The Riverside County Board of Supervisors last week unanimously voted to extend a moratorium on new short-term rentals in the Idyllwild, Pine Cove and Temecula Valley Wine Country areas for up to one year.
“I don’t want to extend this moratorium again,” Supervisor Kevin Jeffries said. “I feel that county staff should have been able to address the issues by today and have this laid out. However…I reluctantly recognize that you need a little bit more time.”
The moratorium, which was originally set to expire this month and also included Mountain Center, was amended at the request of the planning department.
“That was our goal, was to lift the moratorium by around this month or the following month,” Supervisor V. Manuel Perez said. “But goals shift, timelines change, and in this case, that’s what’s occurred, and I’d rather do this right.”
Before voting on the extension, the board heard from roughly a dozen speakers. Seven of those speakers were against the moratorium, three were in favor of the moratorium and one was neutral.
Those who spoke out against the moratorium were either people who bought properties to use in the future as short-term rentals or those who previously operated short-term rentals and were unable to renew their permits before the moratorium went into effect, like Amy Stahl-Gunduz.
“I held an active permit and have successfully filed my [transient occupancy taxes] since 2020,” Stahl-Gunduz, who also lives in Idyllwild, said. “In September of 2022, during the initial chaos of the 30-day moratorium, my expected renewal letter from the county didn’t arrive via postal mail.”
Stahl-Gunduz said she tried repeatedly to renew her permit, but was told that due to the moratorium, she would be unable to do so, forcing her to remove her listing from Airbnb and causing “negative financial consequences.”
“The substantial losses I faced, through no fault of my own, stem from the unjust yearlong moratorium and [the county’s] failure to properly administer the renewal process,” she said. “Given my situation, it’s beyond comprehension that you’re even considering an extension of a 12-month moratorium.”
Of those who spoke in favor of the extension, some wanted the moratorium to be extended indefinitely to protect their quality of life, while others like Ron Keuhl felt the moratorium should only be extended until an ordinance regarding new short-term rentals can come before the board for approval.
“If you don’t approve the extension of the moratorium, and the county starts issuing permits again, you’re just making [the oversaturation] problem even worse,” Kuehl, who is a member of the ordinance committee representing Wine Country, said. “So I would ask that you do extend the moratorium, give yourselves and the county time to bring this new proposal forward and give you a chance to look at that and hopefully approve it.”
Planning Director John Hildebrand said his department was tentatively planning to bring that ordinance before the board next month for possible approval and wanted to give county staff enough of a buffer with the moratorium to implement the new policy.
“We didn’t know how much longer it was going to take, so we’re asking for the full year, but the ordinance should be able to become effective prior to that and then the moratorium would end at that time,” he said.
In other board action: The supervisors unanimously adopted a new ordinance in an effort to curb catalytic converter theft. The ordinance allows law enforcement to cite someone for the unlawful possession of a catalytic converter in unincorporated parts of the county.
A video of the meeting can be found here on the county’s website.
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