The Brunswick Town Council held a workshop on June 15, 2026, at 6:15 PM (adjourned at 6:30 PM) to discuss the proposed ordinance for Chapter 1, Article 4 (Mobile Home Parks), Item 75 on the regular council agenda. All councilors were present except Councillors Peralt and Anderson. The workshop was called to provide a less structured forum for questions and feedback ahead of the public hearing and to address the related moratorium amendment.
Good evening, everyone. I am officially calling this workshop of June 15th, 2026 to order. We currently have all counselors present except for Councillor Peralt and Councilor Anderson. Was this meeting properly noticed on Clerk? Yes, it was. Great. The business of this workshop is uh to discuss the proposed ordinance for chapter one, Article 4, Mobile Home Parks Item 75 on the June 15th, 2026 regular town council agenda. Um we built in this workshop just as a primer for you all um just to have a conversation. We know that um when we were setting the public hearing, there was a bit of a conversation that was had uh going through this uh ordinance, draft ordinance and adjusting different language pieces ahead of the meeting tonight. There's uh also a item about the moratorium. So we're trying to just kind of put all these pieces together and give a less structured time for folks to be able to ask their questions, understand um kind of where we're coming from and what the uh draft is before you and and give it time in this space. Um depending on how this workshop goes, this might be a future tool that we utilize to try to uh work out some of these things ahead of meetings, given the fact that um you know, when we were setting this public hearing, it took a bit of time. So we're testing out this method um and we will kind of go from there. But I will turn this over to the economic and community development director, Costello, to introduce the item and give us the rundown. Thank you, Chair McDonald. Um I want to say I'm very appreciative. Staff is very appreciative for this workshop because as you know, um this mobile hope and park ordinance is very complex and nuanced. Um I will say we are still receiving information and comments up to the last minute here. So there I have come with a red line, it was posted, but we're gonna go through um a couple of things. We're gonna go through the the red line, which is actually the combination of what you all agreed to do in the last meeting, and then what we had for input from counselors particularly and some um some landlords, um, and that's that is the combined red line that we're gonna go through um to get to the presentation. So Larry, can you pull that up please? So we've been the the collectively, the the housing committee and the town council been working on this pretty much for about two years now. Um there's been really thorough uh analysis on the problem. Um there's been a lot of input on the solutions. Um and I will say that what we've presented here I think is a pretty balanced um effort to try to get to the outcome. And the outcome that we're trying to get to is parks that are run um efficiently and affordably as well as being well maintained. Um we've gotten a lot of input from the community on things that they're concerned about and the in the housing study. Um we know that rents are are increasing across the board in all the asset classes, but this is a very, very unique um asset classes we know. That's why we changed that word to unique in the um right in the and in the ordinance, because as you know, they uh they own their homes and rent their lots. So um that is uh an important thing to um make clear to the public that this is only an ordinance related to mobile home park lot rents and also um the property standards. So um I'll just take it through the the sections here. Section 10 um 121. Um we added some clarifying language here that related to when the effective date would be. Um the reason for that is that we need to get the mobile home rent review board set up. So that's really important that we give ourselves time to do that. Um and we will have, as I think Chair McDonald um mentioned, we're going to have uh we've got a moratorium in place, and we're gonna need to have an amendment um to that as well. So we needed time for that to take place before um we uh had the effective date of this ordinance. Um so the effective date of being able to uh when the ordinance is um in place, it then we have to give 90-day notice for rent um uh increases. So that is why um December 1st would be the first date that um landlords could actually impose a rent increase. So I wanted to be clear on that because our ordinance only goes through November. November um I think it's 11th. So I just wanted to make sure that everybody was clear about that. The moratorium you mean. The moratorium, yeah. Um and then in section 1012, the definitions again more um nuances here related to the CPI. The CPI often lags, and so um we wanted to take into account that. Um so we did put in last at last published, right? Um, because that was something that um we talked about at the last meeting. But then on top of that, um we started thinking through when this uh when this or when these rent increases could take place, and we realized that it was a bit punitive to say that it was as of January the first, twenty twenty six because it will be almost a full year and they've already not had rent increases. So after talking to our attorneys, we talked about um having the last um the last published date if they're going to have 2026 rent increases being June.