On the eve of the Putnam County Board of Commissioners' Sept. 1 vote on a new short-term rental (STR) ordinance, Commission Clerk Lynn Butterworth compiled a four-part analysis of the 260 existing STR permits.
One of Butterworth’s tasks is to administer the STR application process.
The accompanying map shows the county’s four commission districts and how many STRs currently lie in each district.
For instance, District 3 (Lake Oconee and the northern half of Lake Sinclair) has the largest number (167, or 64 percent) of STR licenses.
The second largest number (70, or 27 percent) are in District 4, from the neighborhoods served by Scuffleboro Road westward to the Little River and Cedar Creek basins of Lake Sinclair. District 1 has 23, or 9 percent, mainly in Lake Oconee’s Lick Creek basin. District 2 (most of Eatonton and an eastward chunk between the Sparta Highway and MLK Drive/Scuffleboro Road) has none.
The map also breaks down the number of current STR permits by which lake they are on. The percentages are roughly the same – 170 (65 percent) on Lake Oconee, 89 (34 percent) on Lake Sinclair, and a single off-lake permit on Harmony Road.
A third breakdown of the data involves zoning:
• AG(agricultural)–1 (n/a)
• R-1(residential)–55 (21%)
• R-1R(residential)–56 (22%)
• R-2(residential)–79 (30%)
• RM-1(multi-family residential) – 11 (4%)
• RM-3(multi-family residential) – 58 (22%) The fourth breakdown involves the number of people to occupy each STR property:
• 3=1
• 4=3
• 5=1
• 6=30
• 7=8 • 8=87
• 9=10
• 10=57
• 11=2
• 12=30 So far, this list accounts for 229 – or about nine out of 10 of the current 260 permitted properties – while still meeting the new ordinance’s 12-person occupancy limit.
• 14=16
• 15=2
• 16=5
• 18=4
• 22=2
• 24=1
• 30=1
On Aug. 30, when this analysis was put together, the moratorium put another 38 applications “on hold” for various reasons (fire marshal’s approval, missing information, under construction, submission during the moratorium). Another group of applications came in after the ordinance’s passage on Sept. 1, and some have been withdrawn.
The bottom line, according to Butterworth, is the total number of approved and pending permits stands at 309 out of the 350 allowed in the new ordinance. It will probably be mid-October before all the pending applications can be processed.