First Reading of STR Ordinance
"Fredericksburg beats Austin, Dallas for most 'unaffordable' city in Texas" via KVUE and Walletwyse.
Endgame
We are in the endgame of this STR ordinance process and we have come so far since summer of last year. In its current draft, the STR ordinance will nearly stop new entire-home, absentee-owner, short-term rentals from conquering our neighborhoods. We aim to have the ordinance made law by April 1st.
Together, we have taken big steps forward. We feel proud of what we have accomplished in a span of a few months. It has shown that there is broad support for maintaining the integrity of community life.
I wish to caution you that this is the only beginning of the struggle to regulate STRs. When someone stands to make $100,000 per year from making a family home into a party house, he will be tempted to violate a law that provides few penalties. For unlicensed operators, Denver has a fine of up to $1,000 per day and Honolulu has up to $10,000 per day. While this has increased lawful operation, there are still bad actors. The STR ordinance will certainly require a future update. The continued preservation of our neighborhoods will be in the hands of the new leaders of our city: the Mayor and City Council Members elected on May 7th, the new City Manager, and new Chief of Police.
Our vision for Fredericksburg Neighborhood Coalition is to continue to support the neighborhoods and to ensure that the community's vision for itself, A Path to the Future, becomes our reality. Together, we are evermore active in the life of our community. - Michael Perkola
Next City Council Meeting
Monday evening at 6:00PM at the Law Enforcement Center. Meeting starts at 6:00PM but arrive EARLY (5:15PM) if you’d like to speak, as this venue has limited capacity and tends to fill up quickly.
Neighborhood Coalition’s Take on the Ordinance
At this point we are focusing efforts on encouraging City Council to pass the ordinance and do so without any further delay. The ordinance is a compromise, we wish it did more to restore balance to neighborhoods, but thankfully it slows the bleeding.
Public Comment on Monday Night
Overall our aim is for the proposed ordinance to move forward and (ideally) be voted into law at the Council’s meeting in late March. To those ends, we encourage friends of neighborhoods to speak publicly in favor of adoption. Additionally key talking points remain:
Preservation of Neighborhoods for Residents
Prioritizing Quality of Life
Legal Support for Cities’ Right to Regulate or even Prohibit STRs in Residential Zones (see linked PDF)
Since when did FBG become a town inundated with threats to sue one another? Especially when the petitioner would be a non-resident investor?
Resources to Draw From
The below documents were carefully-crafted visioning documents intended to guide the development and planning of Fredericksburg. We champion the wisdom and foresight of these guiding documents.
A Path to the Future A long-term vision for our community created by our citizens. See linked PDF.
Comprehensive Plan The city government's plan. See linked PDF.
Citizen Comment
Happy Texas Independence Day!
In 2018, our QofL Visioning Committee group dug deeply into studies about the ill effects of overtourism worldwide, and we were concerned then that Fredericksburg was in danger of losing itself.
Here we are in 2022, and local restaurants, retail shops, tasting rooms, and more have barely enough staff to run their operations, for various reasons, the main one of which is the lack of affordable local housing for employees.
Adding more STRs and planning to add a conference center (with tax incentives, no less), or similar large venue(s) to our already overcrowded town seems to be quite counterproductive, when it is painfully obvious that Fredericksburg has reached a tourism numbers tipping point of diminishing returns.
It’s one thing to have the annual Spring Break phenomenon, and accept that craziness as students’ rite of passage every year, but quite another to have such crowding routinely, that visitors go home complaining about a less than enjoyable visit, saying that they’ll not return to Fredericksburg because it’s become such a mob scene.
As mentioned in my comments to the City Council and P&Z Commission on February 10th, 2022, I’m very pro-tourism, but evidence points to the fact that at this point, we need to keep the town vibrant and appealing to the tourist numbers we attract already, instead of continuing to find ways to add more, crushing the spirit of both the visitors and this fine community.
Please take a step back and rein in the impulse to acquiesce to outside pressure for the town to grow like Topsy.
Thanks for all you do, it’s greatly appreciated.
With aloha,
Mary Gallagher
