Adopting a short-term rental registration ordinance has been a central topic of discussion in Marco Island for most of 2022.

A political action committee, Take Back Marco, created the ordinance to enforce regulations for those who rent their homes for less than 30 days more than three times per year. It was passed by the council in a 4-3 vote, with council members Becky Irwin, Jared Grifoni and Darrin Palumbo dissenting. The referendum passed at the polls in August with 57% in favor.

In October, council voted to approve the rental registration on the first reading. It held the final second reading of the ordinance Monday, which spurred hours of discussion between council members about last-minute amendments.

Irwin voiced multiple concerns regarding the ordinance, including the requirement for the city to have a register of all current guests staying in a short-term rental.

Grifoni agreed. “We’re limited government conservatives up here, and that’s what we’re putting in an ordinance, that we want our citizens to keep a list?” Grifoni said. “Hotels don’t even have lists of every single guest on their own property and we’re going to have our citizens do that? I mean, talk about hypocrisy.”

The council agreed to remove the required guest list from the ordinance.

An alternate aspect of the registration program Grifoni brought forward for discussion was the ballot question stating the ordinance would be entirely self-funded, with no use of taxpayer dollars. However, the city may need to use money from the general fund to kickstart the program. The city also needs to fund the registration software, which will cost $90,000 annually.

“There’s nothing in the ordinance that actually prohibits use of dollars that are not collected directly from landlords, property owners who are required to register, and that’s what was sold to the citizens time and time again,” Grifoni said. “And I think the citizens deserve that we honor that and are clear about it. And if everybody thinks that this is magically going to fund itself after six months, then there shouldn’t be any concern with including that protection [in the ordinance].”

Council agreed to make an amendment to state taxpayer funds are prohibited from being used to enforce the rental registration.

Noise standards are also a significant aspect of the ordinance, with stricter rules for short-term rentals than for regular single-family households. Noise in short-term rentals should not be heard for over 60 seconds by any adjacent or non-adjacent property, including human, animal, electronically generated and mechanically generated sounds.

Council member Rich Blonna thinks it is an appropriate measure to take. “By the very nature of short-term rentals and how they change the quality of the life in a neighborhood, there are different standards. We’re not talking about a private residence where a family will occasionally have visitors. We’re talking about a place that could conceivably turnover 52 times a year with 52 sets of residents,” he said. “I think we need to be more sensitive to noise in that case, so I would prefer to leave it as it is.”

Council failed to come to a consensus to make noise standards the same as for a full-time family home, but agreed to take out the mechanical noise part of the ordinance in case of alarms.

“I think that overall, this whole thing should benefit the owners as well as the neighbors, so I don’t like looking at it from the perspective that it is just to hurt some people and not help,” Irwin said. “I think that’s why we’re having such an argument over it in the community because it really is feeling like to some people that it is a punishment and not a help.”