2025 at 305.

Sorry for the delay.

At this time, please uh join me for the pledge of allegiance.

Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the Republic, for which it stands one nation under ballot, indivisible with liberty and justice for all Mr.

City Attendee, please present the today's item.

Yes, sir.

The item on the agenda today is ID 13125 task force to study houseboats, floating homes, and other commercial marine vessels presentation of findings.

Presenters, Chair Caron, and Vice Chair Jabin Jabin representing the task force.

Right, look here, Willow Habamaster scrolled up.

Look at you guys.

You'd have to share for this.

If I may, Mr.

Mayor, yes.

Jackie Gyle, Deputy City Manager for Resilience Sustainability.

So this work session was convenient to give the um report recommendations as required by resolution 4624 from the task force to study residential marine vessels.

And the members of that task force were confirmed by council by resolution 1825 in March of this year.

And they were tasked with producing their report and recommendations within six months, which very in a very organized, very efficient and very um professional way.

This task force did put this together.

I'm extremely impressed with the way they organized themselves and went about their business.

And also from the city staff, our project lead was Tim Jacobs from the Harbor Master's Office, who also did an exemplary job.

And I'll turn it over to Tim to kick it off.

Microphone.

It is we're on.

Tim Jacobs from the Annapolis Harbor Master's Office.

If you've got a chance to review this report of over 50 pages plus a PowerPoint, I met with these guys five times.

If you look at the detail and intricacies and every facet uh that they've covered in this report, clearly they've put a lot of work outside of those meetings.

Um, and I just want to take this opportunity to thank uh both Gee and Rod as well as the entire task force for going well beyond what I think anybody would have expected this report.

Um, the the expertise and especially knowledge of everybody that's involved in this report shows.

And uh with that, I'd like to just excuse me, introduce uh Mr.

Gee Carone and Raj Aben, and thank you again.

If I just interrupt for one moment, I also um neglected to acknowledge all the work the Harbor Master's Office put into this report, including to acting harbormaster Tyler Northfield and operations manager Jacob Gnold.

Our turn.

Hey there.

Okay.

So I will uh go by the presentation that we have there and just lead through it if that's possible.

You can see all the folks that you appointed there, and none of this would be possible if it wasn't for the hard work of all the folks that are there.

Um most of the writings were done by the folks that you see there and came out with a report uh initially.

So I want to express my gratitude to all of these people who worked diligently throughout uh the last couple of months in uh getting the report done.

Um I also want to recognize uh John Clinton and uh all the help we have gotten, the support we got when we asked for it.

It was immediately present.

Uh the survey that him and the Harbor Master's office uh did and worked with us when we had issues and questions.

They were immediately addressed uh with no uh delays at all.

Um the city departments as well uh in the append addendum D, you will see the results of their writings for all the city departments.

So our thanks there.

Uh I mentioned already the task force.

Rod to my right, obviously, with his depth and knowledge of the industry, and two people in particular helped us.

Uh we had internal meetings uh with Mary O'Brien and Jay Lunsford, who helped us uh collate a lot of these things together as well.

Lastly but not the least, the people in Annapolis who then responded to the survey, which we've included the results of the survey in this report as well.

Um, those were the things that we were asked to do.

Uh, I think you know them very well what they were, and uh I would point you to the report in full to be able to see in detail what some of the findings were.

Uh we're not going to go through all of them here, uh, but we will show you how we came to it.

So, our first step is that we took the resolution 46-24 and we split it into 26 different tasks.

And we assigned to individuals on the task for that were more suited to write in each area, and they did.

And the results of that report then yielded an executive summary.

Uh, what was interesting uh from that is that that's not actually our recommendation.

So if you read the report, you might think that's what it is.

But we then also had input from the public, and there were these surveys, and we took the first 17, excuse me, and went through them, and when we read those, and we reviewed the report as a group, it was clear that there was a sentiment that was coming out both from our meeting and from the public, and that's how we came up with our recommendation in that particular way.

And the uh addendum D, as I mentioned, has uh the results of that.

I'm gonna turn it over to Rod for the actual core of the report and have him comment on what we found uh on that end.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Gee.

Um again, this uh this is a very brief executive summary.

Uh, and I I urge you to read the entire report because this will start to make a little bit more sense.

But what we started with was we have to define and make clear to council the differences between a houseboat, a house barge, a charter boat, bed and breakfast charters, and any other vessel that's out there.

So if we start with a houseboat, if you look at that picture to the right, that is a dwelling unit that uh is built onto a boat that has been designed by a naval architect using marine engineering that has a steering and helm station dedicated to navigating that boat and operating the vessel in near coastal waters using inboard or outboard engine.

That's that's an important distinction is that it was designed to be leave the dock and uh operate in near coastal waters with its own power.

A charter boat is very different.

That is any recreational vessel that you may see on the water.

It's very hard to distinguish.

That's a picture of a charter boat, the electric version that's got passengers touring Spa Creek, but it's a recreational vessel that is rented to passengers with or without a captain and subject to Coast Guard regulation, and that's the important uh uh uh description of the charter boat is that it is currently controlled by the Coast Guard, and most times it has a uh U.S.

Coast Guard captain on board.

All of these boats, like if we look at that little electric boat there, there's definitely a Coast Guard captain on board that vessel.

Um bed and breakfast charters is kind of a new and kitschy little thing that has been developed, but it's nothing more than a recreational vessel that offers overnight stays for a fee, and it again is regulated by the Coast Guard, and its customers are vetted like any other charter boat would be live aboard.

A liveaboard can be on any vessel, can be on any recreational vessel.

It's again a boat designed by a naval architect using marine engineering that allow for navigation on near coastal and ocean waters that a person recreates on and uses as their primary home, and that's the distinction.

It can be any recreational vessel, just like the one on the right, that is set up to do long distance journeys through the ocean or near coastal, and the only stipulation is that the owners have chosen to make that their primary residence.

What we think we're really boiling this report down to are the short-term rentals of house barges, right?

That's a great picture on the lower right of a house barge.

Very different than a recreational vessel, very different than any other charter vessel because it is not designed to leave the dock or have passengers doing anything.

It's designed to be rented for short-term or overnight stays without leaving the dock.

And a couple of more images that I think are very telling.

Uh all exist in a fashion that are stationary.

They never leave the slip.

And so the house barge has how we've defined it is a dwelling unit built on pontoons or a floating structure that supports the weight of the house light structure that it's built upon.

This structure is generally not designed with steering or helm stations.

There is no marine engineering that allow for standard operation in near coastal water.

However, it may have an outboard engine attached to one end that will qualify it as a boat in the eyes of DNR.

We call that a loophole.

And so, as far as DNR is concerned, it's a boat.

They'll give them registration numbers and everything else, but it can in no way be navigated by anybody.

There is no steering station, there is no controls, there is no view cone from operating that engine to sea in front of the boat, and it's it's not designed to leave the dock.

If we look at the lower left-hand picture, that's another picture of a house barge, and we want to be very careful of saying house barge versus house boat, that is placed upon a steel barge underneath of it, and that that's acting as a flotation, but it is not designed to leave the dock or do anything besides host uh residential short-term rentals or private use.

I think another thing that we thought was a very, very powerful picture was the one on the lower right, which is a house barge in construction, and you can see that looks more like residential construction than a marine construction.

So just the only purpose of this is to try and make sure that we are educating the council on the difference when somebody says houseboat versus house barge because they're very two very different meanings, and when we went through the surveys and we got public responses and we interacted with our task force and everything else, everything feeds back to the short-term rental of the house barge.

House boats not a problem, charter boats aren't a problem, bed and breakfast boats aren't a problem, commercial vessels are not a problem.

That's not what we're anybody is concerned about, nor do we want to get involved with because you'll never separate the charter boats or the liveaboards from the maritime industry, they are intertwined forever.

Um so we don't feel it's appropriate for the city to regulate any part of that portion of the maritime industry.

What we do think needs uh a closer look at are the house barges.

So going down through this current city laws that apply to this discussion, charters, city law does not define cover or regulate charter vessels in any way other than uh the regulations that apply to all recreational vessels, Coast Guard regulation applies the key difference between charter boats and short-term rental barges is that charter boats' primary purpose is to leave the dock and provide recreation out on the bay, whereas short-term rental vessels primary purpose is to provide accommodations for customers at the dock.

The key difference between charter boats and short-term rental barges is that charter boats' primary purpose is to leave the dock and provide recreation out on the bay, whereas short-term rental vessels primary purpose is to provide accommodations for customers at the dock.

I want to bring one more example that uh about charter boats and why we should separate that from the house barges and the short-term rental.

The charter boats, you have an opportunity to vet the charterer, which means that you have, if you want to charter this boat, you have to prove to the charter company that you have the experience required to navigate this vessel, take it off the dock and sail it for the week or weekend and return it in the condition that it was given.

They're generally well trained in maritime environments, accustomed to the water, accustomed to boats.

People that have no uh experience in boats like that can still charter, but it requires a licensed Coast Guard captain to take them off the dock.

But that's their purpose is to take them off the dock and go sailing, just like every picture we see in every postcard.

The distinction between that and the short-term rental of the house barge is that there is no vetting of the short-term rent rental person because there is no requirement that the boat leave the dock, and so that's what sets up this feeling that it is just a party spot, and it creates the noise problems that we'll talk about down the road.

Um if we slip down to uh noise ordinances, the city does have ordinances that uh include specific water base noise ordinances and STR specific noise ordinance and general noise ordinance.

The challenge is that it's really difficult when it crosses that line between land and water, whose responsibility is it?

Is it the harbormaster?

Is it the police?

Is it planning and zoning?

Who is enforcing the noise ordinances?

And we clearly have seen noise surrounding uh several short-term rental situations.

So short-term rentals, it's a the city law defines it as a unit that is rented to transient guests for compensation for a period of not more than 90 consecutive days for any single tenant.

STR vessels generally advertise on one of the popular STR platforms, just like on the residential side, such as VRBO or Airbnb or their own online platform.

Um moving on to uh and again, I this is a lot of information, a lot of it, there's a lot more detail in the full report that I urge you to read, and we're certainly here to answer questions.

So, this is just an overview of what we've discovered as we drilled down into these things.

Um, one of the other things that we are tasked with is how many slips do we have here in Annapolis, and what are we talking about?

And so that was an interesting dive.

And uh working together with him and his team at the Harbor Master's office, we have a really fine-tuned example now.

We have 2342 slips.

That's a lot of slips in Annapolis.

We have 38 marinas that exist in the city waters.

Um at the city dock, and the remainder are with 37 other private marinas.

Most of these marinas, 23 of them are small marinas, and I don't have to tell you, Ross, how small the marinas get in Esport and the overlap and the lateral line problem and how they're all on top of each other.

So that's why there is a substantial number of these that are under 50 slips.

15 of these 37 marinas are large marinas with over 50 slips, and you might say, well, why is that important?

Well, the whole STR house barge regulations that exist talk about a only allowing house barges in marinas that have over 50 slips and then limiting it to 2% of the number of slips that you have.

So again, in the public forum and in within our task force, we had a lot of comments on the inequity of the small marina saying that well, if the big marinas can put a house barge in, why can't I?

And so that's we feel that there's some work to do uh in that regulating if if we do allow the house barges regulating the number and making it more accessible for others.

If all the marinas, I got one more.

If all the marinas requested a barge permit of all the the big marinas that had over 50 slips, and we limited it to percent.

There could potentially be 32 house barges allowed.

Now, the stipulation that we want to draw to your attention is that includes yacht clubs, sailing school, the crab marina, the museum dock.

Obviously, some of those would not be appropriate for a house barge.

But one of the things that came out of our meetings with our task force is there is some interest in house barges, not for STRs, not for rental purposes, but for their own marina use, whether it be housing coaches, housing staff, um, or other features like that.

So just wanted to talk about that for a second.

It's also important to understand what we're talking about when we say black water and gray water.

Black water, I think everybody understands what that is.

That's the raw sewage that's coming out of the boat that's currently handled by a uh pump out system at a marina, a pump out cart, or arranging a separate contract for the pump out boat.

Only the highest level of commercial boats are allowed to treat the black water and discharge.

All right, and that's not even within the creeks or whatever, they have to be in open water for that.

But we are moving towards an environment where that will soon become illegal to treat and discharge, and so treating the sewage is a real real issue, especially when we go into the colder months because all of the pump outs, all of the pump out cart, all of the pump out boats get winterized, just like everything else, and put off to the side.

And so during the winter, if you look at that third slide down, the only option is for the marinas like ours to commission their portable pumps and take them down the tiers for the live aboard community that they may be hosting, but for STRs and everything else that could be a challenge.

Gray water, gray water is everything else that comes out of the boat, it's dishwater, it's laundry, it's dishwashers, it's washwater coming from a hose that's being drained over the side.

It's everything else that's coming out.

In Europe, they have holding tanks for gray water because in some coastal communities it's illegal to discharge gray water, but it's important to understand gray water and its impact, especially when we talk about house barges and short-term rentals of house barges because that is a case where you're trying to maximize the number of people that you can put on the boat in uh short period of time, and that means a lot of dishes, a lot of linens, a lot of washing, a lot of everything, and all of that on the house barge would be discharged directly into the water.

The task force recommends existing city noise laws, STR water and zoning be enforced.

STRs can lose their license after violations, and a process is in place to manage tourists on a booze cruise charter boat, kind of like what we see here.

We've all seen them.

Um, as well as weekend visitors on recreational boats sometime engage in excessive drinking.

It's fair to assume that similar safety issues may arise on STR vessels where customers engage in drinking or are simply unfamiliar with entering and exiting a floating platform.

Kind of ties back into what I said before because they typically are not a uh to use a term we use in a boat yard all the time, a yachty, right?

They're not familiar kind of with the ebb and flow of the tides, the water, the motion on a boat or anything else.

Um, we just feel there is the safety and concern for that sort of thing when we bring that into uh the STR.

However, it's not to say that enhanced regulations may be more helpful, and uh it may be beneficial to ensure docks that host customers are well lit by stanchions and have plenty of ladders if they fall overboard every so many people.

Slip prices.

We the task force does not recommend altering any of the current barge law, which limits licenses to two percent of marina slip.

This would ensure slip holders with recreational vessels are not competing with the short-term rental barges to secure a spot or seeing prices drastically increase.

Because make no mistake, an STR house barge will drive increased revenues for the marina.

There is no doubt about that.

And an example of that is the typical boat that we see at the Javen Yacht Yard.

Let's just say it's 40 footer.

I might get 153 dollars a night for that.

If I have a 40 foot house barge, I might be able to get 1,500 for the weekend.

So there's a substantial economic benefit to that, but um we're a little concerned about the unintended consequence associated with that.

Um let's talk about other cities for a minute.

For the deputy city manager, Mr.

Harmon of Ocean City, Ocean City, Maryland.

We addressed the short-term rentals of houseboats from a rental business license perspective.

You will see in the ordinance copied at the bottom of this email, we spelled out our legislative intent.

Our focus was on protecting the original use and intent of our marinas, along with protecting the public's health, welfare, and safety.

We felt it was important to clearly define a houseboat.

In this case, he's referring to house barge, not house boat, because those terms are a little bit confusing, but I believe he's referring to house barge.

So we crafted a definition using an established ordinance from Kentucky, where we while researching this issue, it was enlightening to see how many communities throughout the nation who have dealt with this issue.

Finally, we prohibited the use of houseboats or house barges for commercial use, making it unlawful to obtain an ocean city business rental license for such purposes.

Beach Haven, New Jersey.

Beach Haven prohibits any vessel not capable of self-propelled navigation from being occupied.

Any vessel which has self-propelled navigation capabilities can be occupied, provided they have a marine sanitation device, portable toilet, or connection to sewage system.

Additionally, the city prohibits vessels from being rented to others, they must be owner-occupied.

An interesting strategy, but it takes you to the same finish line.

House barges are outright banned in Nantucket, Tisbury, Massachusetts, which is Marsha Martha's Vineyard, Newport, Rhode Island, and Brookhaven, New York.

There are places that allow Baltimore is one that have created a nice community of uh uh house barges, Sau Salito, Seattle, and also National Harbor allows a house barges to um populate there.

What's interesting that we found was the example in Wilmington.

Wilmington's a port city, part of its downtown historic district, the Riverwalk, is lined with restaurants, galleries, and shops, not unlike our own city.

It runs along the Cape Fear River.

An STR barge rental company has recently built the Cove River Walk Villa.

The marina is solely for STR barges and managed by one company.

The location is on downtown at the edge of the city's river walk so as not to interfere with the main view shed.

So we thought that was very interesting, and we think the same thing's happening in areas like Baltimore and others where they have the ability to host a house barge without a negative impact on the imagery of the culture and history of that port city.

So we see a couple examples there.

When we talk about the responses that we got from the public, uh it's we we put that sentence in there, use chat GPT to summarize the survey results because we were it was important for us to be completely independent, not my view, not Gee's view, not any of the task members' view.

And so from a full independent uh perspective, what came out of the responses from the public, do not allow STR house barges in city water.

Enforce parity and regulation with land-based STR, licensing inspections, and tax.

Clarify and codify definitions, residential vessel, STR vessel, house barge, etc.

Strengthened pump out capacity and emergency infrastructure, if any expansion is considered.

Consider zoning and visual impact.

Restrict placement to non-residential areas, like Baltimore's example.

Quotes from the public survey.

The only benefit is for marina owners.

What does the community get?

A floating condo with party guests is not a boat.

Ocean City banned them.

Why are we different?

Don't allow that.

This is a short-term rental problem dressed as a maritime development.

This next page, I won't really uh uh uh take your time and going through each one, but it it it it points to the fact that it was predominantly negative towards the STR of house barges and the STR period.

But when when you have a chance to look at the full report, you'll see this in more detail.

I think I'll turn it back to you.

So then what we did uh you have the city responses.

So there were by and large neutral.

Um with trying to help where they it was possible.

Uh it would bring some tourism up if you have these uh short-term rentals on the barges.

Uh, there's a possibility that some of the properties along the water might be affected, and they could pay uh a tax or a fee that would help with revenue.

Uh, there are some environmental concerns uh that were raised uh as well.

And then the public works is uh really dealing with the black water and the gray water.

And you can already see that the things that are mentioned here are very uh similar to what we were founding.

This is really the third leg of what we believe is the input, it's the city departments versus the uh public versus the task fork itself.

And then the fire department uh it was interesting in two ways that were by and large neutral, and they said if it's propelled, it might not be under their purview.

But if it's not propelled, uh then it is under their purview.

And if you do, then they would probably have to put some things in at the marinas themselves uh and see what happens there.

The other comment that I would uh point to that the fire marshal said, which I thought was interesting, is that they're typically reactive, meaning when a big problem occurs, they usually change the law then, meaning when there is a big accident, then the fire marshal will change the rules and regulation, and all of a sudden it's going to be different uh from then on.

And then the Harbor Master made some comments always uh about not always about the enforcement.

It seems ambiguous where and when who enforces what uh that it'd be with short-term rentals and other things.

I think that might have to be clarified uh on that end with the harbor master who has really authority to enforce these things if they're going to be allowed or not.

And uh that was kind of difficult on that end.

So in general, uh, we have three sources, and we ended up with our recommendations, which is the core here, and you'll see why we're recommending what we're recommending.

Number one, we try to be extremely objective.

Uh it's as Rod said, it's not our personal opinions.

We're just trying to represent the folks that they either behind us or couldn't be here, and that have voiced their views that it'd be the public, that it'd be the department, or that it'd be the task force on there.

We tried to listen to everybody.

And then the meetings that we had, uh, we tried to engage people.

There's people who didn't write anything specific, but they discussed it in our meetings.

And when we went through that, um, we came up with this 30-page report and the executive summary.

Um, and that led to the recommendation below, which I'll get to in a second.

From an economics point of view, if you read the report, there's a page almost or page and a half of numbers about Anarilla County and uh the city as well, of how strong uh the economics are the economic uh uh viability of the maritime industry.

So our recommendation is actually very, very simple.

But it came about after two or three meetings of reviewing things with the task force member and the public, and we decided that the general consensus was no rentals, period.

And if you want to have a barge, we feel it's not the business of the city to tell a marina that it can have a pontoon boat, a sailboat, a catamaran, or a motorboat, or for that matter a barge, if they want a barge.

We're suggesting that maybe we shouldn't do rentals.

And the last piece that we also think should be changed is the unfair nature of the 50 slips with the 2% rule and change it to a 2% and one unit.

That means if you are a marina and you want a house barge, you could have it, but no commercial rental was the idea behind that.

The side effect of this is important, I think, from what you see there.

All of a sudden, if you do ban rentals, no more life safety issues with fire marshal and all these other things uh on that end on the watercraft.

Um the infrastructure, you know, how are we going to manage these additional inspections, these additional permitting uh sewer, sewage and gray water disposal.

How are we going to handle this?

The whole thing about permitting, all that falls away.

We don't have to do the permit.

And I know there have been questions about getting a permit, and I know one individual in particular had a problem getting a permit.

And so uh if you ban it, we're done with that part.

Uh eliminate the inconsistency with the 52% and go to the 2% of one unit.

And the last four, um, the community.

If you read addendum B, I think there's a lot of comments in there.

There's impossible to put them on the PowerPoint, but it's entertaining or sometimes quite uh interesting.

Not shy people that voice their opinion.

I think they know what you mean.

You're in politics, you know what that means.

So the city code probably needs to be clarified all this.

We mentioned that.

And then the last thing, maybe it's the most important one.

When we see the cities that said no, they seem to be similar to Annapolis, Queen Town, a particular character.

People go on the Sixth Street Bridge and they do a picture.

I walk that all the time.

I think they do it because of what's in the water and what's around the water and how beautiful this city is.

And I think it's the decision, I think, of the city to decide do you want to keep that, or do we want to put a bunch of bargers in there or allow them for that matter?

So our recommendation is no rentals, and uh that's really what we have for you.

And that's it.

Questions?

Let on my voting alderman go first.

Thank you, uh, Mr.

Mayor.

And um I said this at the Maritime Advisory Board the other night, but I did uh watch all of the meetings and have read twice the report, and you can see my markings.

Um I have to say that I'm actually overwhelmed by the outcome.

It's much more than I expected it to be.

Um I watched the committee as it was organizing, and I was impressed by that, but uh I couldn't think of an issue that I was concerned with that you didn't address.

It didn't always come out exactly the way I thought, but you did address it all.

And there's a couple of things I'll get to in a second that I want to uh bring out that you didn't make in this report, but uh you were incredibly thorough.

I thought you also did a very good job of zeroing in on what were the right issues and what were issues that charters and liver boards that really were not the focus or the concern.

Um so I want to thank you for the efforts and for the report.

I think you've um done you've given a good groundwork for any future work uh on a future council from the city, and um, so that's very good.

So I've been involved in two maritime task force uh uh legislation, and I think they both can come out pretty well.

I'm I'm pleased.

I did want to go over um Ron, when you were talking about how this is clearly could be a plus for the marinas, but I thought a very beneficial discussion in the report is while it may be good for the marinas, it's not necessarily good for the industry because the nature of these uh votes are they're not getting hauled, they're not getting painted, they're not getting their fiberglass repaired, all of the things that are a big part of our maritime industry, yeah, and that was a very important point.

Another point, again, that uh you didn't bring out, but I saw in here, is um house barges actually are imposing, they're even more imposing, well, they're every bit as imposing as final drive for some of the big boats, but they're really more imposing than most of the boats that would be in a marina, and so when you think about looking at the wonderful vistas from the bridge or out of esport, you largely see vessels bobbing up and down, mass swaying back and forth.

You don't see a big monolithic structure, and that gets to that point of preserving Annapolis identity, and I thought the point made just now that the cities that have banned house barges uh are like Annapolis.

Uh they're the same kind of maritime heritage cities.

I also think that one of the great things you did in the report, and and we did this intentionally when I did the led the original legislation.

House barges are uh include house boats, but they're they are different then, and that distinction you drew between a boat, which is recreational and navigational and a barge, which is residential, uh, I think is a very important distinction and really helped zero in on the report.

So my profound thanks to you as the leaders of the committee to the committee.

I saw how hard you worked.

I got phone calls from people asking for sites when they were doing their homework between meetings, and uh you guys did a lot of work and um presented uh a big body with a huge amorphous task presented to you and an incredibly short timeline.

So I want to thank you and congratulate you for the report.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

And I just echo my colleagues' comments.

Thank you very much.

Very thorough report.

Um I fully admit though, due to my own personal scheduling NAFU.

Sounds like I've not been able to review it thoroughly yet.

Um, so I appreciate the presentation today.

That's good.

I think that'll give me good context for when I do dig into it.

Um, and I would love to sit down with Erod or anybody else to have any further questions coming out of it.

But based on the presentation and what I have seen, um, I think this is exactly what we were looking for, or this amount of detail.

Uh very impressive.

Um appreciate the time that you've you've dedicated to it.

Um so can we for the record get the presentation uploaded into a Legistar for future reference and attached to the resolution?

Cindy, yes, Mr.

Lyles.

Can we get this presentation and the report, make sure it's uploaded with the associated resolution?

Um I haven't checked.

I just I don't think it was on the agenda, but it may thank you.

Um I do have a couple other questions.

Uh let's see, the Harbor Master's Office.

So, in light of the recommendations, and I'm trying to find you have a page on the report that I should look at for a summary of the recommendations 38.

And so, and I'll give you the exact page in a second.

38.

And that was the one that was almost copied verbatim on the PowerPoint presentation.

So page 38 on the report should be addendum C and uh it should show you exactly what we are recommending.

And so I you said um altering the you want to alter the two percent.

Yeah, which I believe might be solved as that it might be that the last race on the recommendation is not on the copy that you have, it is on here.

I will send the latest copy uh to uh the Harbor Master and Jacqueline, and that way you'll have exactly what we have here.

But but let's let's talk about that so that you understand that the concept of what was going on, if there's a question related to the 50 slips and the two percent.

Well, I think so.

Well, I think what you're recommending is that that stay in place, however, it's that or uh for the smaller marinas is it that they get so the the challenge was there's there's facilities um that in in however this is resolved that feel like they're being unfairly left out of an opportunity because they don't have 50 slips, right?

And we're in agreement with that, and we understand the complexity of how tight knit the uh marinas are within each other, but by uh adopting a uh I think there has to be some regulation related to the number of house barges, and if you adopt what this task force came up with, which was two percent of the number of slips, or one is that right?

Is it one, then we have declared that it's okay if you are an applause sailing school that has 22 slips, and you have an opportunity to bring in a house barge and not for rental purposes for a legally authorized use, it's okay to do so, um, and not be left out because your marina doesn't have over 50 slips, but he has uh you know everything else is in place to allow it.

Um we feel like there's some inequity involved there, and we should take another look.

A lot of questions surrounded where did this 50 slip 2% rule come from?

And I don't really have an answer for you, but I will say, well, I was gonna go back to the last task force that I was involved with with Paul Renarnette, and there was this idea of uh um the 50 slips, and it it that term kind of got entered relating to zoning and some other issues, and so I think it just kind of got transferred and dropped into this discussion with house barges because it was an easy.

Well, we've used that before, let's use it again.

Um may have more say on that.

But I might so first of all, we do have two house barges, one watermark tour on the city marina and the gas over uh Annapolis landing that are in use for non-resident, and I thought you made a very good point in your presentation.

Marinas may want to have that is places for staff to stay overnight or off the space things like that.

So there's nothing intrinsically wrong with a house barge, it's something that's not going to be moved, not recreational, but if the business, a marina wants to use part of their water for a house barge, fine.

That's what you're recommending.

And I think that all the excuse me, I'll just finish up turn view, all of the concern, it was related to the short-term rentals and the issues that that brought on itself.

If we remove that, then there's no reason not to allow or adopt regulations that support specific uses uh for house barges, just like there is right now, and maybe clarifying that because it's a little unclear in the rule or in the code what's allowed and what's not allowed.

Clearly, there's legally existing examples of house barges, like you mentioned that um uh marina fuel dock uses for everything else, but none of those currently that we accept as legally existing, have any rental component to it at all.

It's all internal business related.

So when we were doing the house barge legislation, we didn't have the wonderful tables that you provided us with the detail about all the marina slips.

But the concept behind it was very much the notion that a big marina, if you have one or two house barges or house boats, tier four, I think, has three houseboats.

Yeah.

And a smaller marina, right next to my where my boat is.

But it would be sort of not overwhelming the rest of the marina.

And it had to do with this monolithic aspect of houseboats and house barges, particularly houseboats tend to have a lower profile because of windage, yeah, and needing to do navigation.

House barges and the the house, the residential structures on floats tend to have a much bigger profile.

And the even the profile that is in the current boat, pretty darn big.

If you think about something 47 feet long, 20 feet wide and 14 feet tall, that's big structure.

Yeah, to your point earlier, it's very imposing to place that amongst other recreational vessels.

It's one of these doesn't belong kind of thing.

So continuing my questions there.

So you um said there are 37 small marinas.

Um so if we did adopt that 2% or one, um at the most, that would allow for 37 more could assuming with a lot of assumptions because that would be at the most 37 new house barges, right?

Yeah, but you're also at the same time proposing to um recommending it, I should say, uh, that we don't allow any house barges to be rented.

Correct.

Right.

So so it's very important that last piece that you just added.

So if a marina wants to put a barge, uh, we feel that's their decision.

For them, it's most likely a loss of revenue because they don't rent it.

It's a non-commercial, non-rentable space, if you will.

And I want to just expand on that for a minute.

So, in a short-term rental, I can get $1,500 for a weekend.

But Mr.

Savage, if you come to me and say, I just purchased a house barge and I would like a slip.

It's for my own personal use in my family.

I want to rent it for a year.

I don't want to rent it for a weekend.

I want to rent it, I need a place to put this thing.

I can't charge $35,000 for a year.

It now drops down into more aligned with recreational vessel pricing because of the private nature of the house barge.

Now, whether or not I have a slip that I'm willing to commit to a house barge with all of its imposing structure, I don't know, but maybe one thing no way am I going to get that short-term rental revenue stream because it's privately owned and it's a long-term rental arrangement.

So the numbers just won't stand up, they'll be more in line with the recreational vessel pricing that we have now.

So you're recommending that they that we not allow any rental or just short-term rental.

I I think Rod, if I'm not mistaken, you're talking about the rental of the slip, not the rental of the house barge.

Right.

If I buy a house barge and I decide to live on the house barge, my question now is where do I go?

And if I go to Rod and Burgehaven Marina, will he rent me a slip where I can put that there?

And that becomes the question.

But we feel that as a task force, that's none of our business.

What we don't want to see happen is that people rent that house barge to other people.

And because then it becomes a completely different use, and it becomes a rental use of the house barge.

So what you just read in the recommendation that's on the screen is exactly that.

If the city council wants to ban rentals of any kind of any length on the house barges, then and then change the two percent or one uh law on the house barges to give an opportunity for a marina owner who wants to put one there for their personal use for uh housing, maybe uh their temporary workers, which is hard to house in Annapolis.

So that was yet even the intent is not to do commercial rental on house barges because of all the other things we mentioned the noise, the safety, and all these other things.

That that's really the intent here.

Okay, so I believe you were you were talking about the rental of the slip that's not the rental of the house barge itself.

Thank you for that clearance.

It would be not allowed per our recommendation.

Okay, so if so, for example, you know, if sailing school wanted to have a house barge to house their seasonal employees in the summer, um if we changed it to the two percent or the one, they could potentially have one, right?

But how would it but I don't know, I still don't understand.

So then they could put that there for I guess their personal professional use, but would they be able to rent that out to the uh employees or no?

How would that work?

No, it's not going to be set up as a rental that that it would be for internal business use only, and whether that included uh, you know, maybe that was a poor example that we brought up, the the housing of uh seasonal coaching staff or whatever, yeah.

That's not in our opinion anywhere close to short-term rentals available to the general public, sure, and and it's all internal, they're not receiving money, they may be part of their compensation as a coach that they're providing housing, but it's not the same as a short-term rental, and and and maybe I we should not use that as an example, but uh there's other uh examples that uh Naples County has where it is their main fuel dock uh uh office that collects fuel dock and does the pump outs and administrates all of that.

The other one is uh um uh well forget where the other one is, but um you know what I'm saying, it's all for internal use, it's not rented to external or the general public.

Yeah, I think I guess anybody can go in.

So Port Annapolis could put one in and then the marina the the existing tenants could go ahead and um clients, I should say, could then go ahead and use that as if they need to have I don't know, right?

How every gathering they wanted to do on the right, and I think that's self-regulating.

I mean, number one, we don't see a lot of these as used in that way.

Um, but I mean, I've never had anybody, and I'm probably as good as an example as any marina, uh I've never had anybody call and ask if I had a slip for a house barge that was privately owned that they weren't interested in using as an SPR, and so I think the point I'm trying to not articulate it very well is we think it's going to be self-regulating a little bit because if Port Annapolis can't come up with a reason to rent that barge that uh is beneficial, then they're not going to do it.

If they don't have a need for a fuel dock, if they don't have a need for this or that, don't know that there would entertain that ability to rent it to a private customer that wants to use it for his own personal things, it's not for short-term rentals, it's not for anything else.

Um, but we don't think it's fair to deny that, because there may be somebody out there, as Alderman Arnett said, it's not that there's anything inherently wrong with a house barge versus a catamaran versus a wooden sailboat.

We don't want to make a distinction, we just want to control the use of that house barge that lends itself to all of these issues that were brought to our attention from the city departments, the public, and our own task force with safety and that kind of thing related to the short-term rental of that house barge.

But can you explain more to help me understand because in your report, your final recommendation there?

Uh you originally I think I guess the version I have, you have short-term rental is deleted, so it's just prohibiting the use of house barges for I I can explain that I'm no problem because uh that is part of what we did at the last uh revision, and it was highlighted in yellow.

I took all the highlights out to show the change so people didn't have to reread the 50 pages every time.

Initially, we wanted to eliminate the short-term, and then we realized that in the definition of the city code, you could rent for 90 days if I'm my memory serves me right, and that's no longer considered a short-term rental.

And we said, Oh, that means people can get barges and they can rent them 91 days at a time, and we're back in the same problem.

Not only in the same problem, but now we have residential living on the water, but they're not really live aboards if you get my drift.

Liveaboard, if you read the report, uh, they look around, they care about the other boats, their eyes from a security point of view that I think marina owners um uh cherish to a certain degree where it helps them maintain their marinas.

We're trying to avoid having the noise, having the sewage, having all these other things and uh dealt with.

We also didn't want to intervene in the marina business of what you can put in your slip.

And we felt that was a very slippery slope to get into between putting a houseboat if you if you as a marina need a house.

I'm sorry, a house barge.

Um that if you needed one, you want to put one in, why not?

If that's part of what you need to do uh for your business, that's really what the intent is there.

Does that help you understand?

Yes.

Where it's really part of their business to put the house barge for their internal use.

If you have 30, you can only put one.

If you have 75, you can only put one.

If you have 101 slips, you could put two based on what we're we're proposing.

Okay.

Well, I mean, I'm still not clear on the did you intend what is the final language that you're recommending?

Do you have the final language?

It's on no rental, so it it is I guess no rentals at all.

Okay.

And because I mean my impression, and I get like both, and I'm assuming this is your train of thought, both short-term and long-term rentals would still be residential.

But what you were trying to explain to me is the difference in that case, the different because I do see a difference as far as impact, right?

It seems to me intuitively that short-term rentals be more prone to having disruptions because it's maybe treated more like a party boat and have those impact and the safety issues that people uh but long-term rental I see having a bit less impact, negative impact, right?

At least in that sense.

But you're is that right?

But you're telling me that I guess there are other impacts of having potentially.

We've been we've been through that on the task force, and I'll I'll give you an example where uh this was discussed.

So let's say you do allow long-term rentals.

We have to define what that is, right?

91 days plus you want to allow it all the way through and allow 10 of those on a per marina basis, and you then want to have people living on the water in Annapolis.

That's really that's where this began to evolve.

And we felt we don't think so.

Uh not for the character of the city and for what it stands for.

Uh that's what Yeah.

And and I would just add that um we initially had it as um prohibiting the use of house barges for short-term rental, and then we had one of our uh task force members say, Well, what if I want to rent it long term?

And we were like, oh, I don't I agree.

We didn't think of that.

And what if we do allow it long term, and it was so ambiguous and so open for loopholes that we said, why don't we just ban it?

Ban the rental, because that's what we're trying to control or alleviate the stress related to the rental of a house barge on the water.

And we adopted that position of prohibiting the use of house barges for rental purposes as final language and took away STR.

So it includes STR for sure, but it also takes away any opportunity to create some loophole in the uh uh code that says, oh no, I'm I'm uh I am renting it for 91 days, and I can put whoever I want on that boat every weekend, different person every weekend because I'm not short-term rental, and by not being a short-term rental, I've gone all they have to do is go past 90 days and I'm not considered short-term rental.

And so that's why we ended up with that line.

There is another element that maybe we should have put in the report.

I believe the maritime advisory board, we were suggested to read the 75 pages there.

And if my understanding is correct, the intent there is to keep the maritime industry intact in Annapolis, so that you can come here, you can dock here, you can have services here, and uh that this city, and believe me, I go up and down the coast, and you can come here and have services.

If you want to get work done, you go to my neighbor to the right because you know the services provide at that particular yard are top notch.

I think rentals of any kind on house barges does away with the intent and the protection of the maritime advisory board and what it wants to do and what it recommended to do.

I know that if you have a building along the water, you're supposed to buy, I can't remember the percentages, but it's very stringent as well.

You guys probably know a lot better than I create the view.

Well, that's an important that's a key point.

I mean, because that's one reason why I think we wanted to set this up, and that was one of my concerns from the get-go, is my questions.

It was because if it's short-term or long term, it's is that more of a residential use as opposed to maritime, and that was my concern because we worked so hard to overhaul the maritime districts a few years back.

I just wanted to add that a lot of that is addressed in the full report.

Okay.

A little bit more detail that might make more sense than this abbreviated version.

Yeah.

Okay.

Um, and and to that point, I would recommend adjusting the executive summary to have list out some of your your recommendations in a succinct.

I I I will alter it.

So I wanted to keep it intact to show the council how we got there, meaning the report was made first, then conversations ensued, and out of those conversations and the web survey, and then the city that uh we came up with the recommendations we did, but I afterwards felt a little ambiguous that the executive summary doesn't reflect the recommendation.

I would be happy to make those alterations, the executive summary at the bottom and say, based on conversations, and based on this conversation, I think it might even be useful as well to mention the maritime advisory board goals of keeping the marine industry strong in Annapolis, then that the rentals as a whole, we do not recommend because it does take away fiberglass repair, uh hauling out all these other things uh that would be there.

So I don't know if that helps, and hopefully that clarifies.

I think what your concern was.

Yeah, I think that'd be good to emphasize exactly something.

I mean, some of us will read the many will not.

But can I interject right here?

Sure again.

Some would argue that and I don't think these house barges are cheap, but that it would be a way of providing affordable housing or at least more houses.

But the report and in this discussion we've had, house barges on the water come with problems of year-round needing to deal with black, but also a huge increase in the amount of gray water, which does have an environmental impact.

Yeah, and there are other issues when we walked, we talked with Lex about it, uh at Port Annapolis.

He was very adamant as you have been about don't tell a marine owner what kind of boat you can have in the marina.

And I think we all agree with that.

But um he was saying that he doesn't really encourage having houseboats because it comes with other kinds of marina operation problems.

You've got people there that I'm not sure they're that different than having a live aboard there year-round.

But it does but it's well, the difference, the distinction is that the live aboards are part of the maritime community, and to use that silly word again, yachts, right?

They understand what happens in a storm and how violent it can be in the slip at night and what precautions they need to take in the middle of winter when they've got a snowfall overnight and all of those things.

Whereas if I pluck somebody out of suburban America and bring them and put them on a house barge, and any one of these events occur, they are not prepared to manage with that uh in a marine environment.

And there's the safety concerns that we highlight.

One last thing from a colleague.

Um I said I would pass along.

She wanted to know if everybody from the task force was invited to attend.

Like are is there anybody who just to make sure that all the voices are heard?

And I think what she's getting at is was there any kind of minority opinion that felt like they needed to express themselves, or is it already expressed in the report?

So that was my main goal, and I'll try to address that.

If you look in the report, um there is an addendum where a couple of other items were brought up that were related, not we felt not related uh to this, and I think it's uh addendum e one was about the space uh that is available in the fairways in the city.

I don't know if Tim uh or Tyler had a conversation with the gentleman in question.

But but I I think also I don't mean to interrupt, but I think we gave extraordinary efforts to hear every task force member's opinion, and we beg for a response.

So we we we went over and above in our addendum E as he's referring to to those that responded, but as opposed to the STR issue, they wanted to have a statement relating to safety and navigation in the navigable waters when people anchor in the middle in a very crowded fairway.

And I know that Tim's team is deals with that on a daily basis and everything else, but we still included that, even though it wasn't part of our our mission, we included that in appendix E because we felt it was important that hey, this was brought to our attention.

We want to make sure it's heard and put out there for review and consideration if there should be any.

But I will tell you that we gave an extraordinary amount of time to receive input from every task member.

Yeah, I want to ask some some provided some, some didn't.

And that's the way it goes.

But we we worked really hard together.

You you can ask the people on the task force.

Uh I personally wrote emails that request to people to give input by a certain amount of time.

And I know both Tim and Jacqueline were on those emails because I want to make sure that they were public in that regard, and invited anybody, if you have any comment to bring them in by a certain amount of time, and we did that three times.

On top of that, during our meetings, uh, I have the list of the task forum members and the ones who did not write anything directly.

I made sure I addressed them personally in the meeting and make sure, and there were conversations with those folks during the meeting.

You can go look on the videos on there.

Uh, there's a couple people that uh were never there.

Uh I know one individual was never in any of the meetings, and there probably is no input from that individual.

I don't want to name anybody because it's not necessary, but I can tell you from this individual as the chair, uh, I made enormous efforts to either via email or engaging people.

Yeah, one while they might have been a little bit sitting back in the meeting, I went through the cameras and said, What of what do you think?

And and then they did engage, and then we had the conversation.

So I think they had an opportunity to really voice, and I will say one last thing to you.

If some individual feels they haven't, I'd be happy to listen to them, and I'm sure Rod would be as well.

Right.

And I just got one thing I'd like to add to that is right from the beginning, the way that the chairman uh designed this input from our task force members separating it into 26 separate tasks.

And I remember that meeting where Gee and I were assigning tasks to people that were being very quiet, and we were being a little bit aggressive assigning those tasks.

So I I we we put a lot of effort into being inclusive, I think.

Yeah, sounds like question.

Thank you very much.

That's all I have, Mr.

Mayor.

Well, uh, again uh even just today, the richness of what you've provided us.

I I think we're only beginning to uncover an idea um my profound thanks for the effort you as leaders, but for the whole team and the whole staff that supported it.

Um this is very impressive.

I I will reiterate one thing.

It goes to the people to my right, all the way here and there, and it goes to the people probably in the back, I don't know who's in the back, but also the people who might be viewing this.

The people that went involved in this task work genuinely care about the city and then some.

And we do.

I know you do.

And we are just trying to represent them, and that's the bottom line for us.

It they were genuinely involved, and we really appreciate it.

So your thanks really goes to them.

If I could just one last thing just to say, you know, I since uh I know I will be returning to the council next term.

I do fully intend to uh revisit your recommendations.

Uh or not maybe I shouldn't say revisit, but to work on implementing your recommendations.

So thank you.

Be happy to participate.

Deputy Director.

Um, I just wanted to note that R 4624 does state that this task force would disband three months after the final report to the city.

So if we take today's date, the 18th of September, that would be December 18th.

So if there's anything further for the task force, we would need to do that before they're supposed to disband in December.

Right.

So I want to just say thank you.

You you said an Annapolis land speed record for a task force.

I thought there's no chance you're gonna finish this before the end of the year.

And um uh excellent work.

Thank you so much.

You know, we we all love this city.

I I want to ask you a couple of questions, just I thought a lot of marinas didn't even allow house barges.

Uh of the 38 marinas, are there any that actually have it written into their bylaws that you're not allowed to have a house barge or a house boat, or did you not check that?

Um we we didn't check that.

One of the questions that we are asked to uh nail down was how many marinas have contacted the city to seek information related to house barge, and there was only two was Marcellus Butler, who um both he and I personally spoke to while we were in meetings and personally outside of the meetings, and uh the Eastport Yacht Center.

Um, and uh Marcellus has a equity interest in flow homes, which is a uh house barge company that's doing very very well, is populating Baltimore and areas down in the Carolinas and other areas.

Um his to summarize his concern was I just want to know what I can do and what I can't do.

I doesn't matter to me whether the council says no or says yes, I just want to know.

It's and I think it also speaks to the robustness of the Annapolis maritime industry, whereas we're to use another silly term, we're all drinking from a fire hose, especially this time of year.

And so the incremental increase in revenues associated with the house barge is not meaningful at the end of the year, and so the challenges associated with the house barge are such that when somebody calls me, Mr.

Mayor, when you call me and want to move in on your house barge after your term simply, I'm gonna pause and probably deny that.

Not because I have it in my code or I have it listed in my contract, but uh the challenges Alderman Arnett has said associated with the house barges and its ability to get along nicely with its neighbors is such that I don't need another problem in the marina management life.

My other question is just in terms of legislation that we need to pass.

It uh house barges and house boats and all those things defined well enough in our code, so that because I thought that was one of the holdbacks there, you know, that there's this gray area of what was a barge, what was a house boat.

And I mean my position hasn't changed.

If you can't drive it, it's it's not a boat, you know.

You you you have to drive it.

And I and we we took our best efforts in explaining it.

It's better detailed in the full report than what we did this afternoon, but uh we tried to do as best a job we could in defining the difference between a houseboat, a house barge, charter boat, recreational boat, and others, so that we felt very strongly that before anything, we have to understand what it is that we're talking about because there's a lot of confusion, even among states and and different territories.

Are we talking about a house boat?

Are we talking about a house barge?

Or are we what are we talking about?

A charter boat, a commercial boat?

And it's like, no, no, no, no, no.

We're not talking about any of those.

What we're talking about is a house barge, which is a residential unit put on some kind of flotation device that keeps it in the water, not designed to leave the slip.

And then we put imagery associated with that that makes it very clear.

When you put a houseboat next to a house barge, there's no question about what we're talking about.

But doesn't our current legislation allow for a house barge office like the two that we do we need to change any legislation on that?

Because it it seems like you could already do what you're talking about, put one of these um at if we allow it to be 50 less than 50.

Um without having all of the information available to me to answer this question properly.

As a general statement, one of our recommendations was to revisit the regulations associated with house barges and clear it up and modernize it so that the marina owners and uh vessel owners understand what is allowed and what is not.

And I'll use the example of the Eastport Yacht Center where they're still confused.

They thought they purchased a house barge that was going to be legally existing and used for STR, but the city felt differently, and I didn't get into all the details of why or or what and actually uh the harbor masters have been out on leave, so I haven't been able to get the or her response either, but uh they still have not come to terms, and they're now trying to sell the boat just to say I've had it, I can't feel this anymore.

Um, so that's an indication that the regulations associated with the house barge in particular should be uh modernized and and cleaned up so that the normal person can communicate what the law is, whether it be the harbor master's office or the office of law, because right now I'm not sure either one of us could between the three of us, the harbor master's office, the office of law and the professionals in the industry could explain what the what the regulations are uh because they seem to be at odds with uh insert code.

So yes, uh I'm gonna give you Alderman Savage's commitment to clean that all up uh with the new council so we can make it black and white.

If I could speak to that, yeah, yeah, you're good.

If I could speak to that too, just uh when we look at the house barge and then what these guys have clearly already mentioned, the delineation between house barge and then we're combining short-term rental.

There is no such thing as a short-term rental on a boat right now.

If you go to the short-term rental application, you will not find a way forward because all the provisions for short-term rentals are residential, fire code.

We would have to create that to find a way forward to do short-term rentals on anything that is water, which is why we get into planning and zoning and all the other things.

So thank you.

I don't believe that we've actually defined house barge either in our boat, have we?

I don't think so.

I'd have to look at it.

I know we have house barge and house boat, but I do think it needs cleaning.

Yeah, it's a little confusing.

Well, really excellent work and really gave us a great definition, and I learned a lot just from the presentation.

I didn't know there was a what did you call that a bed and breakfast?

Uh that's uh that's an interesting term.

So that what a great thing to do in Annapolis.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Well, to everybody out there, thank you so much for all the work you put into this.

I know uh the the this city depends on volunteers like you to make it uh an even better place than it is.

So thank you, everybody, for all the hard work to the city staff.

You guys are amazing.

Thank you so much.

And uh we truly appreciate this and uh looking forward to how it rolls out in the next term.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Just us, anything else for good order?

All right, can I get uh session adjourned?