After months of multiple public meetings and hearings about — and revisions to — the new STR regulations, the Lake Placid Village Board of Trustees and the North Elba Town Council on Tuesday, Jan. 3 approved the new STR law.

The law will prohibit the issuance of new unhosted STR permits in residential neighborhoods, among other new measures that elected officials say are intended to preserve the Lake Placid community while still inviting the economic benefits STRs bring to this village — specifically, through the 5% occupancy tax on STRs and all hotel, motel and bed-and-breakfast stays. A portion of the revenue generated through the tax is funneled into the North Elba Local Enhancement and Advancement Fund, a grant program that has doled out more than $2 million to local projects since 2020.

The new STR regulations essentially ban new unhosted STRs from residential areas in the town and village, cap the number of permits that would be issued in the town and establish a waitlist for when the cap is exceeded, increase fines for STR law violations, remove the definitions “rooming/boarding house” and “bed/breakfast” from the land use code and change the definition of “hotel/motel,” and require that STR permits be renewed once a year, among many other changes.

And, to bolster compliance with the STR law, the town board this past December raised STR permit fees to pay for new “STR compliance monitor duties” assigned to Building and Planning Department Clerk Britt Isham Waite, including scrubbing software and websites for noncompliant STRs on a daily basis and streamlining communication about STR noncompliance between town code enforcement officers, the Lake Placid Police Department, and town and village boards, among other tasks.

The new STR law — the first local law passed by both boards this year — is available online at tinyurl.com/4fvr3rrt.

Though the town and village passed a joint STR law, the municipalities have to file the law individually. The town’s STR law will officially go into effect on Jan. 9 while the village’s will go into effect immediately upon filing with the secretary of state. Village Clerk Anita Estling expects to file the village’s law by the end of this week. The town and village’s current moratorium on the issuance of new STR permits — which is set to end on Jan. 31 — will now end as soon as the new local laws are filed.

Town Councilor Emily Kilburn Politi said in an email Wednesday that the waitlist for unhosted permits in select districts and for hosted permits in town residential districts — where the number of available permits is capped, and where there’s room for new permits to be issued in each category — is expected to open at midnight on January 9th, “and not a minute before.” Details about applying for North Elba’s waitlist are found on pages 19 and 20 of the new local law.

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Oppositions

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Village Trustee Marc Galvin and town Councilor Jason Leon were the only two elected officials to vote against the new regulations.

Galvin said he voted against the law because he didn’t agree with the new law’s requirement that any STR owner with three or more units in the Village Center or Gateway Corridor districts, as well as the stretch of Main Street from Brewster Park to the North Elba Town Hall, offer one long-term rental for every two short-term rentals available.

Conversely, Leon said he voted against the law because he didn’t think it was restrictive enough on unhosted STR permitting in the town, where there will be room for unhosted STR growth in the Rural Countryside, North and South Lake, Old Military and Gateway Corridor districts, and certain developments — like the Whiteface Inn development district — under the new law.

Leon said he appreciated added restrictions on unhosted rentals in residential districts, as well as the town board’s “transparent” process while forming the new regulations, but he was hoping that the law would place a greater emphasis on protecting locals from an “oversaturated” STR market that he said is driving up the price of local housing.

“I can’t say a lot of locals are super happy about it, but I feel their pain,” Leon said.

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Public hearing, SEQRA

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The town and village held a third public hearing for the STR law, as well as a review of any potential adverse environmental effects of the law, before approving the new regulations on Tuesday. Four people attended the hearing in person, and 10 people tuned in virtually. Danny Baker, a Lake Placid local who moved back to the village around two years ago, was the only person to speak.

Baker thought the village should lower permit fees restrictions for residents and loosen its limit on how many nights per year that year-round residents could rent out their homes — though there’s no limit on how many nights per year a hosted STR can rent in the town or village’s residential districts — as well as prioritize locals when issuing permits. Baker submitted a guest commentary to the Enterprise, “Put locals first in Lake Placid STR law,” published on Dec. 31, 2022, with similar requests.

The boards ultimately passed the law without changes on Tuesday, though village Mayor Art Devlin told Baker that his board plans to reassess the law in the future to see how it’s working. Town and village boards have both stated that they want to review the STR law annually, with the town council expecting to review the law at the council’s regular board meeting this coming October.

The town’s environmental review of the STR law, which was required by the State Environmental Quality Review Act, determined that the new law wouldn’t have any negative environmental impacts on the area’s natural resources.

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Thanks

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Elected officials on the town and village boards gave each other kudos for their work in creating the law, with town Supervisor Derek Doty especially thanking Kilburn Politi for her attention to the law. Kilburn Politi is on the Lake Placid-North Elba Land Use Code Committee — which worked for years on developing ideas for STR regulations, and formed recommendations for a new STR law nearly a year ago — and she said she wrote the town’s first STR law in 2006 as an intern. Village Mayor Art Devlin credited village Trustee Jackie Kelly for her work on the law. Kelly also sits on the land use code committee.

The two boards also thanked Dean Dietrich, the chair of the land use code committee, for his years of work on STR regulations. Dietrich was one of the four people who attended the boards’ public hearing on Tuesday.