Meetings tomorrow & Public Comment

First, is this one:
There will be a regular Big Sur LUAC meeting on Tuesday, January 31, 2017. The Big Sur LUAC will be reviewing a landowner building project for the County with a site visit at 9:00AM. After the site visit, there will be a project review and a LUAC determination of the project at the MAF.

Another meeting will be held at approximately 10:30AM at the MAF (depending on when the LUAC completes its project review), with Melanie Beretti from County Planning.

The item scheduled on the County agenda follows:

PUBLIC COMMENT:
The Committee will receive public comment on non-agenda items that are within the purview of the Committee at this time. The length of individual presentations may be limited by the Chair.

SCHEDULED ITEMS

Monterey County Staff are in the process of developing an ordinance, starting with the existing Inland ordinance (Transient Rental of Residential Property for Remuneration 21.64.280), to permit and regulate Short-term Rentals in the Coastal Zone. Staff is in the process of developing a clear definition of Short-term Rentals and updating County codes to reflect these definitions. Staff is also in the process of evaluating proposed ordinances to regulate Short-term Rentals against all of the Local Area Plans to identify unique issues and consider appropriateness of Short-term Rentals in each area. Staff is requesting input from the Land Use Advisory Committees. Please provide input on the development of the ordinance.

Second: Also, there is a BOS meeting tomorrow and  discussion will be had which impacts STR. I’ll try to get up more about this later. Still fighting this crapola flu.

Here is one comment about the BOS meeting sent to Mary Adams’s office:

The discussions about the priority and importance of attracting (and I would hope sustainably retaining) visitors to our local economy is apparently measuring success primarily by the gross TOT collected. (See discussion of focus area on page 7 of the Strategic Initiatives report). THIS IS SERIOUSLY FLAWED REASONING. Transient Occupancy taxes are imposed to address the impacts of public facility use by folks who are not here to pay property taxes or other taxes and fees residents pay to maintain our public infrastructure. Thus properly the gross TOT collected should be first and primarily used to be sure that at least the direct impacts of visitors are addressed. In Big Sur this is certainly not the case now. The celebrated significant increased visitor traffic is resulting in a number of impacts that are being externalized to the resident public, like clearing litter and human waste, safety issues and the traffic woes of which everyone is aware, and this is unsustainable. In this area too primary emergency services are provided by volunteer fire departments, which rely on residents to staff and fund them. Cumulative wear and tear on roads, bridges, parks, trails and other public infrastructure is less immediate but also important. I don’t have direct knowledge of all the other areas affected (the 156 corridor comes to mind) but I am sure they also have needs relating to the direct impacts of increasing numbers of visitors. Please consider asking that the funds collected thru TOT be used first to address identified direct visitor impacts as this tax was created to do before being released for other general fund needs. If help is needed in identifying such impacts it can be provided! (This is of course an important element in the discussion of STR policy as well.) Thus any discussion of TOT as general fund revenue or as a measurement of success should be of the net amount after direct impacts are addressed vs the gross total.

Third, from the USFS re the community fuel breaks. A public meeting with be held 2/15/17 from 5:30-7:30 at the USFS Big Sur Station and on 2/16/17 at the Kind City Office at the same time: