Summit County Clerk Eve Furse has proposed a fee increase for business licenses. The extra revenue would help offset the cost of software that would help Clerk’s Office staff track short-term rentals throughout the county.“We think that having a software solution that collects and aggregates data about the short-term rentals in Summit County will help us zero in on what the issues are and how we want to address them,” Furse told the Summit County Council on Wednesday.Short-term rentals, often listed on sites like Airbnb and VRBO, have been a concern for the County Council and other county departments for almost a decade. There are currently no regulations other than a required business license. Short-term rentals often have a negative effect on housing affordability, too, according to Economic Development and Housing Director Jeff Jones.The County Council has considered adopting ordinances that would limit where nightly rentals can be located based on community character, for example. However, the Utah Legislature limits how local governments can handle rental operations.Right now, Summit County leads the state in nightly rental listings with 23.8% of total housing listed as a short-term rental, per a recent report by the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.“In 2021, the short-term rental licenses were 765, and, as of now, the short-term rental licenses are 1,290, so they have grown more than anyone else,” Furse said. She presented a graph displaying the number of active commercial, in-home and short-term rental licenses in Summit County.Furse estimated that slightly over half of the short-term rentals in unincorporated Summit County actually have a business license.“We don’t have great business license enforcement because we rely on our code enforcers, who are very busy enforcing planning and building issue licenses rather than business licenses, which is understandable, but it does make it hard to have increased compliance with business licensing requirements,” she said.The short-term rental software Furse hopes to implement would sweep websites for rentals in Summit County and provide a packet to the county government for review.“They get our authorization and can send a letter to those individuals encouraging them to comply,” Furse explained. “If they don’t, that would be submitted initially to a compliance officer for a citation and then if that is unsuccessful, then through the attorney’s office.”Some other counties in Utah have already adopted the software and reported success, Furse said.“It was a really interesting system, and they use it in a lot of resort communities,” said County Council Vice Chair Tonja Hanson. “It seemed like it would help us solve a lot of problems.”Furse proposed increasing fees to pay for the software and an enforcement officer specifically designated for licensing violations.Currently, a commercial license is $200, an in-home license is $75 and a short-term rental license is $200. Furse’s first proposal would change the cost of commercial licenses to $250, in-home licenses to $125 and short-term rental licenses to $325.“We’ve increased the fee more for the short-term rental license than for the commercial license because of the software being solely directed to the short-term rentals, but the enforcement officer would spread over all of them because we would use them for all business licensing enforcement,” Furse explained.However, she also proposed a second option that would increase fees even more. This would also allow the Clerk’s Office to hire a part-time employee to respond to the higher number of people applying for licenses. Under the second option, a commercial license would cost $275, in-home licenses would cost $125 and short-term rental licenses would cost $350.“I think this is actually a very conservative step in this process,” Furse said when County Councilor Chris Robinson asked about pushback from the community. “Enforcement of one’s ordinances is certainly an important piece. Having an ordinance you don’t enforce hurts everyone. I think it doesn’t change our ordinance in the sense of we are not putting additional regulations, we are simply trying to pay for the enforcement of what we’ve got. I don’t see how that could garner any concern. The fees themselves, in comparison to what businesses are making, are really quite small.”The change is not yet official, but the county councilors expressed their support for the second option that would allow for the software, an enforcement officer and a part-time position within the Clerk’s Office. Furse said she plans to send out a letter to businesses informing them of the anticipated increase so that they can budget for their renewal in 2025, assuming the increase is approved by the County Council in December.The post Business licensing fees may increase next year to better track short-term rentals appeared first on Park Record.