Thank you.

Oh, call the order of this study session.

Roll call.

Mayor Scott Anderson.

Here.

Vice Mayor Chuck Bon Giovanni.

Here.

Councilmember Bobby Buckley.

Here.

Councilmember Kenny Bucklin.

Here.

Councilmember Young Koprowski.

Here.

Councilmember Monty Lyons.

Here.

And Councilmember Jim Torgeson.

A quorum is present.

Thank you.

We have two items on the agenda.

Item number one will be a presentation on proposed changes to the short-term rental program.

Hawkman.

Thank you, Mayor and Council, just as a brief introduction to my staff that will prepare present on the short-term rentals.

We had intended to provide this a study session overview of short-term rentals and kind of what's coming next.

Tonight, there is an item on the agenda for a notice of intent to change the fees.

We understand that that's a compressed timeline, and that is not what we wanted to bring.

So we've asked to delay that notice of intent to a future meeting so that we can have this study session, get true feedback, and then bring forward at the appropriate time the right thing for council.

So just for some clarity of what's happening tonight.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

My name is Ashley Namore.

I'm the Business Compliance Project Manager here at the town of Gilbert, and I manage our short-term rental program.

Give us just a second while we're pulling up the presentation.

Perfect.

So as Hawkins said, um, we tonight our purpose is just to share an update on the program with you.

Um, given that we adopted this uh three years ago, some of you were here, some of you were not.

Um so again, our purpose is to share an update on the program and to bring you what we will uh bring forward as potential changes later on uh in a few months.

So, first, just a general definition for what a short-term rental is.

Um, this is any property rent out for a period of 29 days or less.

These are what we commonly see listed on Airbnb and VRBO, um, and they're currently reported in the hotel motel tax classification.

Uh to provide a brief overview of what uh state legislation has looked like.

Um, there's been uh quite a few Senate bills and house bills passed in the last decade, the most notable being Senate Bill 1168, which allowed uh cities the opportunity to closely monitor and track these short-term rentals.

In response to that bill, uh Gilbert Town Council passed their ordinance in June of 2023, which is ordinance number 2874.

For a current run through of what the short-term rental status is in the town of Gilbert, we have about 450 active short-term rentals.

We're averaging about 25 book nights per month, so we are pretty busy.

We're also really proud of the fact that we're 98% compliant with licensing for short-term rentals in the town of Gilbert.

So we've come quite a long way in the last three years.

Um, and then we do complete quite a few public records requests for this data as well.

And this is an active map of short-term rentals currently in the town of Gilbert jurisdiction.

We also wanted to share with you our short-term rental vendor and resources available to property owners and residents here in the town of Gilbert.

So we're currently contracting with GovOS.

GovOS is an online software that identifies documents and licenses all short-term rentals within the town of Gilbert.

So this really is a one-stop shop for property owners to come in, get licensed and manage their licenses throughout the year.

What gov OS also provides is a 24-7 hotline available to residents throughout Gilbert.

This is in the form of an official uh hotline where they're talking to another person.

Um, it's also an online complaint form.

And this is meant for us to capture complaints submitted by residents for short-term rental related issues.

Our staff has also worked to create public websites and resources available for property owners, some of those being a postcard they can use to uh let their neighbor know that they are uh operating as a short-term rental.

Uh, we also have a good neighbor guide that has uh our town policy, some neighborhood information, as well as a link to Discover Gilbert that we encourage all property owners to print and put in the home for folks to use when they're here visiting.

Now, speaking about short-term rental complaints, um, since we launched the program in September of 2023, we've received about 73 complaints through the GovOS portal itself, which has been really fantastic considering before this program.

We had no way of tracking complaints.

We didn't know what departments they were going to and coming from.