DeKalb committee approves cooperative purchase to run short-term-rental compliance and tax platform

The DeKalb County PEX committee on Thursday approved a cooperative purchase and implementation plan for a cloud-based short-term rental (STR) compliance platform, aiming to centralize registration, monitoring and administration of the county'required 8% excise tax.

Raquel Jackson, project manager for the STR implementation, told commissioners the county selected Rentalscape (powered by DeCard Technologies) through a cooperative purchasing agreement to accelerate deployment without the longer competitive procurement timeline. Jackson said the platform will support registration and permitting, administer the 8% excise tax, identify and monitor listings across platforms, triage and track complaints, support enforcement workflows and provide real-time reporting to staff and leadership.

Jackson explained how complaints will be handled: residents will submit complaints online, which will route to county staff for triage; legitimate code-enforcement issues will be referred to Code Enforcement while incidents requiring police response will be directed to 911. She said staff will maintain a dedicated short-term-rental inbox and that three staff members are currently managing messages while the system is built out.

Commissioners pressed staff on features and scale. Jackson said the vendor can track listings across major platforms (Airbnb, Vrbo) and smaller “mom-and-pop” listings and can report occupancy and registration rates (for example, showing percentage capacity or number of active listings). Commissioners asked whether outreach to operators was included; staff said the contract includes at least two rounds of a letter campaign to notify operators and that noncompliant listings will be identified for follow-up. The item also includes a tax payment portal to accept payments from operators who are not remitted via the major platforms.

The committee approved the request and ratified the associated purchase order and cooperative contract; the contract paperwork in the packet indicated a ratification amount "not to exceed" a figure presented in the staff report.

What happens next: staff will continue buildout of the platform, begin a letter campaign to identified operators, stand up the tax portal, and work with Code Enforcement and partner departments to define triage and enforcement procedures. Commissioners also asked for reporting back on registration numbers and enforcement findings as implementation proceeds.

Attribution: Quotes and attributions above are to Raquel Jackson (project manager) and committee members as recorded in the meeting transcript. The committee voted to approve agenda item 2026-0384 by voice vote.

Ending: The system is intended to centralize compliance and tax collection for STRs countywide and to supply staff and leadership with data to monitor registration, enforcement and tax remittance during the coming months.