Council approves registration fee and adopts vacation-home licensing enforcement framework in second reading

The committee approved a city resolution to add a registration fee for vacation homes and moved forward a second reading recommendation on Ordinance No. 6698, which amends Title 17 to define and regulate short‑term vacation rentals.

Community Development Director Vicky Fisher told the committee the city expects 600–900 vacation homes exist in Rapid City at any given time and anticipated about 600 initial registrants. She proposed a $70 per‑application registration fee to pay for Granicus software for monitoring and code compliance. Fisher said the fee is expected to decline to about $50 per registration as compliance increases and the workload to monitor decreases.

On enforcement, Fisher said the ordinance requires licensing first, then registration, effectively providing the city with enforcement "teeth" where state law does not: operating without a license/registration can be fined up to $500 per day for each offense. Fisher said staff had met with state Department of Health representatives and a local state representative (Representative Derby) to discuss compliance and potential state‑level changes to give the Department of Health more enforcement authority for unlicensed properties in jurisdictions without local ordinances.

The committee voted to approve the fee measure and moved to recommend the ordinance on second reading (motion by Seacrest; second by Evans). The motion carried.