Director Kellen Spielman told the committee the administration plans to reappropriate $40,000 from existing FY25 budgets to purchase a software-as-a-service product that tracks short-term rental listings and locations. "The hope for this project fund is to be able to go out for an RFP to purchase, software as a as a service, essentially," Spielman said.

Staff described the funding sources as excess in community planningudget lines for professional services and training that went unused this year. The software companies demonstrated to staff typically aggregate listings from numerous platforms and provide an address-level database showing how long a listing has been advertised and occupancy patterns.

Committee members pressed on definitions and next steps. "Is there any action that we would expect to take? For example, if we found somebody listed with this piece of software... that they were claiming a residential exemption and clearly have rented it out all year," asked Assemblymember Kras. Staff replied the tool
ims first to establish the size and scope of listings borough-wide and to provide backup data for enforcement or policy changes: "The first thing in my mind we'd used to do is kind of establish how many of them we have in our community. Is it a problem?" Spielman said.

Staff said the administration estimates as many as 1,586 short-term rental listings borough-wide based on vendor-provided counts; the borough currently collects bed tax from a much smaller set of operators. The committee discussed potential follow-up actions (permits, ordinance changes, platform collection requirements) but did not adopt new enforcement rules at this meeting.

The planned purchase is proposed as a one-year subscription with options for renewal if the borough finds value. The RFP will be drafted to avoid vendor bias and to allow multiple pricing models; the administration said ongoing subscription beyond the pilot year would be considered as part of future budgets.

Ending: Committee members asked staff to return with an RFP scope and a fiscal plan showing one-year costs and renewal options. No final purchase contract was executed; the reappropriation will be included in the upcoming ordinance packet for formal action.