony before these people came to the town and started bitching as soon as they got there that NOTHING there is good enough for them and everything has to9 be changed to accommodate them and their “feelings,” while their kids cut through the fences of local farmers and ride their dirt bikes and four wheelers through his hay fields and other crops because there is no room for them to do so on the parents postage stamp lot.