- October 14, 2024
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The signs are like summer dandelions — seemingly in every yard on St. Armands and Lido Keys.
Although nestled in one of the greatest vacation spots and tourist destinations in Florida, many of the residents on these two keys don’t like what’s happening in about a dozen homes identified as “hotel houses.”
Just about everyone can sympathize. For sure, the vast majority of people want to live in a safe, clean, peaceful, attractive neighborhood where neighbors get along, are friendly and share many of the same values — especially those values related to the way everyone lives.
No one wants to live next to a group of 20 or 30 annoying, raucous, drunk, dirty-mouth vacationers who don’t give a hoot about the neighbors they’ll probably never see again.
And that explains the proliferation of signs on the two keys. For more than two years, residents have been pleading and appeared three times at City Commission meetings urging the city to do something about what they deem to be out-of-control “hotel houses.”
Take Lucretia Tuffile, who lives on S. Washington Drive, and spoke to commissioners in January 2020:
“… I feel sick that the neighborhood I love and raising my daughter in is being changed because of a company trying to make money. It should not be allowed.
“We want families and people who live here year-round and have jobs and own local businesses. Do you really want a bunch of rental homes with 20-plus people in them affecting your community? My community? Please tell me the answer is no.”
At that same meeting, Chris Goglia, vice president of the St. Armands Neighborhood Association, showed commissioners a map of St. Armands and Lido Keys identifying 12 “hotel houses” with common ownership and 22 similar hotel houses on Siesta Key.
Goglia highlighted one home that has been advertising online that it “sleeps 25.”
Persuaded, commissioners did what they often do: Ordered the city attorney to prepare an ordinance with regulations that vacation rental homes and their owners would have to meet.
So here we are now. And not surprisingly, the 88-page ordinance City Attorney Bob Fournier prepared and commissioners approved on first reading last week is a bible of red tape.
Rather than do extensive research to determine how other communities have addressed vacation rentals — as the St. Armands representatives requested, the City Commission did what elected officials always do: They opted to make more laws and regulations while forgetting what government always forgets: When you make more laws, you take away people’s freedoms and, in this instance, property rights.
Clearly, Fournier’s proposed ordinance is intended to be so onerous and annoying that it will discourage any future developers and vacation home operators from coming into Sarasota’s barrier islands.
Voila! Just what the residents want.
You should read through the ordinance (see: YourObserver.com/VacationRentalOrdinance). It starts with requiring all single-family, two-family, three-family residences to register with the city ($250 fee). The requirements of that registration include, among dozens:
You really need to read the entire ordinance to absorb how the extent of the regulations and imagine how they will create another new layer of city government, enforcement responsibility and, inevitably, increased taxpayer expense.
Now mind you, we wouldn’t want one of these homes as a next-door neighbor if they became a rotating fraternity bacchanalia. And we understand the neighbors’ distress.
But we would urge Sarasota city commissioners to think again before blithely approving this ordinance. Think about it in the context of: