Months ago, the Camden Planning Board started investigating the issue of Short Term Rentals (STR) in Camden. They began with a statement of goals and concerns. The goal seemed to be to establish a set of regulations to mitigate their estimates of potential negative effects of STR. Their estimate of potential negative effects included:

Reduction of housing stock available for sale to potential long term residents

Reduced availability of long-term rentals

Reduced availability of workforce housing

Neighborhood stability and cohesiveness

Safety and health of visitors and residents

The board stated that its major concern was with what it termed “unhosted rentals” meaning those where the owner does not live on the property. This was supported by statements of intent to protect the traditional practice of local primary residents to offer their own residences as seasonal rentals.

The other major concern was to protect our traditional lodging industry of inns, hotels, motels and B&Bs.

These deliberations over months were undertaken with a significant lack of relevant data. There was no accurate measure of how many STR there are in Camden. Guesstimates varied from 150 to 400.

There were no statistics or police reports of any incidents or problems involving STR.

Extensive testimony by homeowners and real estate professionals showed that any kind of STR regulations would have little or no impact on increasing the availability of workforce housing as long-term rentals or for purchase at Camden’s real estate prices.

As to neighborhood cohesiveness, whatever that is, Camden is Camden, and any property that becomes available may be bought by a potential full time resident or a summer resident.

Any and every town board or committee involved in producing potential rules that the town will vote on knows the deadline date for the Select Board to finalize the warrant that will go to the voters.

After months of public hearings and Planning Board discussions the planning department produced an incredibly extensive warrant article to regulate STR. The Planning Board never even saw this potential article. The board and the department failed to publicly review what was to be the result of their months of meetings.

This is an incredible shortcoming of what should have been a logical planning process. The Planning Board seemed to have the attitude of we’ll leave it up to the Select Board.

It appears that this potential article wasn’t even written when the Planning Board ended its deliberations. Two weeks later when the Select Board was to take up the issue, they didn’t even receive it until late that afternoon. It needs to be noted here that the potential article was presented as a seven-page document in red, blue and black ink, theoretically representing old wording, new wording, and deleted old wording. 

Stephanie French was the only Select Board member who had been able to find the time to read this late arriving, barely decipherable document. Thankfully she pointed out so much overreach and numerous inconsistencies in the document that the board rejected the article.

Tom Hedstrom wanted some form of regulation due to his concern for safety and asked the dissenting members what could be done to make this article palatable to them.

The article was then chopped, edited and so many changes requested until it was finally midnight and without all the points being discussed it was sent back to the planning department to be rewritten for the next meeting.

In a consistent pattern the Select Board received the revised article late in the afternoon of the final warrant meeting. No members had read the final draft when they voted to put this unread article before the voters.

Two significant shortcomings of the proposed article are that there is no limit on the number of commercial STR as the Planning Board wanted. Protection of our traditional hospitality business disappeared since the current seven day minimum for STR is eliminated and they can be rented for as briefly as one night.

Since there is already an existing ordinance requiring non-hosted rentals to register please vote no on articles 5, 6 and 7.

Stephen Gold lives in Camden