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Short term rentals in residential neighborhoods have been a source of neighbor complaints to municipalities for several years now.
They have often been referred to as “party houses” and sometimes attract large numbers of people for weekend outings.
That reputation did result in some of the national rental agents such as Airbnb, cracking down on bad actors. Also, in Arizona the state legislature pulled in the reigns somewhat and returned regulating authority to local jurisdictions.
Frank Trovato, a resident on Emerald Drive in Fountain Hills, applauds the ordinance passed by the Town Council in 2022 as a good ordinance. However, he does not think the town is doing a very good job enforcing that ordinance.
Trovato told The Times Independent that a home in his neighborhood continues to be a nuisance. He provided copies of nine reports from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office regarding the residence. Most were based on his complaints. Those all occurred between February and July in 2022. Primarily there were concerns related to the number of vehicles at the residence. There were a couple of noise issues and one complaint about trash at the curb. Deputies cleared all the reports without incident.
Trovato says he suspects the property owners are in violation of the town’s code and the town will not follow up to check for possible violations.
Trovato provided photos hand dated of more recent parking and trash issues at the Emerald Drive property.
Town of Fountain Hills Development Services Director John Wesley has jurisdiction over zoning regulations and oversight of the code enforcement department. He said issues Trovato is bringing to light are being dealt with as best he can with the staff available.
Once the town established the rules through the ordinance, a system had to be put in place to put the town in a position to collect transaction privilege tax (TPT) or sales tax for the properties, and that is still in process.
Wesley said the town contracted with Granicus/Host Compliance to identify short term rental properties within the town. They do this by searching websites and advertising. To date Granicus has identified 320 potential short-term residential rental properties in Fountain Hills.
“Once the address is verified, a letter is sent outlining the requirements to obtain a TPT license, and register with the county and the town,” Wesley said. “So far we have received 148 STR registrations and $37,000 in permit fees.”
This is an ongoing process with the objective of registering as many of the identified properties as possible. The home in Trovato’s neighborhood has been registered with the town, according to Wesley.
Wesley said the town does not conduct inspections of the registered properties for ordinance compliance. It is required that the applicant certify that they have complied with the regulations.
“There are penalties for providing false information,” Wesley said. “Should we ever have justification for an inspection and find they were not truthful, the issue would be addressed at that time.”
The ordinance calls for the applicant to provide notification to adjacent property owners that the home is a short-term rental. This is part of the registration process, and the applicant must attest that the step has been completed.
The owner/agent attestation is part of the annual permit application and is required before the application and fee are submitted. There is no requirement to post the application at the location of the rental property.
Wesley noted that the bulk of the complaints received by the town are similar to those described by Trovato – parking, noise, trash and similar nuisance concerns. These complaints often come on weekends and later hours when code enforcement officers are not available, and MCSO responds if they receive a call.
“Code enforcement will handle the follow-up and other issues that occur during regular business hours,” Wesley said. “The last code enforcement officer (hired) was part-time and is for general code issues, not confined to STR.”
There are two full-time and one part-time officers with the town’s code enforcement. There is a request for council consideration of another full-time officer in next fiscal year’s budget. That has initially been presented as an animal control officer to address concerns related to dogs at large.
That was discussed by the council at its planning retreat in February, and council members seemed to generally support an additional code enforcement person, but not necessarily dedicated to animal control. The issue related to an additional officer should be resolved one way or another within the next few months of budget discussion.
The Times Independent invites readers to submit their civil comments on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org. Bob Burns can be reached at bburns@iniusa.org.
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