One year later and the controversial Anna Maria vacation rental ordinance could still be in flux.
Anna Maria’s VRO went into effect April 1, 2016, after months of debate and controversy. The ordinance came with a registration and license requirement, regular inspections, an eight-person occupancy limit and minimum requirements for the size of a bedroom.
By the deadline in 2016, 450 units were registered.
Today, the city has 527 registered rental properties.
The city also is addressing 112 Bert Harris claims as a result of the VRO and the related legal issues have been on city commission agendas for most of the past year.
Now the city also is facing a challenge to the VRO from Tallahassee, where Sen. Greg Steube, R-Sarasota, has filed Senate Bill 188 to roll back the vacation-rental specific regulations to June 1, 2011.
A companion bill, House Bill 425, was filed by Rep. Mike La Rosa, R-Osceala. Both measures are in committees and have not gone to a floor vote.
The city hired lobbyist Chip Case to fight the bills and commissioners have encouraged residents to wage a grassroots campaign to defend the VRO at the Capitol.
Even as the city works to protect the ordinance, some people in Anna Maria think it could be improved.
At the April 6 commission meeting, Jean and Bill Bystrom, Holmes Beach residents and owners of the Stillshores apartments at 604 N. Shore Drive in Anna Maria, addressed the commission.
The Bystroms say they had only recently learned the VRO applies to their property, which has four units and which they’ve operated since 2001.
As a result of the eight-person limit, they told the commission, they can only use three of the four units in their complex, which has functioned as a short-term rental since it was constructed in the 1950s.
The couple asked the commission to consider changing the ordinance to accommodate a handful of three- to nine-unit complexes in Anna Maria.
However, Jean Bystrom emphasized, the request does not mean they oppose the VRO.
“I’m sure having rental restrictions and guidelines is going to help the cities have more control over short-term rentals,” she said.
“I agree with home rule and letting local governments put some restrictions,” Jean Bystrom said. “I’m sure they didn’t realize when they passed this ordinance that there were people like me it was going to affect.”
Other residents, including Debbie and Bill Kilichowski, think the VRO violates the spirit of Anna Maria.
Debbie Kilichowski owns property on the island that has been in her family since before there were bridges to the island and her grandparents traveled to Anna Maria by ferry. She uses it as a family vacation home.
“The island was discovered by people seeking vacation,” she said. “Pretty much everyone talking about this VRO right now came at some point on vacation. The pushback comes from people who chose to make it a permanent home.”
Kilichowski acknowledges some vacationers can be noisy and disruptive, but the island is a vacation destination and residents should expect some noise around holidays and on weekends.
In addition, remaining a vacation destination and allowing people to rent out their homes helps the population and traffic, Kilichowski said. Many of the houses on the island remain empty for portions of the year, she said, and full-time residents occupying all the houses could make traffic on Anna Maria Island worse.
Kilichowski said owners of these vacation properties, which are not homesteaded, pay a greater share of taxes.
“Their intentions are good,” she said about the city commission, but the VRO and discouraging short-term rentals has negative long-term consequences for the island.
Others have spoken up in support of the ordinance. Dr. Alex Wagenaar, a full-time resident of Anna Maria, said the VRO is necessary and he dislikes attempts in Tallahassee to limit local government regulation.
“I’ve been here for a couple of decades and I’ve watched the changes. I think the citizens here are just trying to quietly preserve this very special place,” he said. “I think the VRO has been a very reasonable first step. It doesn’t seem draconian.”
Wagenaar said the VRO protects residential neighborhoods from becoming commercial zones.
“Our city commission, I don’t agree with everything they do, but I think they’ve really worked hard within the limitations and abilities they have,” he said. “They’ve worked day and night to try and do this in a careful way. I think it’s been a pretty good move.”
Wagenaar said he moved to Anna Maria from Holmes Beach in 2003 after feeling his former city had become too commercial.
“I just thought I wanted to live in a residential neighborhood,” he said. “I like being within walking distance of Pine Avenue, I’m not opposed to that. But I want residential streets to be residential. I felt like the city had plans to maintain that.”
Three Anna Maria residents — Ruth Uecker and Amy and Alan Tripp — made their way to Tallahassee in recent weeks in an attempt to lobby against the House and Senate bills that threaten the VRO.
“We don’t want to stifle (tourism), but we do want to retain the tools we have to solve local problems. And one of those tools is our ordinance,” Uecker told senators March 27.