Oro-Medonte residents who attended Tuesday night’s neighbourhood meeting in Bayview Memorial Park were in no mood to listen to rhetoric.
They had direct questions and they wanted direct answers from the township’s mayor and deputy mayor.
They delivered a petition to the municipality’s leaders detailing all of their concerns.
For the past three years, the residents said, their lives have been made miserable because of a short-term rental (STR) on Tudhope Boulevard that they say the township has refused to shut down, prosecute or even visit.
The residents claim it’s a non-stop party house that’s going 24/7 from Victoria Day to Thanksgiving, and only slightly less than that in the winter. Their laundry list of complaints includes loud music at all hours, squealing tires, gunshots in the middle of the night, foul and vulgar language, and overflowing septic tanks.
They said they’ve complained to the police and the township’s bylaw enforcement, but nothing gets done. They say the police won’t investigate because it’s a bylaw issue, and bylaw won’t investigate because the complaints are called in after hours.
The residents finally decided to take their complaints to the top of the municipal food chain.
And they wasted little time on small talk or social niceties.
“Are they legal?” one resident demanded of Oro-Medonte Mayor Randy Greenlaw.
“They’re not listed as a permitted use outside of the village commercial resort, Carriage Hills or a bed and breakfast that has had a zoning change,” Greenlaw said.
“Then why haven’t you closed them down?” the resident countered.
“That’s a global problem, not just here. We’ve incurred a huge expense trying to get (short-term rentals) closed down,” Greenlaw said.
“All we were trying to do is amend a bylaw, which was a definition of commercial accommodations. It was one sentence, basically, that said commercial accommodations is something that is rented for 28 days or less. It got thrown out by the courts; the courts didn’t uphold that.”
According to Greenlaw, the courts told the township it was overreaching because it encroached upon what the courts called the benign “family cottage” rental.
The township now faces the challenge of defining a “family cottage,” because it’s not in the Planning Act.
“That’s the challenge we have. How are we going to do it? Do we turn the tables on the operators and get them to prove it’s a family cottage?” the mayor asked rhetorically.
According to Greenlaw, the township has spent more than $1 million dealing with the short-term rental issue.
On March 22, Oro-Medonte Township and the Oro-Medonte Good Neighbours Alliance’s appeal of an Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT) decision regarding short-term rental accommodations in the municipality was dismissed.
The Ontario Superior Court of Justice said it dismissed the appeal because there was no procedural unfairness, and the OLT was correct in its interpretation of the existing zoning bylaw and made no error in law in finding the 2020 bylaw did not represent good planning.
According to Deputy Mayor Peter Lavoie, that decision opened the floodgates for short-term rentals in the township.
“We currently have 530 short-term rental operators in the township,” he said. “Before the OLT decision, we had 70.”
Greenlaw said the township is working on another strategy regarding short-term rentals, but he wouldn’t share it for fear the opposition would get wind of it and draft a counter-strategy.
“I’m not being disrespectful, but we don't want to let it out,” the mayor said. “We want to get it tested and proven it works before we present it.”
Lavoie noted whatever the township decides to do, the short-term rental operators will counter.
“They have a lot of money and a lot of resources,” he said, “and you can certainly expect them to challenge anything we do.”
One suggestion put forward by the residents was for the township to pursue prosecution of short-term rental operators using Section 440 of the Municipal Act, which says: “If any bylaw of a municipality or bylaw of a local board of a municipality under this or any other act is contravened, in addition to any other remedy and to any penalty imposed by the bylaw, the contravention may be restrained by application at the instance of a taxpayer or the municipality or local board.”
“We understand that one of the most cost-effective ways to protect homeowners and to stop these intrusive and illegal STR uses is by bringing prosecutions using Section 440 of the Municipal Act. If municipal law enforcement and the Ontario Provincial Police work together, successful prosecutions of STR operators who fail to cease and desist operations can be obtained,” the residents wrote in their petition to Greenlaw and Lavioe.
“Prosecutions can result in significant fines and even court injunctions. Such penalties can be used to send a very strong and clear deterrent signal to everyone that council is serious about protecting its citizens.”
Greenlaw and Lavioe told residents they would look into their concerns and get back to them in a week.
