After several rounds of discussion about short term rental regulations, on March 28 Gibsons council held an in-camera meeting to make some adjustments to the rules.
RGA rules changing
As Mayor Silas White completed reading endorsed motions released from that closed session into the record at the evening portion of the open special council meeting, they were met with applause from the meeting's audience. Among the issues discussed at the in-camera council meeting were adjustments to short-term rentals (STRs, also referred to as residential guest accommodations or RGA) regulations.
The first will allow secondary suites and accessory building STRs that were in operation before the new RGA process was put in place in 2022 to be allowed as Stream 1 RGAs. That change would remove the requirement for the RGA unit to undergo a building inspection, except in cases where a property has ongoing bylaw non-compliance issues that are considered unsafe.
Council also endorsed a request to amend the town’s business license bylaw sections relating to RGAs to state that a building inspection is not required to obtain a business license for an RGA unit.
TUPs approved and denied
On the agenda for the special council meeting that convened at 3 p.m. were applications for the town’s second group of temporary use permits (TUPs) that would allow 11 properties to apply for unhosted (Stream 2) RGA business licences. That process included a public comment opportunity. Four meeting attendees spoke, all expressing concerns about the town’s bylaws and processes related to RGA’s but none with comments on the individual applications.
Following those presentations, the mayor explained that the comment timeframe had been listed as 7 p.m. on notification letters to residents living within a 100-metre radius of the locations that were the subject of those applications. To ensure comments could be heard from those who had planned to attend at that time, he called for a motion to take the discussions into a closed (in camera) session to conduct other business. He then recessed the open meeting, to be resumed at 7 p.m.
At the evening session, six of the applications received council endorsement to have a TUP issued. The addresses of the successful applications are 586/588 North Fletcher, 541 Abbs Road, 574 Spyglass Place, 553 Wildwood Crescent, 805 Payne Road and 594 Shaw Road. A staff report considered at the meeting noted that those applications either had letters of support from neighbouring property owners or received no comments from members of the public. The absence of comments, in staff’s view, indicated a lack of concerns related to their operations as RGAs.
The policy and bylaw changes, released as the evening portion of the meeting began, drew questions from the owner and TUP applicant for 594 Shaw Road. She stated that location had operated as a STR prior to 2022. Her inquiry was if she should withdraw her TUP application and re-apply under Stream 1, where a TUP, which is charged a fee of $1,500 is not required. Under Stream 1, the annual RGA business licence would be $200 as opposed to the $2,000 annual fee for a Stream 2 operation. The mayor advised her with the adjustment to the rules approved only hours earlier, she should discuss her options with staff and that she had the opportunity to “not pick up” her TUP, should council approve its issuance.
Five applications were denied TUPs. Those were for the locations of 558 North Fletcher, 338 Cochrane Road and three of four suites in a multifamily development at 524 South Fletcher.
The proposals to operate units in the multifamily development garnered both written and verbal public comments in opposition. The majority of the concerns related to a lack of dedicated onsite parking spaces for the number of guests that could be accommodated. The absence of an onsite manager or contact was also cited as an issue. A resident of an adjacent property commented that approving three three-bedroom RGAs at one street address could bring up to 18 “strangers” to a location that has already experienced problems with people trespassing onto neighbouring properties.
In relation to the other two applications that were turned down, White’s view was that council should “start drawing the line on unhosted full homes” and new RGA locations, given that 22 Stream 2 locations had been approved in December 2022.
