The Dalles City Council returned to regular session last night for the first time in six weeks after an August hiatus. Under the public comment section, several people testified that the city should add more controls to the short term rental ordinance, listing neighborhood complaints about drinking, noise, unsafe driving and at least one consequence no one thought about.
“People inadvertently pulling into our driveway, rather than the short-term rental next door. It’s happened three different times.”
That’s Paul Peters, who lives on East Scenic Drive.
“Sometimes, people just assume, you know, you can just walk in. We’ve had people come to the door. They questioned whether I lived there or not. Another one was actually in the process of unloading his vehicle in the driveway, and he started walking towards the house.”
He said those two situations ended amicably, but there was a real potential for problems in the future.
On a brighter note, councilors approved a contract with Docu Driven, a specialty scanning company that will digitize all the city’s records, including those going back to the 1800s. The goal is to have them all digitized and searchable, with many of them accessible to citizens on the city website.
And the council did approve setting up an ad hoc committee on the proposed Federal Street Plaza.
But the main concern of the public in attendance was a proposal to adjust funding the city has been giving to the North Wasco County Parks & Rec Agency from the Transient Room Tax. That tax, known as the TRT, is paid by short-term renters, and by people staying in hotels and motels. By law, cities must devote a portion of the TRT to promoting tourist activities. For a number of years, the TRT added 6 percent to local hotel and motel bills. If the room charge was $100, the hotel would add $6, and pass that on to the city to promote tourism. Some years ago, the city raised the TRT rate to 8 percent, and at first dedicated the extra 2 percent was to pay off an earlier infrastructure project. Once that was paid off, that 2 percent went to Parks & Rec, where this year, it amounted to $350,000.
Some council members said that this was not among current best practices, and suggested that the city stop dedicating TRT money to Parks & Rec, and support the district through the budget process. Here’s Councilor Darcy Long:
“I have no intention of stripping away money from Parks at this point, and I feel like that’s their fear. So they have some reassurance that is not what we’re doing. We do need to transition as soon as possible to an even budget process.”
Councilor Dan Richardson disagreed, saying the city was asking Parks to give up guaranteed revenue and put their trust in the whim of future councils.
No action was taken last night but staff was instructed by the majority of the council to bring back a detailed proposal for a vote at the next council meeting.