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Date: 2/13/2023
SOUTH HADLEY – After months of planning and deliberation, the South Hadley Planning Board hosted a public hearing at its Feb. 6 meeting to discuss potentially moving a short-term rental general bylaw and short-term rental zoning bylaw to Town Meeting in May.
Both proposed bylaws are available for viewing on the town’s website. The general bylaw would “establish regulations that are not legally permitted within zoning and apply generally townwide irrespective of zoning.” In doing so, the town would create a licensing and registration process for all short-term rentals. In doing so the building commissioner would be the licensing agent and enforcement officer. The number of short-term rental licenses would also be capped at 25.
With the zoning bylaw, the town would be allowed to issue zoning permits for short-term rental use. Under the zoning umbrella, there would be two different kinds of short-term rentals, owner occupied, and non-owner occupied, both of which have specific zoning conditions required for approval. Under owner occupied, the rentals would be allowed by site review in the town’s residential and zoning districts, and by right in the town’s business zoning districts. The non-owner-occupied rentals would be allowed by special permit in residential, agricultural and business zoning districts. In both cases, short-term rentals would not be permitted in industrial zoning districts.
To be an owner-occupied facility, the owner must live on the property when it is rented. To be classified as non-owner occupied, the owner must be the license applicant and assumes all responsibility for operation and maintenance even though they do not live there when it is rented.
Before jumping into the public hearing, Planning Director Anne Capra gave a presentation about the proposed bylaw changes and explained why the town is pursuing the short-term rental bylaws, after the state began regulating short-term rental bylaws in 2019, before other towns and cities began implementing their own short-term rental bylaws.
“It was time for South Hadley to take a look at this and figure out how we wanted to regulate this in this community,” Capra said.
With the way the bylaw was written, it had to be updated to include short-term rentals.
“The way our zoning bylaw is written is if it is silent on a use, it is therefore prohibited. So, the use has to be explicitly recognized in the zoning bylaw in order to be allowable, and it was not in our zoning bylaw,” Capra said.
In April 2022, Capra said the town’s former Building Commissioner David Gardner issued 12 cease and desist orders to short-term rentals found in town.
“At that time when he issued those cease and desists, it was purely a manner of zoning compliance. No complaints have ever been issued against any of the 12 short term rentals. It wasn’t that this was a nuisance activity that we were seeking to control, frankly we had no idea they were happening,” she said.
Two of the short-term rentals eventually received special permits for use as bed and breakfast home facilities.
Capra explained that the Planning Board will be the body that issues the special permits and detailed the requirements of the application, which includes, parcel boundaries, all proposed structures, location and description of parking, the floor plan of the dwelling and short-term rental, the number of rooms, which will be rented, the maximum number of overnight guests, owner contact info, a trash collection description and a snow removal description.
Following Capra’s presentation, residents then were given the opportunity to ask questions about the bylaw and to provide feedback.
One resident, Martha Terry, questioned why the owner-occupied short-term rentals had a lower bar for approval than bed and breakfasts, which require a special permit. Terry added that she was concerned that non-owner-occupied rentals could be “asking for trouble” and said they could be “possible party houses or animal houses.” Several of the other residents who spoke also voiced their concerns over the non-owner-occupied rentals.
Selena Weber, a resident and owner of one of the two bed and breakfasts in town, said South Hadley would not get the same amount of disruptive behavior as other places might see with the non-owner-occupied rentals.
“As a host, my experience is visitors are respectful of the homes they stay in. What my experience is that 100 percent of my guests have been extremely considerate. The draw to South Hadley is limited, it’s not known to be a party town,” she said.
“Guests are usually in town to visit their daughter at Mount Holyoke College, attend graduation or visit family or friends who don’t have a spare bedroom.”
When asked about the application process during the public hearing portion, Capra explained that it will be a two-step process where it has to be approved by the Planning Board for the use permit, then applicants would have to apply for a license with the building commissioner.
Another resident, Ira Brezinsky, who also serves on the town’s Bylaw Review Committee, said he would like to see fewer restrictions on the number of allowed short-term rentals in town.
“I don’t feel that there’s a need to limit the number of licenses at all actually, I think the free market will take care of that. I think that we in South Hadley need to recognize that the sharing economy is something that is here and is not going away,” Brezinsky said. “It’s a way of life from both the perspective of individuals that make a business out of it, and it is a way of life for those who choose to share the resources of others.”
Following the public comment portion, Capra said she understood that “in general, I think a non-owner-occupied permit is probably not what the public wants.” If the board agreed to remove that portion, Capra said it could alleviate some of the concerns about enforcement. She added that she would work on clarifying some of the language in the bylaw.
Ultimately, the hearing was continued to the board’s March 20 meeting.