Summit County hired code enforcement officer Scott Buchanan to address short term rentals. Some of the most common calls he said he gets are noise complaints, which he said should actually go to the Summit County Sheriff’s Office.
“The reason for that is because of Sheriff [Kacey] Bates’ concern that, if we were to divert calls that are relating to noise activity, that we could be inadvertently delaying required emergency response,” Buchanan told Summit County councilmembers at their June 3 meeting.
Since the county set up a hotline for residents and nightly rental operators in January, it has now received more than two-dozen calls.
When callers have noise complaints, Buchanan said the call center immediately transfers those to Summit County dispatch. He could not say what kind of enforcement ultimately resulted from those calls.
“So we're already, in our communication with the community on our nightly rental concerns hotline, asking people: please continue to direct [noise-related] calls to the sheriff's office,” he added.
Summit County is beginning to track nightly rentals and vacation homes listed on sites like Airbnb and VRBO more closely.
Staff are mapping out which nightly rentals are licensed and code-compliant, and which are not. Summit County is home to an estimated 1,900 total nightly rentals.
Buchanan said simply calling operators and encouraging them to get a business license has been successful.
There are currently 600 unlicensed units, but 400 of those are in the process of applying for a license.
Summit County is considering additional regulations on short-term rentals, which could include a ban in remote or mountainous neighborhoods.
Summit County is a financial supporter of KPCW.
