“I’ve witnessed a celebration before a wedding where men were sleeping outside the home, liquor bottles on the sidewalks after large gatherings where people were getting ready for the wedding in the home, unleased dogs, filming a documentary,’’ said Sarah Larson.
“I’ve been personally catcalled and attacked and insulted by clearly intoxicated men while walking my dog after dark.”
Paul Dittman said in the last year he has experienced similar things as Larson including late night parties, cul-de-sacs filled with cars, people sleeping out on lawns “just not what we expect in a high-end neighborhood.
Had he known the house adjacent to his lot was being used as rental “I never would have bought (it).”
Trustees had put in place a six-month moratorium on renting out homes for short periods of time that expires July 8. It was done to give staff time to assess the legal ramifications.
Complaints first started coming in about two years ago and at that time township officials advised homeowner associations to ban short-term rentals in their covenants.
Since then, the popularity and use of sites offering the rentals — such as Airbnb and VRBO — has increased, along with complaints, township officials said.
In January 2020, there were 164 short-term listings in Butler County posted on sites like Airbnb and VRBO, said Tracy Kocher, executive director of Travel Butler County.
That number had grown to 919 by January of this year and is now up to 1,024, Kocher said. A single residence may be listed on more than one platform, too.
“This has been on my radar screen since I became a trustee. I’ve been waiting to take on this fight for quite a while,’’ said Trustee Steve Schramm.
Resolutions to both extend the moratorium and prohibit short-term rentals were needed because they are not currently addressed in the zoning resolution.
The moratorium extension “will give us time to make changes to the zoning resolution,’’ said Bryan Behrman, the township’s director of planning and zoning.
“The zoning resolution regulates uses in the township. We want to make sure that the resolution that was approved by the trustees (banning short-term rentals) is in line with our zoning resolution,” Behrman said.
“We want to make the zoning resolution consistent with the prohibition on that use. We want to update our zoning resolution to make it easier to find that it’s prohibited.”
Updating the zoning resolution is a three-month process once the staff has put together proposed wording on the changes. That will be presented to trustees who would then have to officially begin the three-month process that includes reviews by the county planning commission as well as the township’s zoning commission, with public hearings at each step.
“When you move into a residential neighborhood you don’t expect to have a hotel next to you,” said Trustee Tom Farrell.
For the past year or so, trustees have been “looking at what we can and cannot do to stop them,” Farrell said.
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