Showing posts with label Lorie Mertens-Black. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lorie Mertens-Black. Show all posts

Thursday, October 11, 2018

Over a year later, where are the positive results of the City of Hollywood's new Vacation Rental ordinance? How's the compliance rate? About what WE expected and less than the city promised.


Over a year later, where are the positive results of the City of Hollywood's new Vacation Rental ordinance? How's the compliance rate? 
About what WE expected and less than the city promised.

Because I am the way that I am and interested in the sorts of myriad things that I am, and write and Tweet about a LOT, including the #GigEconomy and #Airbnb and public policy, I mention this in case you are interested in some things that touch on all of these things.

Just got this in the mail today:
Rebecca Stone, Skift Research: The Roadblocks Airbnb Must Tackle on Its Way to Possible IPO: Skift’s Latest Research

As of today I plan on doing an updated blog post sometime in the next few weeks that'll seriously examine and re-examine what I believe to have been the completely ineffective changes the City of Hollywood made last summer to their Vacation Rental ordinance.

Those of you among the public and the press who attended that afternoon might recall that I spoke towards the very end of that Hollywood City Commission meeting on whether to give the city more aggressive (regressive!) tools to enforce the city's new changes to the existing ordinance, after many representatives of the Vacation Rental, real estate and Small Business industry spoke, including Tom Martinelli, Airbnb's Florida Government Relations Director based out of Miami.

I spoke after people from Airbnb, individual Airbnb or VR hosts and other industry members spoke had the chance to articulate their frustration with the city's refusal to work in good faith with them, to say nothing of many of the City Commissioners NOT understanding that they could NOT simply go back on contracts and MOU's with individual hosts and give the city personal confidential information.

Among other things I said that it was, sad to say, yet another example of a South Florida municipality putting its faith in the power of a govt. bureaucracy rather than empowering responsible Vacation Rental hosts, in this case, in Hollywood -where I live and know many such hosts- and trusting human behavior, and actually making it easier for Vacation Rental hosts to comply.
A win-win scenario for everyone.

BUT to do so on terms that did NOT open hosts up to what could be unlimited and unwarranted intrusion by city officials (or their hired hands) looking to play gold prospector and recoup money for the city's coffers for its own past failure to have adequate code compliance in place and be able to catch additions made to houses at the time they took place 20, 30 or 40 years ago, rather than try to go after current owners or renters.

Many of the latter have invested in their future by renting houses in Hollywood that would otherwise be empty if not dowdy, but which are now much-improved by their interest in making it as attractive as possible.

In many cases, better taken care of than if the city itself owned them, as hearings I attended earlier this year regarding the city's attempt to sell some city-owned parcels proved 
conclusively, when a mirror was held up to the city's owned homes and the eyesores many of them have remained in many neighborhoods.

It was also hard not to notice that there seemed to be a very lackluster effort shown by the city to go after the repeat offenders that cause a majority of the complaints that are both valid and intrusive to their neighbor's Quality of Life. 

The fact that the city and the person running the program for it, Lorie Mertens-Black, seemed to fail to invite several responsible and articulate Airbnb hosts who were in compliance to speak at their July dog-and-pony show weeks before,

 

Updated: A veritable trainwreck of a public meeting. Wednesday's embarrassing 

Vacation Rental Ordinance Amendment presentation at Hollywood City Hall was 

not a pretty sight by any stretch of the imagination


gave me plenty of angst and ammo for what happened when the City Commission voted. 

As we all saw to our exasperation when we saw how my logic and common sense was received last summer. Badly.
After all, there was money to be made!

I predicted that the compliance rate would be much less than what they expected or had been led to believe by vendors, and would... well, to quote myself:
"As long as the city makes it about meting out individual and collective punishment
and making money via fees, based on what I have personally seen and heard at city
meetings and in conversations with many successful Airbnb and Vacation Rental
hosts in Hollywood, I see little prospect that the city's compliance rate will ever get
much over 40% with the proposed changes."

That's still my perspective as I start cobbling together that new post, and no facts or
evidence I have seen or received from the city of late shows me that I'm wrong.
The fact that this was so predictable doesn't bring me any joy. 

Let me leave you with a sweet teaser of things to come: The city's VR licensing program
is now so inaccurate that it shows properties on its site that may not even be in compliance
any more, since it is accurate as of... Sept. 30th.
"The map illustrates all approved Vacation Rental Licenses that will expire on September 30, 2018."

Why should it even be more than a week inaccurate if the whole point of it is to BE accurate? Also, HOW and WHY would any out-of-town traveler go to the city's website, a site that they wouldn't even know exists? They wouldn't. 

But the city acts like people would do that.

Yet again, completely ignoring human behavior when it comes to this subject.





Friday, October 7, 2011

Video of the 2009 Hollywood City Commission voting on $30k deal with State Sen. Eleanor Sobel; Sara Case was talking about budget problems even then!

September 20, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier.
Later than I had originally planned, I now finally have the link to the video from April 1st, 2009 at Hollywood City Hall that was the heart of the $30K deal for State Senator Eleanor Sobel that I have referenced twice within the past week, via a post of my own and one yesterday by Hollywood civic activist Sara Case at The Balance Sheet Blog, in light of her formal request to have the State of Florida perform an audit of the City of Hollywood.



Me, I find her timing and rationale very, very curious, and that would be true even if I hadn't voted in the 2008 primary for Tim Ryan for State Senate, despite the nasty and untrue TV ads paid for by her shadowy supporters at 527s, and electioneering communication groups
A survey done by VancoreJones Communications in June 2008 described Democratic voters in District 31 as "the most angry, despondent and suspicious group we've ever polled.'' But on the plus side: "Despite being very opinionated they can be easily persuaded.''

Just like other 527's did the bidding of Alexander Lewy last year in Hallandale Beach against Comm. Keith London in Lewy's bid to get elected on his second try for office, where I wrote: "Not out of any great magnanimous desire to help the citizens of this city, mind you, but rather to help himself and take his first step in becoming a career politician."
History has proven me prescient.

You may find it worthwhile to know that using Internet Explorer, you can't find the link on the city's website marked "Archived City Commission" meetings, but the video itself seems to ONLY play using Internet Explorer, since it will NOT work using Google Chrome.

I know that because I have tried and tried over the past few months to see several old Commission meetings that I wanted to reference in blog posts but was unable to.

Above, the webpage using Internet Explorer -list of files is invisible!

Below, the webpage using Google Chrome, a list of files.
Once you get to the blue-highlighted agenda item on the particular Hollywood City Commission meeting you want to view -or even the entire meeting if you choose- the link doesn't work using Google Chrome.
Consider yourself warned!
It's SNAFU!

And there is nothing on the city's website page that tell you that you have to use Internet Explorer to see video of selected agenda items.
A real conundrum that!

I'll be talking to the City Clerk's office about that next week.


April 1, 2009
6. R-2009-072 - Resolution - A Resolution Of The City Commission Of The City Of Hollywood, Florida, Authorizing The Appropriate City Officials To Execute The Attached Agreement Between State Senator Eleanor Sobel, State Representative Elaine Schwartz And The City Of Hollywood For Lease Of City Office Space And To Reallocate Funds For The Renovations For New Offices For Senator Sobel In The Old Library Building.
PASSED UNANIMOUSLY.

September 20, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier.
State Senator Eleanor Sobel receives 5,000 sq. feet of improved office space, inc. electricity and water, for only $750 a month for a period of 40 months -the remaining period of her term at the time in 2009- paying no interest.
State Representative Elaine Schwartz is paying $500 a month in rent, which includes the costs incurred by Hollywood for past improvements from 2006.

Florida House and Senate legal counsel contacted City Attorney Jeffrey Sheffel and said that rules on limitations on member's office account expenditures are such that this matter needed to be done in the form of rent rather than checks for improvements.

Video is 23:47 minutes long