Portland City Council roundup: Street fee, short-term rentals once again on the docket.
BY JACOB PALMER | OB DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
The Portland City Council will decide a pair of proposed ordinances on Wednesday morning that could have an impact on the city’s “sharing economy.”
OregonLive.com’s Mike Francis previewed the city legislature’s potential moves:
The city will seek to improve compliance of people who haven’t registered their short-term units — typically a room in an occupied house — and who don’t report or remit required fees to the city. The proposed ordinance also will require Airbnb and other operators to provide addresses and contact information for units listed on their sites. …
Also Wednesday, the council will have a second reading of the ordinance that permits occupants of multiunit dwellings, such as apartment and condominum units, to offer short-term rentals.
Another item that seldom leaves the council news cycle is the proposed controversial Portland street fee.
The Portland Tribune reported Tuesday that a resolution on the item is still months away.
The confusion was clear during what had been billed as the final public hearing on the proposal by Mayor Charlie Hales and Commissioner Steve Novick last Thursday. Although Hales previously had declared the council will put an advisory measure on the May 19 special election ballot, that decision was put off until Jan. 20, at the earliest. And Novick agreed to figure out whether the math behind the nonresidential portion is as flawed as critics claim.
All of which means that after eight months of increasingly contentious debate and endless revisions, the fee proposal is still not ready for prime time, and may never be. No other council member agreed to support an advisory ballot measure that will determine the final version of the residential portion, as Hales wants. And it is unclear whether the council can even vote on the measure next week. No measure can be referred to the ballot without a title written by the City Attorney’s Office and approved by the council.
