Ferguson council hears wide public input on proposed short-term rental rules; bill sent back for revision

The Ferguson City Council on a public forum night took up Bill 73-02, a proposed ordinance to register and regulate short-term rentals and platforms such as Airbnb and Vrbo, and postponed final action for rewrites after more than two hours of public comment and council discussion.

Mildred Pines, a Ferguson resident who opened public comment, asked whether short-term rentals should be capped and taxed differently, saying, “All short term rentals and Airbnbs, shouldn't they be considered in the same category?” She gave a personal example — “we paid for was $3,500 for 4 days” — and urged limits on the number of rental days and stronger rules about owner proximity and privacy of owner information.

Councilman Mike Palmer, who sponsored the draft ordinance, said the bill is intended to create a public registry and some basic rules where none exist today. “Right now, there is no Airbnb registry or short term rental registration with the city at all,” Palmer said. He told the room the goal is transparency so neighbors “should be able to find out” whether a property is being used as a short-term rental rather than guessing whether it is “a short term rental or a drug house.”

City staff and subject-matter witnesses described policy tradeoffs and enforcement limits. Rachel St. Pierre, a city staff member in community development, said Ferguson currently collects a hotel/motel/boarding-house tax through business licenses but has no short-term-rental registry. She reported, “We have 21 Airbnb in town right now, and a few of them are already licensed,” and warned that detailed day-by-day tax tracking could be hard without proprietary platform data and additional staff.

Council discussion and public commenters focused on several recurring issues: neighborhood character and zoning, enforcement capacity, safety and nuisance response, guest limits and age restrictions, parking, insurance, and whether hosts or managers should be required to be within a specified travel time of the property (the draft used 60 miles as a standard). Council members and staff offered different options: zoning some areas to allow short-term rentals while prohibiting them in most residential neighborhoods; capping maximum guests for any rental; requiring visible house numbers and basic wayfinding; and linking licensing to the ability to suspend or revoke a short-term-rental permit when nuisance complaints accumulate.

Councilman Kasoff described two safeguards in the draft he supports: an age minimum to rent and a guest cap tied to occupancy. “First of all, you have to be 21 years old,” he said, and the draft limits guests to “double the number of the occupancy,” intended to curb large recurring parties. Other council members urged caution not to overregulate a small existing market: staff and council repeated that only a small share of Ferguson rental properties are short-term — estimates during the meeting ranged from “a dozen or two” up to the staff figure of 21.

Residents from across Ferguson urged local control and clearer notice to neighbors. Several speakers recommended neighborhood notification or a local hearing for proposed short-term rentals; others urged stronger enforcement tools for repeat nuisance properties and clearer lines between police and code enforcement responsibilities. Chief Doyle and other city officials described enforcement realities: officers can respond to noise and disorder calls, and code enforcement handles building and maintenance violations, but sustained enforcement requires staffing and reliable local contacts for property owners or managers.

Council members and staff agreed to tighten several points raised in public comment. One immediate change under consideration is an amendment to the reporting requirement: staff will provide the council with a list of licensed short-term rental addresses annotated with recent police-call history to show where problems have occurred. Council and staff also discussed capping maximum visitors per property (for example, applying an absolute ceiling in addition to the draft’s occupancy-based formula), clarifying whether managers must be able to arrive within an hour, and whether inspection frequency should be annual rather than every three years as written in the draft.

No formal vote was taken on Bill 73-02. Mayor and council concluded the public hearing by directing staff to refine the draft using input from the council, the police department and community development, and to return the revised ordinance for further review. The mayor said staff would return the revised bill to council within the statutory notice period; the meeting adjourned after council took public comment on the bill and set follow-up work by staff.