WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Planning Board on Tuesday discussed ways to reach out to residents who use their homes for short-term rentals as the body prepares to bring a bylaw regulating the practice to May's annual town meeting.

 

Short-term rentals – referred to as Airbnbs in the vernacular — have been a topic of conversation for the board for years. At one point, it was close to finalizing a bylaw proposal a couple of years ago but instead asked the Select Board to take up the project, as any such regulation would not be specific to a given zoning district but applicable to the town as a whole.

 

The Select Board effectively took no action after studying the question, leaving the planners to take it up again at the start of their 2024-25 cycle.

 

The board has a draft bylaw that would restrict short-term rentals of a primary dwelling unit to 90 days in a calendar year in the residential districts if approved by two-thirds of town meeting members. The rule, as drafted, would carve out exceptions: allowing unlimited rentals of a primary dwelling if the owner lives on the property in an accessory dwelling unit; allowing unlimited rentals of an individual bedroom in a home where the owner is residing; and allowing unlimited short-term rentals of ADUs if the owner lives in the primary residence.

 

What the board members want is feedback from residents who already rent their homes on services like Airbnb or Vrbo.

 

"Do people feel like the feedback we've gotten has been representative of different points of view," Chair Peter Beck asked his colleagues at Tuesday's meeting.

 

"In the current cycle, we haven't gotten any feedback," Kenneth Kuttner said.

 

The board does have some evidence that town meeting is amenable to limits on short-term rentals.

 

A bylaw enabling "Cottage Court" housing developments that passed overwhelmingly at the May 2024 annual town meeting included a rule against the "cottages" being used as STRs for more than 150 days in a calendar year. The Planning Board included that provision to address past criticism that any change in the bylaw to increase the density or variety of housing in town would lead to homes being built and converted to full-time STRs.

 

On Tuesday, the planners discussed how they could reach out specifically to residents already using their homes as STRs.

 

"A lot of our short-term rental units are folks who meet spike tourism demand for big events and use it to supplement their income," Town Planner Andrew Groff reminded the board.

 

The town currently has more than 190 short-term rentals registered with the Department of Revenue, which collects lodging taxes on them. Groff said he could send a postcard to owners of those homes inviting them specifically to a Planning Board meeting or listening session to see whether those residents have concerns about the bylaw as drafted.

 

The timing of that meeting was left up in the air on Tuesday, though the planners discussed holding such a listening session in January, perhaps, one suggested at a venue like Williamstown Elementary School's cafeteria, which can accommodate a larger crowd than the Town Hall meeting room.

 

In the meantime, the board discussed other outreach sessions it could do to inform the electorate before May's annual town meeting, including drafting a flier on the proposed short-term rental bylaw and staffing a table that the Select Board has reserved in the Penny Social at the annual Holiday Walk festival on Dec. 7.

 

The board pretty much agreed on Tuesday that the STR bylaw may be one of only, potentially, two proposals it brings to May's town meeting.

 

The other initiative that may be ready to bring to the meeting members is a bylaw amendment to regulate the installation of geothermal wells in the recharge district for the town's aquifer.

 

The director of the Department of Public Works brought the board his concern this summer about the use of such systems in the recharge zone given the practice of using propylene glycol as an antifreeze in the wells.

 

In its discussion on Tuesday, the majority of the board seemed in line with a proposal pitched at its October meeting: to allow geothermal wells that use potable water only as a heat transfer medium without requiring an engineering report from homeowners while making the oversight more stringent for systems that do use propylene glycol.

 

The board members recognized that more information is needed about the systems generally

 

"There's also the issue of what the system is made of," Roger Lawrence said. "We don't know the type of piping, for example. I can't think off the top of my head what else in the system might be harmful, but we're not engineers."

 

Groff pointed out that "horizontal" geothermal systems that use trenches up to 4 feet deep are less of a concern because they would not pose a threat to the aquifer or the recharge area, unlike the vertical systems, which can go several hundred feet below grade.

 

Tuesday's meeting included updates from board members for their colleagues about various ongoing projects that the body does not anticipate bringing to the town until May 2026, at the earliest.

 

Groff and Samantha Page told the board that they are convening a working group with representatives from Williams College to discuss a possible academic zoning district to address the fact that the town's private schools (Williams, Pine Cobble and Buxton) operate in residential zones and, especially in Williams' case, frequently need relief from the residential zoning rules — relief the Zoning Board of Appeals is bound to give under Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court precedent.

 

Cory Campbell told the board that he needs more time at its December meeting to provide a full update on his research into potential changes to the bylaw to enable more mixed-use development in town.

 

And Kuttner and Lawrence updated the group on their work refining a proposal to allow open-space residential development in the town's Rural Residence districts. In particular, the pair went through some of the differences between an OSRD development and subdivision mechanisms already in the town's bylaw.

 

"We're beginning to bring [a bylaw proposal] into focus," Lawrence said. "I think we may have another, easy, 12 months to filter through what ideas are practical and how to come up with bylaw phraseology that is easy to understand. But it feels like we're not at the beginning anymore. It feels like we're making progress."

 

In other business on Tuesday, the Planning Board reviewed a Select Board policy for a procedure to address pending sales of land in the commonwealth's Chapter 61 land preservation program.

 

Two years ago, the Select Board was faced with a decision on whether the town wanted to exercise the municipal "right of first refusal" when land is sold and moved out of the Chapter 61 program, which provides tax incentives for landowners who promise not to develop property. Ultimately, the Select Board decided to assign its right of first refusal to the non-profit Williamstown Rural Lands Foundation, as the law allows.

 

The process by which the board reached that decision was developed on the fly. Now, the Select Board wants to codify a process that, among other things, invites relevant town committees — including the Planning Board, Conservation Commission, Community Preservation Committee, Agricultural Commission and Historical Commission — to provide recommendations.

 

Before it adopts the policy or takes it to town meeting for a vote, the Select Board is asking the impacted committees to review it. On Tuesday, the Planning Board members agreed the policy language looks good.