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Sandpoint commissioners postpone action on short-term rental rewrite amid legal risk and public opposition
Summary
City staff proposed removing Sandpoint's 35-unit cap on non-owner-occupied short-term rentals while adding a high-occupancy CUP, parking rules, a 20-mile local representative requirement and stronger enforcement; after hours of testimony the Planning & Zoning Commission voted to postpone review to Dec. 16.
City planning staff and legal counsel framed a proposed rewrite of Sandpoint's short-term rental (STR) regulations as a response to recent Idaho court rulings and urged commissioners to bring the ordinance into compliance with state law while keeping strong local controls.
Community Planning & Development Director Jason Welker said the existing 2017 ordinance contained a hard cap of 35 non-owner-occupied STRs in residential zones, representing about 1% of housing stock in those zones, and that the Idaho Supreme Court's decision on Lava Hot Springs has made numerical caps legally vulnerable. Welker told the commission the draft removes the cap but adds other rules the city believes are defensible under Idaho Code 67-65-39: a new "high-occupancy" permit requiring conditional-use review for larger…
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