Berry voices opposition to short-term rental bill

Eureka Springs Mayor Butch Berry was expecting to be in Little Rock last Friday, voicing his opposition to Senate Bill 197 at a house committee meeting.

At its regular city council meeting Monday, Feb. 27 at The Auditorium, Berry read the statement that he planned to relay before the House Committee on City, County and Local Affairs in opposition to the bill, which aims to restrict cities from putting any restrictions on short-term rentals.

The committee meeting, however, was postponed and as of Monday morning hadn’t been rescheduled.

“This is real important for Eureka Springs,” Berry told council members. “The bill has been slightly amended, but it still almost entirely restricts cities or towns the ability to regulate short-term rentals. More specifically, even though short-term rentals are effectively businesses in residential cities, they will not allow us to regulate them any differently than you would any other houses.

“It’s important for representatives to know the issues are facing with short-term rentals.”

Berry said in a recent committee meeting in the Senate the bill had many voices of support from residents of Bella Vista with the Arkansas Municipal League the only representative speaking against it.

“We’re a town of over 2,000 residents, and yet we have a million visitors each year,” Berry said. “Tourism is not our major industry, it’s our only industry. So, we understand tourism and the value of lodging.

“Many who testified last time talked about the value of tourism and how important it was to their community, Bella Vista.”

When it comes to setting restrictions on short-term rentals, however, Berry said each community is different and should decide what is in the best interest of its residents.

“A city should adopt a procedure in which it can show that it is addressing documented community issues such as the loss of housing for local residents,” he said. “Zoning should be up to municipalities, local leadership and residents as each city is unique upon itself. One reason people live in the city is for the protection of their property values.

“We strongly oppose 197 and feel that such control should remain with the city to handle and not the state. What may be good for Bella Vista may not be in the best interest of Eureka Springs and vice versa. What we do as a city should not be dictated by another city.”

Berry’s words against the proposed new law echoed comments from council members.

“What it would do is it would take restrictions off short-term lodging, which is tourist lodging in residential areas,” council member Melissa Greene said of the bill. “The people of this town fought very hard that they want their neighborhoods and they did not want any more lodging here.

“So, I encourage the citizens of this town to get ahold of your representatives, your senators, because this law will not only hurt the businesses that are here, it will hurt our neighborhoods. It will depreciate property values on commercial property … and it will take housing away from people that want to move here or even people that want something to rent.”

Council member David Avanzino voiced similar concerns and said the city should be researching “creative ways around this situation.”

“Unfortunately, I feel is going to pass with flying colors,” he said. “I would like to challenge us as a council and Forrest, as our attorney, to try and look at ways, creative ways, around this situation. I don’t know that they’re out there. I’m not an attorney, so I don’t know what can be done. … I would like to at least look at some options that may halt or slow down this process for Eureka because we have a huge housing problem and allowing things like this to come into our city is only going to make it worse.”

BUDGETS AND PATROL CARS

A topic that was on the agenda for the Feb. 27 meeting as potentially forming a council budget committee morphed into changing when the monthly council budget review sessions are held and the questioning of whether off-duty police officers are driving their city patrol cars home.

To help council members understand the budget and have more time to sift through all financial-related documents, city council member Autumn Slane proposed forming a council budget committee that could discuss budget items with city department heads and dig deep into financials and then report back regularly to the full council.

“The city budget is absolutely huge,” Slane told council members. “It’s a lot of information to cover. It’s a lot of information to keep up with. A lot of future planning goes into this that we don’t do here at this table that I would like to be a little more involved in. … I think what this committee, if we did start it, that it would be a kind of an information highway. It would be something where this committee could ask all the questions and maybe have a regular standing meeting with our mayor or possibly … whoever is going to be a part of this.”

Avanzino asked if council members could get budget information earlier to help go though the numbers ahead of the monthly budget review meetings, which typically have been held before the first council meeting of each month.

Council member Terry McClung then suggested that council members receive the budget information in time for the first council meeting of the month, but move the budget review meetings to the second council meeting of the month to give more time to go over the numbers.

Council members agreed that the idea was a good one and voted 6-0 to make the change.

The discussion on the budget led to an off-topic question from council member Harry Meyer about whether police officers who are off duty are currently driving patrol cars home. The question came after Meyer mentioned earlier in the meeting the amount of money the police department is spending on fuel.

“The police cars, who takes the cars home,” Meyer asked.

“No one,” Berry responded.

Meyer replied that he was recently driving to Eureka Springs from Branson when he passed an ESPD patrol car on Highway 21 North near Blue Eye, Mo.

“There may have been a reason for that, but they’re not allowed [to take them home] … with the exception of the police chief … because he’s on call 24/7,” Berry said.

City finance director Michael Akins, however, told council members that officers do drive their patrol cars home.

“I believe that what Brian has said is that, yes, they do drive the car home in case they’re called in,” Akins said. “So, they are allowed to drive their car home.”

Berry responded: “Ok, I was mistaken on that. I thought they were staying at the police station.”

“But that’s a decision that he’s made as a police chief … the police department doesn’t have anything to do with the budget,” Akins said.

Meyer disagreed.

“That’s money,” Meyer said. “That’s wear and tear on cars. Don’t insult me. That’s insulting. We’re buying two new cars every year, spending I don’t know how much God-awful amount of money on repairs. Yes, I think it’s out of control.”

Berry said he would talk to Young about the issue.

“But, that’s not a council decision,” the mayor said. “That’s something that is administrative.”

While the patrol car issue was off-topic from what was on the agenda, McClung said: “The benefit of this discussion, though, is that this has come to the surface. At least we know.”