As concerns rise over vacation homes, city officials on Anna Maria Island are looking for harmony for residents.
“We have a very serious problem in Bradenton Beach regarding six-bedroom, single-family homes with multiple bathrooms,” Commissioner Jan Vosburgh said during a March 24 commission workshop.
Vacation home websites often advertise accommodations for as many as two-dozen occupants and the result can be much more activity indoors and outdoors than at owner-occupied homes.
Bradenton Beach Police Chief Sam Speciale has a unique perspective. As a resident or a worker on the island for some 30 years, his home at the north end of Bradenton Beach is near a “new, beautiful” vacation home.
Some of these homes are larger and have “huge decks” that renters make use of until 3 a.m., he told commissioners.
“These people are not whooping it up,” he said. “They are not going crazy. It’s the ambient noise. Where it used to be dead quiet at night, you hear people talking.”
At 3 a.m., a conversation can sound “really loud.”
Then Speciale put his “cop hat” on. Aside from an occasional “For Rent” sign in a right of way and complaints, such as anonymous calls about neighbors renovating homes without permits, code enforcement is not strained by vacation rentals, he said. Most yards are well maintained by property management companies.
Speciale told commissioners the noise neighbors complain about may be bothersome, but it does not amount to a violation of the city’s noise ordinance. No citations have been issued since the noise ordinance went into effect in 2014, Speciale said.
Speciale said the goal should be to educate owners of short-term rentals and encourage them to advise renters to reduce noise after hours.
It won’t be easy.
The population of Bradenton Beach swells on holiday weekends, from 1,100 to 35,000, many of them daytime beachgoers, county statistics show.
“The environment is changing,” Speciale said. “There are a lot of people staying here now.” But no one is causing a disturbance. So when commissioners talk about enforcement, they need to be careful, he said.
Before the workshop, Speciale heard a call on his police radio about a woman in Anna Maria complaining about someone using a chain saw “and she can’t think straight,” he said.
As commissioners chuckled, Speciale explained the woman’s quality of life had been affected, but he assumed no violation had occurred.
“We have to understand what we are dealing with when we enforce this stuff,” he said. “There’s got to be education for the people who own these places.”
Larry Chatt, broker-owner of Island Real Estate, said in an email that vacation rental managers on Anna Maria Island do many things to limit the impact of visitors.
“The majority of the vacation rental managers, and I would estimate this to be above 90 percent, follow the best practices we created several years ago to help promote balance between our visitors and neighbors,” Chatt wrote.
“We pass out a pamphlet to all visitors which educates the visitor that their vacation rental is in a residential community and, although they are on vacation, we all need to be conscious of our neighbors.”