The first of two special public hearings on probable controls for short-term rentals will come this evening, March 23, at the Putnam County administration building. The hearing led by the Putnam County Board of Commissioners begins at 6 p.m.
A second hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m., Tuesday, April 4, again at the county administrative building.
Complaints, especially around Lake Oconee, but also around Lake Sinclair, began piling up two or three years ago.
Loud music extending into the early morning hours – with sound traveling quite well at night and over water. Parties sometimes numbering in the hundreds. Reckless boating in the coves. Houses are being expanded into what some call “lakeside hotels,” allegedly even served by tour buses. The serenity and calm that attracted families and retirees to the lakes a few decades ago seem on a road to becoming party central.
Neighbors’ expectations, however, get clouded by property rights. Rentals, per se, do not seem to be the problem. After all, many of the lakesides’ current residents bought properties and rented them out to help pay for them until the owners could retire and move in.
Families have taken week-long vacations at beachfront cottages on Georgia’s Tybee and St. Simons islands and all along Florida’s long coastline for a hundred years.
Changes to the game seem to come in two areas. One is the rise of third-party corporate managers like Airbnb and VRBO, plus several smaller start-ups. They do the advertising and booking, then send a check or direct deposit to the investor/owner, wherever that person might be.
The second is linked – the whole notion of investment for a profitable return, not for retirement.
The Greene County Board of Commissioners enacted a short-term rentals ordinance a couple of years ago. The workings of that ordinance were well-explained by Mark Engel in last week’s Eatonton Messenger and Lake Oconee News.
Two advantages for the Putnam board to simply pass a carbon copy is that it would create the same rules for both sides of Lake Oconee, and it would put a quick solution in place before the major summer rental season.
However, Putnam commissioners might face other problems. It might be too late for a similar scheme to work effectively in Putnam. And Putnam has a second lake and two other neighboring counties that might want to have a say in Sinclair’s governance.
In the meantime, lakeside residents and owners have two opportunities to register their complaints and recommend solutions.