Proposals to regulate vacation home rentals in Sonoma County get their first public review Tuesday evening when county planners roll out rules limiting levels of noise, guests and activities that would be allowed this summer.
Two contentious public hearings before supervisors last year produced sharp disagreement among neighbors, property owners and professional property managers. The issue is how to keep a lid on problems generated at the approximately 1,000 homes in the county leased for weeks or weekends at a time.
Earlier this month, a wooden deck collapsed at a vacation rental near Guerneville, injuring several people among about 400 who reportedly attended the weekend-long gathering.
"We would not be spending this much time on this issue if it was just five properties causing the complaints," said board Chairwoman Valerie Brown, who said the problem is particularly acute among mansion-style estates in her Sonoma Valley district. "The issue is often the property owners have no connection with the neighborhood and it becomes party central."
The proposed rules would:
Limit overnight occupancy to two people per bedroom, plus another two people per house.
Limit the number of guests, using a formula that effectively caps the total at 25.
Bans amplified music outdoors and prohibits any noise from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.
Allows special events like parties and weddings, but requires a zoning permit that could be obtained up to four times a year. But it prohibits any sort of outdoor events in rural or urban residential zones.
County planner Jane Riley said Tuesday's workshop, from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Permit and Resource Management Department hearing room at 2550 Ventura Ave. in Santa Rosa, is designed to explain proposed regulations and solicit opinion from neighbors and vacation renters.
There will be at least two more public hearings on the proposals, one before the planning commission and another before the Board of Supervisors.
"It would be fabulous if we could get this done by summer, but we do have to go through the process of drafting the ordinance and public hearings," Riley said.
Already, there is evidence that the issue is opening long-festering neighborhood resentments.
An e-mail alert by planning officials notifying interested parties of the workshop produced a week-long cascade of bitter exchanges regarding a single house on Valley Lane north of Guerneville rented out by property owner Chuck Levine.
Richard Sharrock, who lives nearby, accused Levine of "running an illegal hotel" and allowing "continuous drunken booze fests" at the house.
"Ask any of a dozen neighbors surrounding his nonstop party house if these perpetual revelers are intruding and the answer is a resounding yes," Sharrock wrote in an e-mail to county officials.
Levine, however, responded that he screens renters, that neighbors were complaining about "happy sounds" generated by children in the pool and that residents should be reminded that the Russian River area is traditionally a resort-like region of the county.
"There are communities such as Oakmont ... that restrict this kind of activity," Levine wrote to county officials. "The area we live in is a mixed residential and resort area and people who live here should adjust to that."
That, of course, produced a torrent of comment from others like Levine's neighbor, Scott Taylor, who wrote that "suggesting we should &‘move to Oakmont or buy acreage removed from other properties' is a preposterous solution."
Riley noted that such "exchanges are indicative of the kind of problems that we are seeing."
"In the west county, we've got vacation homes that have turned into residences and in the Sonoma Valley, we have large homes being rented out for parties," she said.
Under the proposed vacation rental standards, persistent complaints by neighbors would be investigated by the county's code enforcement officers. A second confirmed violation would lead to penalties on property owners, and a third violation would result in revocation of these special zoning permits for a year.
You can reach Staff Writer Bleys W. Rose at 521-5431 or bleys.rose@pressdemocrat.com.
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