OrilliaMatters welcomes letters to the editor ([email protected]) Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter, from Oro-Medonte Association for Responsible STRs president Barry Sookman, is in response to 'Oro-Medonte council has run out of time on STRs,' published Aug. 20.
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Kim Pressnail’s letter points the finger at Oro-Medonte for the lack of regulation related to short-term rentals (STRs) when the problem is much closer to home.
The township and its officials had consistently and properly recognized that STRs could be legally operated in Oro-Medonte. This was recently confirmed by the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (LPAT, aka the Ontario Land Tribunal or OLT), which rejected the township’s recent attempts to argue otherwise because of political pressure from the Good Neighbours Alliance.
That Kim Pressnail continues to propagate arguments rejected by LPAT only serves to weaken the township’s resolve and ability to tackle the few alleged problem properties in the township.
The reality is that it was ratepayers – and not the elected officials – that have stood in the way of regulation. The township proposed to regulate STRs with a combination of licensing and zoning, and then using licensing. A bylaw could have passed, except it was opposed by ratepayers who wanted a total ban on new STRs and to strip homeowners of their legal non-conforming use protections under the Planning Act, rather than the more balanced approach taken by many other municipalities.
The township also tried to work out a compromise at the LPAT hearing that would only have permitted occasional rentals of properties. While the proposal was flawed, had the Good Neighbours Alliance not utterly trashed it, it or some variation of it may have seen the light of day and there would be a law on the books that could have been enforced against some properties.
After the township and the Good Neighbours Alliance lost the LPAT appeal, the township again proposed a licensing solution – the solution the chair of the LPAT panel recommended. Council had to withdraw the draft bylaw because the same ratepayers opposed it – also based on their refusal to accept the LPAT finding that STRs can be legally operated in Oro-Medonte and that the outright ban approach “is not good planning.”
Kim Pressnail would prefer to see prosecutions rather than action to regulate STRs. Pressuring the township to prosecute cases and hold off balanced regulation will only further delay regulation for years as such cases wind through the court – if they are allowed to proceed at all – and then are dismissed.
It is time that the ratepayers that have consistently opposed reasonable regulation realize that their actions are the reason we are where we are. It is time to work together to find a balanced solution.
Barry Sookman
Oro-Medonte
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