Crested Butte South POA updates STR regs

Membership vote on capping licenses coming soon

By Katherine Nettles 

The Crested Butte South Property Owners Association (POA) board of directors updated its short-term rental (STR) regulations last month, and is now preparing to bring a possible cap on the number of STRs allowed in the subdivision to a membership vote sometime this year. The timing of a membership vote, which is required to amend property rights within the CB South covenants, has not yet been determined.  

The POA board kicked off the effort to update its STR regulations in 2022, forming a subcommittee of both board members and POA members. That committee brought recommendations to the board this spring and spent the past two months fine tuning a draft that includes STR licensing fee increases, compliance checklists and health and safety requirements. The POA conducted two membership surveys about STR regulations in the past year and took those responses into consideration as well in drafting the new regulations, says POA manager Derek Harwell. 

During their May 22 meeting, POA board president Andrew Sandstrom suggested that the board first consider the updated STR regulations as proposed by the subcommittee in a separate discussion and vote, and then discuss the issue of capping STR licenses in a second discussion. The subcommittee was made up of board members Scott Clarkson and Sue Schappert and property owners Ashton Wyckoff, Alli Melton, Deborah Tutnauer, Kevin Van Horn and Maggie Dethloff. The board then approved the language in the recommendations as a draft regulatory document, pending some final adjustments and legal consultation. The document is not yet available to the public, but the board directed staff to prepare a final draft to be presented at the June 12 meeting and shared with the membership.

“Once these documents get more coherent in one spot, we will come back and actually adopt them,” said Sandstrom.

The new STR regulations would take effect in 2025. 

Next, the POA board discussed the subcommittee’s recommendation to cap STR licenses at 20% of the subdivision’s total residences, exempting primary residents renting their own homes or rooms on occasion. There are currently around 650 homes in CB South, according to Harwell, and about 45 STR licenses, or about 6% of the total home inventory. The 20% cap would allow up to approximately 130 STR licenses in CB South. 

There would be no cap on those who obtain a STR license for their primary residence for a limited (to be determined) number of days per year. 

This limit would require a membership vote to amend the governing covenants, and board members were not ready to decide on when to do that.

Board member Rachael Gardner said that she believed adding a membership vote on the covenants to the annual board of directors’ election in July would be too fast and not allow enough time to provide information and outreach to the community, while board member Sue Schappert thought it was a fairly minor issue and that the membership would rather not be given repeated tasks to vote on in one year. After some discussion, board members decided to make that decision at the next meeting, Wednesday, June 12 at 6 p.m.