OPA Board to consider short-term rental ban, stronger options for enforcement

(June 24, 2020) A discussion on Tuesday night about repeat violations at one Ocean Pines home turned into a broader debate about short-term rentals in the community.
 
It also served as a preview for the July 1 Board meeting, when Directors will consider banning rentals of less than one week. 
 
The home in question, a rental property on 91 Abbyshire Road, received nearly 10 complaints in the last four years, according to Ocean Pines Police.
 
Homeowner Bill Fenn, who lives next door, said he’s sent five or six emails to Board members about issues related to the home. 
 
“I put into emails to the Directors my experiences, my feelings and some suggestions, and I’m here tonight to hopefully listen to what … Ocean Pines may be able to do to resolve this,” he said. 
 
Association Vice President Steve Tuttle said Board members received many emails about 91 Abbyshire.
 
“It’s a very, very serious problem,” he said. “We’ve seen the trash piled out there … I think all the Directors have been by there at least once, if not more.”
 
As an example, Tuttle said last Sunday there were six cars parked in the driveway and a large truck parked in the roadside.
 
“And we’ve certainly heard from various residents with concerns about the noise and the disruptions in the middle of the night,” he said. “I wanted us to at least have a conversation and see what, if anything, we could do as an Association.”
 
Tuttle said he spoke with Worcester County Commissioner Chip Bertino about the matter, and that Bertino reached out to county Zoning Administrator Jennifer Keener. 
 
“They have been able to contact the owner of the property, and then my understanding is that the owner is starting the process to seek a [rental] license for the property,” he said. 
 
The county passed new legislation related to short-term rentals last August, with Bill 19-4 going into effect on Jan. 1, 2020. The bill requires any person or firm offering rentals to first obtain a license from the county. 
 
Worcester County defines short-term rentals as those lasting less than 28 days. 
 
Tuttle said he told Bertino the situation on Abbyshire was unacceptable, and the Commissioner replied that he would like to “make an example out of” the situation.
 
“The people actually renting the building do not have a license and the disturbances are unacceptable, and they’ve been advertising this property without a license,” Tuttle said. “He [Bertino] picked up on that and he has asked Jennifer to [issue] a citation against the property.
 
“Whether that will bring enough pressure on them to stop what they’re doing, I don’t know,” he continued. “It’s really the county regs that, I think, control this, but … from what I can see they’re not ready to enforce anything … in any significant way.”
 
Association President Doug Parks said the county legislation defines things like the amount of occupants permitted per square foot, in a rental, but lacks enforcement if the rules are not met.
 
“What’s missing from the legislation that they passed is, what can we do to enforce this and what, if any, are the penalties,” Parks said. “Right now, we can’t depend on the county for any immediate action, but certainly we want to work with them for the long-term action,” he added. 
 
Parks said he also registered a complaint with airbnb, where the property is advertised. 
 
“The activities at that house do not favorably represent the organization … and they definitely need to be looking into it,” he said. 
 
With the county and airbnb “on notice,” Parks said it was now up to Ocean Pines to see what could be done. 
 
“My personal concern is, what can we do immediately to eliminate or, at the very least, minimize this problem,” he said. 
 
Director Camilla Rogers said she recently drove by the property and saw, among other things, “beds [for sleeping] in the garage.”
 
“It is just a horrible, horrible atrocity,” she said.
 
Rogers asked why Ocean Pines, as a homeowner’s association, would have to go to the county for enforcement.
 
“With the covenants of private enjoyment, which we have in our documents, why is it that we can’t evict these people?” she said. 
 
Parks said Ocean Pines’ Declarations of Restrictions do not have a component for enforcement, including either eviction or issuing fines.  
 
He said the Board discussed “fining in general” about a year ago, and the conversation appeared to be again headed in that direction — potentially amending the Declarations through a community referendum.
 
Parks cited Director Frank Daly’s motion slated for the July 1 Board meeting, which would “direct legal counsel to develop the wording necessary to amend the Declarations of Restrictions in all sections to ban rentals of less than one week and once established to place that question before all homeowners in a Referendum vote.”
 
“Certainly, the motion that’s out on the floor that Frank proposed … is a good” place to start, Parks said.
 
According to Daly, the Association currently does not have authority to levy fines in any section established prior to 1995. 
 
Daly said the property on Abbyshire is in one such section. Each “section” of Ocean Pines is governed by a separate Declaration of Restrictions, which cannot be changed without a referendum. 
 
He said the current process of enforcing the Declarations is arduous — requiring several steps in a lengthy legal process. Recently, Daly said the Association moved to penalize a homeowner for “parking junked cars in their driveway.”
 
“We started down a process of enforcing our Declarations of Restrictions,” Daly said, including filing a complaint and giving the homeowner 30 days to respond. “If they fight that in any way … it’ll be well past October before we get a court date to bear our grievance against that property.”
 
In a case like the one on Abbyshire, Daly said addressing a complaint as simple as a noise ordinance violation could take four months. 
 
“[That] just doesn’t work,” he said. 
 
Daly said there are two choices to resolve the problem, the first of which is to seek a referendum vote to impose fines.
 
“When we tried that last year, there was a lot of pushback — a whole lot,” Daly said. “It’s … certainly questionable that, over the array of all of our homeowners, they would do that.”
 
The second option, he said, was to ask the county for new or amended short-term rental legislation.
 
“We are the largest unincorporated community in the county. Berlin, Snow Hill, Pocomoke [and] Ocean City handles this [enforcing short-term rental restrictions] with ordinances that they pass through their town council — we can’t do that,” Daly said. “The Commissioners made it pretty clear that they would be willing to work with us, with text amendment, but … the ball is in our ballpark to ask them.”
 
Daly went on to say the current short-term rental law “doesn’t specify any penalties.”
 
He said he is considering a change to his July 1 motion to ask for “two disjointed questions” — should Ocean Pines ban short-term rentals, and/or should the Board approach the county for text amendments to further regulate short-term rentals in Ocean Pines. 
 
Specifically, Daly said he would like either Ocean Pines or the county to have the authority to impose significant fines, and to immediately evict renters who violate occupancy limits.
 
“If we don’t get it, we can go the more expensive route [to change the Declarations], and I think it’s going to be a tough sell of going through all 22 sections and changing the DRs,” Daly said. 
 
“The residents on Abbyshire have a real serious problem and nobody has the right piece of law on their hands to correct it,” he added. 
 
Daly later said the Board also needs to determine how large the issue of derelict short-term rentals is, in Ocean Pines.
 
Tuttle called for a workgroup, to potentially include Board members, Abbyshire residents and County Commissioners Bertino and Jim Bunting, to “find out what we can do, legally, to stop them from renting this property [on Abbyshire] right now.”
 
He said current county regulations do classify short-term rentals in violation as a civil infraction. 
 
“To me, that says there’s something that can be brought to bear, in this situation, because they do not have a license,” Tuttle said. 
 
Parks, Rogers and Daly each echoed the call for a workgroup with county officials.
 
“If I were on Abbyshire I’d say, ‘OK great, you’re going to do something in six months — what the hell are you going to do for me today?’” Daly said. “That’s what we have to find out.” 
 
He underscored the need for action, sooner rather than later. 
 
“Looking at the current piece of county legislation — they were working on that long before last season, and here we are this season and we have a piece of legislation that appears to be highly ineffective,” Daly said. “If we don’t get going on it right now, then we won’t have something in place enforceable, I’m afraid, by next year. And that would be a tragedy.”