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Vernon Hills trustees table hotel licensing ordinance after heated debate and hotel manager testimony
Summary
Trustees voted unanimously to table Ordinance 2024-085 (and related 2024-086) after lengthy discussion about a proposed 28-day stay limit and implementation details; a district hotel manager warned the rules could force evictions and cost operators heavily if enforced as drafted.
Vernon Hills trustees on Monday moved to table Ordinance 2024-085, an amendment to the village code that would impose new hotel licensing rules, after more than an hour of questions, debate and a public plea from a hotel district manager.
Director Jennings told the board the ordinance would add implementation recitals and set an implementation timeline: the village is projecting an effective date of July 1 for the ordinance with a license-compliance deadline for existing hotels of Sept. 16. Under the draft, hotels would be required to limit guests to 28 days within any 60-day period, with limited exceptions that guests must request by Aug. 31.
Kathy Broad, who identified herself as “the district manager for the extended stay,” said her properties do not maintain public lists of 30-plus day guests and that the sanitized data the village shared did not match her accounting. She told trustees she believed some of her properties have “at least 80% of our guests who are residents” and warned that forcing compliance could require evictions and impose large costs on operators. “If you pass this law, my building's closed,” Broad said, adding that eviction proceedings in Lake County could take “six months at minimum” and that her company could incur more than $100,000 in costs.
Village counsel and an outside attorney said the draft ordinance aims to restore hotel uses to their originally contemplated use and to give the village police and code tools to address repeat nuisance calls and property impacts. An attorney advising the board said zoning and the village’s police powers provide a rational basis for the ordinance and that the changes were not a “taking.” Trustees debated whether the 60-day return window should be lengthened to 75 days to strengthen deterrence, and discussed possible social-service supports to assist guests displaced by enforcement.
After hearing trustees’ and staff’s willingness to meet again with hotel management and to consider revisions to manager-residency and enforcement language, a trustee moved to table Ordinances 2024-085 and 2024-086 (the board described the table as open-ended). The motion passed on a unanimous roll call.
What’s next: Staff and members of the board offered to meet with hotel management and, if requested, legal counsel to refine the proposed ordinance language and implementation timeline. The board did not adopt the ordinance at the meeting.
