This transcript is for a meeting of the **Lake Elmo Planning Commission**. While the Mayor and Council members were listed in your context, they are not the primary speakers here (though they are referenced). The primary speakers are Planning Commissioners (Jane, Jason, Matt, Tom) and a City Staff member named Sophia. [00:00:30] **Planning Commission Chair**: Call into order the December 8th, 2025, meeting for the Lake Elmo Planning Commission. First on the agenda is the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [clears throat] All right. Thank you. Next item is to approve the minutes. I need a motion to approve the minutes. [00:01:10] **Jane (Commissioner)**: We need to make a change. [00:01:12] **Planning Commission Chair**: We will. We'll have the motion. I have a motion to approve the minutes from 11-10-25? [00:01:15] **Jane (Commissioner)**: I make a motion to approve the minutes with one amendment to those minutes, and that would be—I was chair. Yeah, I would assume that you called the meeting. [00:01:25] **Planning Commission Chair**: I haven't called the meeting. [00:01:27] **Jane (Commissioner)**: With one amendment to the minutes is that Commissioner Ray Camp called to order the meeting. [00:01:35] **Matt (Commissioner)**: We have a second. Second that. [00:01:37] **Planning Commission Chair**: All right. [clears throat] All in favor? [00:01:40] **Commissioners**: Aye. [00:01:41] **Planning Commission Chair**: The meeting minutes with said amendment is approved. Next item: public hearing. We don't have any public hearings today. [00:01:48] **Sophia (City Staff)**: Mr. Chair, can we get a motion to approve the agenda? [00:01:51] **Planning Commission Chair**: Oh, correct. Thank you. We [clears throat] need a motion to approve the agenda. Ahead of myself. [00:01:55] **Jason (Commissioner)**: Motion to approve the agenda of Monday, December 8th, 2025, Lake Elmo Planning Commission. [00:02:00] **Matt (Commissioner)**: Thank you. I'll second. In favor. [00:02:02] **Commissioners**: Aye. Aye. [00:02:04] **Planning Commission Chair**: The agenda is approved. Now moving on to new and finished business. The first item is short-term rentals. [00:02:10] **Sophia (City Staff)**: All right. Good evening. Tonight we're going to talk about short-term rentals. And this format will be a little bit different. It'll be similar like a council workshop to get input. This is part of the work plan for 2025. [clears throat] So as you recall, at the beginning, this planning commission did a housekeeping to include non-owner occupied uses and to move them into the bed and breakfast. This was pulled out, and then we went ahead and did a workshop on November 12th with the council, and the council gave us some feedback on what they would like to see. So, just to take a step back, the city currently does not allow short-term rentals in any zoning districts. We do allow bed and breakfasts in most residential mixed-use districts with the standards being owner-occupied single-family homes not to exceed five rooms. There's parking requirements. They are required to have insurance and a permit for two years. So the issue before the commission is: should the commission consider short-term rentals and, if so, should the zoning code be updated to allow them? Where should they be located? Certain zoning districts would be more appropriate? Lot sizes? Should there be a conditional use permit? Also, if you want to approve them, should there be a limit on how many? And then, we'll talk about this a little bit in the presentation, but should they be regulated as an R1 or R3 occupancy? So, currently, Washington County requirements for short-term rentals meet the definition of a hotel/motel per state statute. The hotel/motel is basically any place where you have occupancy under a week. We'll talk about this more in detail with what's a hotel and what's a short-term rental in terms of the days and that sort of thing. Currently, Washington County is the licensing jurisdiction for food, pools, and lodging. They require licenses for short-term rentals and bed and breakfasts in the county. The county performs the inspections for all lodging establishments that they license. They also notify local fire inspectors during plan review for new lodging establishments. So the fire classification, this is where it's a little bit tricky. The state fire code basically is the cutoff between a hotel when it comes to an R3 and R1 occupancy at less than six guest rooms. So the state fire code is different than the building code. What is an R3 occupancy? An R3 occupancy is a classification under building code. It typically includes residential structures where the occupants are primarily permanent in nature. It also includes certain care facilities, congregate living facilities, and transient lodging with five or fewer guest rooms and 10 or fewer occupants. So that's basically your typical home. And then an R1 occupancy contains sleeping units where the occupants are primarily transient in nature. It includes transient lodging with more than 10 occupants, hotels, and motels. R1 structures must meet fire code and ADA accessibility requirements. So what that means is if you're converting a house to an R1 from an R3, high-cost improvements would likely be necessary for an existing single-family home to meet the requirements. Then what are neighboring cities doing? Stillwater does permit short-term rentals. Its short-term rental license applies to hotels, motels, bed and breakfasts, state-licensed residential care facilities, and nursing homes. It requires city council approval. The license lasts three years. It's not transferable. The newly licensed rentals are inspected by both fire and building. Short-term rentals are only permitted in specific zoning districts. Most of them are downtown in the historic district, but no more than 50 licenses shall be approved outside the business district. Last time I checked, I don't believe there are any available licenses; if there are, there's only like one. So, they have performance standards. You cannot host events or have more than three unregistered guests. There's maintenance standards. You have enhanced parking. There's also a nuisance standard. This is not uncommon where it's "three strikes you're out." So, after the third substantiated complaint violation within a 12-month period, you can have your license revoked. Just to be clear with Stillwater, too, the R3 occupancy is only for owner-occupied properties, five or fewer guest rooms, and 10 or fewer total occupants in a single-family home. An R1 category would have to be converted to an R1 if it's in a home if there's no permanent resident or greater than five guest rooms or greater than 10 total occupants. Condos or mixed-use buildings also have to be R1; they're typically R1 anyway. You'll see short-term rentals in multi-family buildings. When you see these throughout the country, they meet those standards of R1. Sprinkler systems don't kick in until they're greater than 4,500 feet, though. Oak Park Heights: they're permitted in all residential districts with a conditional use permit. The rental must have a state license for lodging. Permits are not transferable, are not required to be owner-occupied, must be a detached single-family home, and may not be located closer than 500 ft from another transient lodge. That could be a motel or an Airbnb. They have performance standards with fire building code, limit of three transient guests per bedroom or limit of three bedrooms for transient lodging. Dining shall not be open to the public and then you have to have additional off-street parking. Two off-street parking spaces shall be provided plus one for each bedroom over two bedrooms. They also have a nuisance/excessive noise report to the city. In violation, you could lose your license. Woodbury does not allow short-term rentals. [00:07:35] **Matt (Commissioner)**: How many—go back, I'm sorry. How many does Oakdale have? Do you have any idea the number of short-term rentals? [00:07:44] **Sophia (City Staff)**: Yeah, I don't know. [00:07:46] **Matt (Commissioner)**: All right. Thank you. Sorry. [00:07:48] **Sophia (City Staff)**: Woodbury. So Woodbury just doesn't allow short-term rentals, I think under 30 days. And then same thing with Hugo. Hugo's the same way. It doesn't allow short-term rentals. So the city council workshop discussion we had the same questions essentially regarding location, zoning, and limits on how many. But just to kind of cover that: four of the city council members were there; one was not in favor of adding short-term rentals, and the three others were interested in the conversation and asking questions. Basically, some of the comments were they wanted to adopt regulations to protect neighbors from nuisances such as noise and larger gatherings, limit the number of lodging rooms, limit the number of guests, and limit the total number of short-term rentals within the city. That was pretty much the discussion comments they [clears throat] had. Other comment that was discussed was potentially if you live in a subdivision, your HOA would not allow short-term rentals too. That's something that an HOA could decide. So, we're here tonight because this is on the work plan. We have a pretty good idea of where the council stands. You know, this could be a contentious issue, so we wanted to bring it to the council first just to see what their thoughts were. So, really opening up the discussion on any of these items: your thoughts on if they should be allowed, if it matters the zoning district, lot size, would you like to see them in rural areas or not, in the village, in multi-family apartments or not? That's the big question. And also a limit: should they be limited in how many? If anybody has any comments? [00:09:20] **Matt (Commissioner)**: What's current demand? I mean, are we trying to solve for a problem that doesn't exist? [00:09:24] **Sophia (City Staff)**: I think that if you look at Airbnb, I think there were 12 listings when I searched. So, you have about 12 listings. We have about five bed and breakfast permits. When we brought it forward a year ago, we haven't heard complaints. So, it was one way to kind of simplify the permitting to say that these could be allowed anywhere. Obviously, there were some concerns. And we continue now in terms of regulating. There are some concerns with doing that, but I haven't seen much in terms of demand of people calling us. [00:09:55] **Planning Commission Chair**: We anecdotally hear that the demand is potentially from Stillwater, right? There's events in Stillwater. People want to stay here. [clears throat] [00:10:02] **Sophia (City Staff)**: I think in general, short-term rentals are great if you have a larger house with multiple bedrooms, so people don't have to purchase multiple hotel rooms. It seems to be an advantage of a short-term rental. But no, it's just more of a permitting issue because the permitting does not allow for non-owner-occupied bed and breakfasts. So, we were just seeing if we could permit this, and this is what started this process. [00:10:25] **Jason (Commissioner)**: Did you happen to look up Woodbury on Airbnb and see if there were any listed there? [00:10:29] **Sophia (City Staff)**: I'm sure there are. [00:10:31] **Jason (Commissioner)**: And that's what I'm thinking. Like, they don't allow them, but I guarantee you could probably find 20 at least on there. So, it's going to happen, you know, whether it's permitted or not. And the enforcement of that is, I think, is what's difficult, especially for staff to have to enforce it all. [00:10:48] **Planning Commission Chair**: Should we just start with number one, and we can all weigh in on should they be allowed or not? I mean, in my opinion, I think we should allow short-term rentals. Anyone else is welcome to chime in. [00:11:00] **Jane (Commissioner)**: I'd like to know where are they right now in the city. I have that information. [00:11:05] **Sophia (City Staff)**: And you know specifically so... [00:11:08] **Jane (Commissioner)**: How many? Well, I found between the Airbnb website and VRBO there are a total of 11 in the city and [clears throat] three of them are owner-occupied. I also looked up the bed and breakfast permit application and it says the property at which the bed and breakfast operates is a private owner-occupied residence. Guests must stay not to exceed 30 days. They're signing something that says here that "I've read and understand the conditions under which I may use my property as a bed and breakfast as set forth by this application and city code section 154310A. I agree to abide by these conditions. Failure to abide by these conditions will result in cancellation of the permit." So, if they've signed that and they're not really an owner occupant—it's non-homesteaded—they've already fraudulently [clears throat] signed this document. [00:11:58] **Jason (Commissioner)**: But I mean, there's a good chance that those 11 didn't sign that document. [00:12:02] **Jane (Commissioner)**: Yeah. Well, there's—I have—of the 11, there are seven that are registered, four of them that are not registered, and five of the seven are non-homesteaded, and three of the four that are not registered are non-homesteaded. [00:12:15] **Jason (Commissioner)**: Regardless, it comes down to enforcement capability. I feel like we're not able to enforce the bed and breakfast. So, I'm not sure we can take on something on a level of... [00:12:25] **Matt (Commissioner)**: I can't imagine that requiring licensing and the fee for licensing would be enough to employ staff to follow up in compliance. [00:12:35] **Jane (Commissioner)**: It's easy enough. I mean, when you—I think one thing that you could add—I'm just speaking of the bed and breakfast here because I'm open to those. I think people that own their home, it's a primary residence and their homestead, they should be able to have these. [00:12:47] **Sophia (City Staff)**: That's current code. And so I'm not against that piece of it. When they come in for the application, they can bring along their proposed tax record and it says right on there that it's, you know, residential homestead. That would be one way for the city to verify it at least. [00:13:00] **Jason (Commissioner)**: But that's—that's a bed and breakfast conversation. [00:13:02] **Planning Commission Chair**: Yeah. You know, I know where you're going. But do we want to allow for short-term rentals? [00:13:08] **Tom (Commissioner)**: Well, and the problem with it a little bit, I think, is at least I would think you'd want to limit what zoning district you're in. Right? [00:13:16] **Planning Commission Chair**: Right. [00:13:17] **Tom (Commissioner)**: And if you do that, are you really solving the issue? Because you're going to say, "Hey, you can do it along the 94 corridor or the suburban edge, let's call it, on 36." Well, then at some point you've got to manage somebody that wants to do it, you know, across Lake Elmo Drive there, right? So either way, you're going to have to have some way to enforce it unless you open it up completely, which I don't think I would like to see if you're going to go the R3 route. [00:13:40] **Jason (Commissioner)**: In my opinion, I personally don't think there needs to be a zoning district. And reasons behind that are if you allow a certain number of rentals, then you're not getting concentrated areas of them, you know. So, if someone wants to stay downtown Lake Elmo or if someone wants to stay on 36 closer to Stillwater or wherever, or they want to stay on a farm that's got a pool or something like that, right? So, you know, to me, I don't know that a zoning district is appropriate as long as there are requirements in place. I like the parking spaces. I like that if it's over 4,500 feet, they need to have some kind of fire suppression system. But that's just my opinion. [00:14:24] **Jane (Commissioner)**: So that would include a neighborhood such as... [gestures] [00:14:28] **Jason (Commissioner)**: Correct. [00:14:29] **Jane (Commissioner)**: Across the street or next door to a... [00:14:31] **Jason (Commissioner)**: Let's say Tom gets sent—you know, and his family—are gone for two years in business and they want to have their home as a short-term rental rather than... [00:14:40] **Tom (Commissioner)**: They get sucked back in the military. [00:14:41] **Jason (Commissioner)**: Yeah, there you go. [00:14:42] **Jane (Commissioner)**: Does Stillwater require a primary residence? And I think we need to distinguish that one is a homestead and the other one is not. One is a primary residence. He owns that home. Even if he's gone for six months or two years, it's still his primary residence. He's homesteading it, but he's also treating it as a short-term rental. [00:15:00] **Jason (Commissioner)**: Well, or Airbnb registered as Airbnb owner-occupied. [00:15:05] **Planning Commission Chair**: I thought R3 said the owner had to be—would generally be living there at the same time, renting out a room. B&B is different. [00:15:10] **Sophia (City Staff)**: B&B they have to be owner-occupied. [00:15:13] **Planning Commission Chair**: Short-term rental does not. Is that right? [00:15:16] **Sophia (City Staff)**: Is that right? For short-term... it really just depends. I mean, the bed and breakfast requires owner-occupied. So you would just have that as the permit for owner-occupied, which we currently have. If you wanted to have a permit for someone who wasn't an owner occupant, you would basically create the short-term rental, I think, is the easiest way to do that. And R1 versus R3 just depends on the size of the space. So, guest rooms and guests were some of the stipulations between R1 and... [00:15:52] **Jason (Commissioner)**: I personally don't like the R1 and R3 designations. I don't know that the short-term rental fits well into either one of them, but it's a good way to have a guideline for what it needs to be. [00:16:04] **Tom (Commissioner)**: Did you say Stillwater restricts it to a zoning zone like downtown? Is that by definition? Is that by an ordinance or is that just where they fall? [00:16:15] **Sophia (City Staff)**: That's in the code. So, they allow 50 outside of that district and I believe that they all have licenses except for, like, maybe one available. [00:16:25] **Tom (Commissioner)**: Right. And in order to have those, do they have to do a CUP? [00:16:28] **Sophia (City Staff)**: I would have to check. I think the CUP is outside. I think it may be "by right" if they meet all the standards. [00:16:34] **Matt (Commissioner)**: I do think the CUP is a good idea. I think if you want to have a short-term rental, you need to give your neighbor a chance to say "no way, no how." [00:16:40] **Jane (Commissioner)**: I mean, so from my perspective, short-term rentals are one of the—well, this is just a stat—but the short-term rentals are one of the fastest growing segments at over 9% of the transactions nationally right now. Investors are buying these properties. Private equity real estate firms compete with wannabe homeowners. They can easily outbid consumers with cash offers. This drives up the affordability index and liquidates housing inventory. Asset management companies—we don't really want those. We want residents owning homes, single-family homes, and being our neighbors. I do not recommend allowing short-term rentals that are non-homesteaded, non-owner occupied in a single-family home inventory. Then bed and breakfast homesteads, those are fine. You know, I'm totally fine with those. But the short-term rentals, they're going to alter our neighborhoods. They have a negative impact on our citizens' safety, comfort, and expectations for predictability and will transform the quality of life and the character of our community. My biggest concern is, you know, we're in a housing shortage right now and so an investor is always going to be able to outbid a homeowner and so they're going to eat up our inventory. And if city staff isn't able to handle the or coordinate with the bed and breakfast at this point, how will we manage short-term rentals? [00:18:00] **Planning Commission Chair**: I think, Jane, that we've got—you're thinking it's a bigger problem than it is. Again, there's 11 out of how many? How many homes are in Lake Elmo? Roughly 5,000? [00:18:10] **Sophia (City Staff)**: 5,001 right now. [00:18:12] **Planning Commission Chair**: There's not—other than Stillwater or maybe some family—there's not a draw for people to come here. We're not a vacation destination. [00:18:18] **Matt (Commissioner)**: We're not Lutsen, but there's 11 and it's outside of code. And when we say it's okay, we would expect that number to grow. Agree. So you've got to be careful and I tend to agree. You've got to be careful, too—is that what the community is asking for? Some investors might be asking for it. But is the community of which we represent... a quiet little neighborhood next door, all of a sudden now every four or five days, every week, every month there's... so I don't know if... what I'm getting at is the problem there... that's fine. Somebody's going to spend $600,000 or $700,000 on a house. They're not going to be able to rent that 300 days of the year. [00:18:55] **Jason (Commissioner)**: Yeah. If we were a vacation destination, I could see how investors buying up homes that occupants couldn't get into... [00:19:02] **Jane (Commissioner)**: The example of the last two homes that have sold that are now registered as an Airbnb: one of them sold for $300,000. That's a starter home. That means that a family couldn't buy that home, build equity, and then move up in our community. The other one sold for $328,000. Both of those people have registered their property, but neither one of them are homesteaded. So, they've said, "I'm an owner occupant." One of them lives in Colorado. I mean, they're filling out the paperwork and they're fraudulently signing it. And so, I mean, there's an example right there. Those are starter homes. And so we don't have a family that's living in those homes now. They were bought by basically an investor who fraudulently filled out the paperwork. [00:19:48] **Planning Commission Chair**: And that's what we need to be, you know, concerned about. [00:19:51] **Tom (Commissioner)**: Yeah. I don't think the numbers are going to explode, right? I agree. We're not a vacation area, but I think we have to be careful that we... it doesn't matter, I guess, in my mind if it's going to explode or not. Is it the right thing to do in the Lake Elmo community? And I think we've got to be careful, at least without restrictions and guardrails, right? That's why I threw out the question: is there a way to district it and say maybe it's not fair to people who live near there, but it's the suburban exterior—94, 36, commercial—additional areas it could work potentially. But to say—I think we're going to be a little risky if we say it's open anywhere you want to do it, no matter where. I think that's just a risk that I'm not sure there's a big demand to make us take that risk. [00:20:38] **Jason (Commissioner)**: Sophia, you mentioned that whether it was Oakdale, someone required state licensing? One of the communities did? [00:20:45] **Sophia (City Staff)**: I believe it's for like a lodging establishment, a state... [00:20:50] **Jason (Commissioner)**: What does that mean? What's the state license? [00:20:53] **Sophia (City Staff)**: That has to do, I believe, with like the hotel/motel type license that you get. So the state's got to come out and inspect. But we don't. So there's another question that we haven't mentioned is: do we want a license or do we want the county? So typically it could be either. So right now bed and breakfast is both. So I think it'd be unusual to have this licensed by the state. We haven't considered that. We've just considered the county and local. And I think the issue comes in when you're looking at nuisance and people having parties and maybe they're a problem property. Then it'd be nice for us to just revoke it, right? The idea. So, if this moves forward, the next steps: if the planning commission wants to move forward with this, we're going to work closer with the licensing body at the county and just see what our options are in terms of, you know, maybe they license and we don't license, but we have the ability to send verified complaints to them and they agree to act on those. So, I mean, there's different options of how to move forward with that. [00:21:55] **Jane (Commissioner)**: So, in the rural district, there was—last year, maybe a year and a half ago—there was a property that somebody wanted to develop for a commercial use and they wanted to have transient lodging in there and they weren't able to do their commercial use. But if this would have been open to them, they would have had that set up as transient lodging in the middle of the rural district in the same area that we were fighting to keep them from going into. Would they just be able to get in there then, just like that? [00:22:25] **Matt (Commissioner)**: That's why you need a conditional use permit. [00:22:27] **Planning Commission Chair**: Yeah, we need to have some guardrails. I think we can all agree that there should be a conditional use permit if it happens. [00:22:33] **Jason (Commissioner)**: Yeah, I agree 100% with that. Yep, for sure. [00:22:35] **Jane (Commissioner)**: And we should limit where they can be. They shouldn't just be everywhere. And we should limit the quantity of them. [00:22:42] **Tom (Commissioner)**: I always have a concern about starting something and then there's an issue and either it doesn't get resolved or you're creating a problem for the homeowners who are already there, and then everybody has to jump through hoops and go to court and all this happy garbage. I'd rather prevent a problem than create a problem and then have to go and fix it. That's why I like that "three strikes you're out." You know, if you get three complaints... three complaints and after the third one your license is revoked or your conditional use permit is revoked. [00:23:15] **Jane (Commissioner)**: Any one of these properties that are currently not registered or not homesteaded, it could easily be a long-term rental and it could have a family that's living there. I keep thinking about—we have a housing shortage right now and we're going to allow short-term rentals to be purchased in our community. I just—I'm not very for it right now. [00:23:35] **Planning Commission Chair**: I just don't believe that for short-term rentals, the value is there and that would be the underlying reason somebody would purchase a property. [00:23:42] **Jane (Commissioner)**: That's why these last... [00:23:44] **Planning Commission Chair**: But you're drawing an assumption; you don't know either. You don't know the history of why they purchased that and why that's there. They may be in a position where, okay, I've got it, I'm in a transition of my life or my family, I can make a little bit of revenue to try to cover some of the mortgage or the cost of this house. So, I'm going to do this short term; I'm going to do this temporarily. But I don't think—we don't know if these people purchased that home specifically for this reason. [00:24:10] **Jane (Commissioner)**: A few of them, I can tell you, I do know because I did the research. [00:24:14] **Planning Commission Chair**: But how do you know, Jane? [00:24:16] **Jane (Commissioner)**: Because I looked it up and I know the person and they're a real estate agent and they own a house in Stillwater and they don't live in this home and they're renting it out and they filled this out. [00:24:25] **Planning Commission Chair**: Are they renting out short-term or are they renting out long-term? [00:24:28] **Jane (Commissioner)**: They're doing short-term rentals. It's Airbnb and it's like five nights. It's on the website. [00:24:33] **Planning Commission Chair**: But B&B—we're talking B&Bs again. We're not talking... [00:24:36] **Jane (Commissioner)**: He's a non-owner occupant. He's non-homestead, right? But he's a real estate agent and he signed our paperwork that says "I understand that you're an owner-occupied residence." So fraudulently filled this paperwork out knowing as a real estate agent that that wasn't true information. So, I mean, I don't want to reward people like that. I just don't think that's fair. And he's in on a large piece of acreage. So, I mean, it might not be—you might not think that that's an impact, but I can hear my neighbors. They have little girls. And when they scream, it's startling, you know? And so now all of a sudden you're going to have—you don't know who's over there screaming and why they're screaming. They were screaming because they were playing. But if somebody's screaming because they're playing and it's a different voice, I mean, I don't know. I just—I'm concerned about our housing stock and the disruption to our community by having short-term rentals. I don't like them. [clears throat] Sorry. [00:25:32] **Tom (Commissioner)**: No, you're fine. [clears throat] That's a tough one. I have to admit, I've been using short-term rentals a lot lately. A lot. And they're very convenient. And it's not because it's a destination; it's as I'm traveling through. We stop, we spend the night, we go on. So, I'm using them a lot. [clears throat] Um, but in my neighborhood, I don't want to see it. [00:25:56] **Planning Commission Chair**: Your HOA is not going to allow it. But I think that's another piece. We've got to remove HOAs because... [00:26:01] **Matt (Commissioner)**: I don't know if there's an HOA, but it doesn't matter where I'm living. It doesn't matter to everybody else, but it's not in an HOA. Yeah, I don't care where I'm living. I just—I wouldn't want that as my neighbor. [00:26:15] **Tom (Commissioner)**: So, I guess—and I think you started off with the question, actually: are we solving a problem? Other than the council is asking us, saying that they'd like to do this apparently, you know, with the 3 to 1 vote. So, if we're not solving a problem, then I guess I'm not sure. There's 11 people. Is there a line of people waiting to do it? I don't think so. [00:26:35] **Sophia (City Staff)**: But you're putting those [clears throat] guardrails in that you mentioned before is that it's going to happen. So, should we regulate it? [00:26:42] **Tom (Commissioner)**: Well, yeah. So, I'm okay with certain guardrails that say in certain areas. I have a little challenge if we just say it's open to anybody that fills out the paperwork. [00:26:54] **Planning Commission Chair**: And I think Jane's perspective is there are guardrails already in place that aren't being dealt with. [00:26:59] **Jane (Commissioner)**: Correct. Yep. Primarily an enforcement issue there. [00:27:03] **Tom (Commissioner)**: Those are the guards. [00:27:04] **Matt (Commissioner)**: It goes back to compliance like the other things. City staff doesn't have the resources to enforce the compliance. [00:27:10] **Tom (Commissioner)**: So here we go again. Should we add more cost? Yeah. It says right in here, "enforce regulations would be difficult and costly." All right. Neighborhood nuisances such as noise and gatherings. I'm in a neighborhood. You know, I know what a nuisance is. I never used to be in a neighborhood. Now I'm in a neighborhood. [00:27:32] **Jason (Commissioner)**: Can I ask a question? I'm sorry. Did I interrupt you? If—no, I just left. Um, when you have those guardrails in place—I'm a rule follower, so this is probably a bad person to be coming from—but if you have rules in place and somebody's considering doing that, would knowing that it's written down make that person stop and think? I know some don't stop and think, "Oh, I have to get permission to do this." With no guardrails, a person says, "Oh, there's no rule against it, so why can't I have it?" So, do you think it makes a difference to have the guardrails or not have the guardrails? [00:28:10] **Jane (Commissioner)**: It does because I don't think people know that they're not allowed. [00:28:13] **Sophia (City Staff)**: Yeah, I'm sure they don't. [00:28:15] **Jane (Commissioner)**: Yeah. So, that's kind of what I'm thinking. Like, if you have an HOA, it says in the HOA—a lot of them say you cannot have short-term rentals. So, people can see in black and white. [00:28:25] **Tom (Commissioner)**: But to counter that point, people aren't going to know whether they're not supposed to or not either way. [00:28:30] **Sophia (City Staff)**: Well, the code is just silent on the issue, right? So you have to understand the code, read the code, understand licensing. So if you just thought this was a good idea to have a short-term rental, then if you read it, it doesn't say anywhere that these are not allowed. [00:28:50] **Tom (Commissioner)**: But I guess part of it is, other than the group of us here that are involved in local government, if I'm living wherever and I know I'm going to be gone for 6 months and I'm going to put my house on VRBO, I'm 90% not going to check city ordinance to determine whether or not I can do this. [00:29:10] **Jason (Commissioner)**: We would say, "I'm a rule follower. I would check." [00:29:13] **Matt (Commissioner)**: And but that goes with anything. The CUP allows the neighbors to say something and go to the city and the city can say "we don't have a permit for that" and so we're going to have to shut it down or tell them they have to revoke it or cancel or whatever it is. Now you could do a "more than 30 days" if you want to find a way to get around it. It's got to be 30 or more days and then they don't need anything then. [00:29:35] **Tom (Commissioner)**: I'd be interested to know what the City of Woodbury does for compliance. If they don't allow them at all, are they enforcing anything? [00:29:43] **Planning Commission Chair**: Well, I would say it's a lot easier to enforce "you can't do it" than it is to enforce "you can do it with restrictions." So, if we're trying to make it easy on enforcement, then you say "no, none of it" because that makes it easy. Then you go to Airbnb and say you're out of compliance. So, if we're worried about resources on how to enforce it, well, then to me that makes it very simple: you allow zero. Because once you start—it's either zero or everything is allowed if you're worried about resources, because I don't think you build a policy around whether people will follow the rules or not, right? You do it for "is it the right thing for the community?" So, that's my two cents: I would not be for just carte blanche "anybody can do it." If we put some very specific guardrails in it, sure, with areas. But if you really want to simplify, you still say zero. [00:30:25] **Jane (Commissioner)**: Well, I pulled up Woodbury and I see four, five, maybe six... less than a dozen, but they're popping up. They're all townhomes. And I guess—are there any single-family homes? [00:30:40] **Tom (Commissioner)**: Well, 799... let's see. Oh, let's see. That might be Maplewood. That's Maplewood. [snorts] [00:30:45] **Jason (Commissioner)**: How many townhomes do we have now? I mean, that would be a guide bill if you said "townhomes only," you know, multi-family only. [00:30:52] **Matt (Commissioner)**: Well, let me ask the question of the group. What's the other side of this? Why—why the need to allow them? [00:31:00] **Jane (Commissioner)**: Yeah, exactly. Why would they prohibit it before? [00:31:02] **Matt (Commissioner)**: But why is there a market? I mean, what's the value provided? [00:31:05] **Jason (Commissioner)**: Other than "I'm a property owner, I've got rights. This is my house. I should be able to do what I want with it." [00:31:13] **Jane (Commissioner)**: You should as a homeowner. [00:31:15] **Jason (Commissioner)**: Well, and that's—so I think we need to look at the other side of the coin and understand that perspective as well. [00:31:20] **Jane (Commissioner)**: But I can tell you, I mean just looking at looking this up, these last two people bought it as an Airbnb. [00:31:26] **Jason (Commissioner)**: But you know, that's private property. That's America. Our property rights are important to us—that you get to be able to deal with what you own. They might be renting it out for a year and turning around and selling it. You know, I mean, that's how real estate works, right? You sell for profit. [00:31:40] **Jane (Commissioner)**: They just put a full one-year or six-month rental in there. Why do they have to do short-term rentals? [00:31:45] **Jason (Commissioner)**: Maybe they're waiting. It's hard to find a longer-term rental to speculate on. [00:31:52] **Jane (Commissioner)**: I just, you know, I think the Airbnbs are fine. We just need to get these people that we have in town either in compliance or cancel their permit because they are not truly... the only thing that's permitted right now is a bed and breakfast. So, if they're not going to treat it as a bed and breakfast, then they're not permitted. Correct. So, I think we need to focus on getting these straightened out before we even take on something bigger that's going to be more complicated. Because once you open up that can of worms, you cannot get the worms back in there. I mean, I shared the story about what happened up in Marine on St. Croix. They had to go to court with that person. They couldn't get him to stop the bed and breakfast there. And he bought it with the idea of doing it. He already knew that they weren't allowed and he fought it. And the neighbors had to fight with him. The neighbors had to—he shut off the street so that the neighbors couldn't even get to their home, and so then the neighbors had to sue him. So I read that whole story on that person. So once you bring them in, it's going to be really hard to get them out—and they weren't even allowing it and they were having a difficulty getting him out. [cough] [00:33:05] **Planning Commission Chair**: So number one: should the zoning code be updated to allow short-term rentals? I say no. [00:33:12] **Jason (Commissioner)**: I say yes. [00:33:13] **Jane (Commissioner)**: I say no. [00:33:15] **Ray (Commissioner)**: Say no. [00:33:16] **Commissioner**: No. [00:33:17] **Planning Commission Chair**: Tom, did you have an opinion? [00:33:19] **Tom (Commissioner)**: I never have an opinion. [00:33:21] **Planning Commission Chair**: [laughter] I think—you know, I think we—I think we should in the sense of private property rights. [00:33:30] **Matt (Commissioner)**: Agreed. Here's my thought, too—like I said, I've used them. I don't know if now's the time. I agree with that. I feel like more research, maybe more talking with the staff and seeing what they think, what can we put into place. I'm not totally against it, but I don't know if just right now saying yay or nay is the way to go. I don't want this to turn into 38th and Chicago because this has come around a lot—and I'm referencing Minneapolis and George Floyd Square—where they've spent millions of dollars on research and surveys and come back and keep on kicking the can. [00:34:05] **Jane (Commissioner)**: I don't think there—we have the information that we need to know. Woodbury doesn't allow them. Hugo doesn't allow them. They're growing communities. We're a growing community. We're not a destination like the St. Croix River. We have a housing shortage. I mean, these two last ones that recently sold were starter homes that a family could be living in. And I just—that's gut-wrenching to me. I think that's really sad. [00:34:30] **Ray (Commissioner)**: Doesn't have them? [00:34:32] **Jane (Commissioner)**: Only bed and breakfast, I'm sure. But like I said, I don't see the need for something like that right now. And I'm—I mean, I'm for people to be able to do what they want to do. But I think we have to also consider the other people in the neighborhood and what's really needed and what's just thrown up here. It's been prohibited before and there isn't a big demand. There are problems with it. So I don't think short-term rentals are needed at this point in time. [00:35:00] **Matt (Commissioner)**: What about a paradigm shift? What about the property rights of the people that live in town that are our citizens that are already here? They are way more important than some investor that lives in California or Colorado or wherever the hell they are coming in and buying our inventory. Just change zoning districts and make it this and that... we already have lodging. We have resorts. That's transient. I mean, isn't that enough? [00:35:30] **Tom (Commissioner)**: I'd just like to speak too because I've used the B&B thing onto like a graduation or something like that, and usually it's a townhouse. And what do I have right beside me? A big townhouse with rentals in it. So, I can imagine what I'd get. [00:35:45] **Jane (Commissioner)**: Got a whole bunch of them right over here that just got built right next to my house. [00:35:48] **Tom (Commissioner)**: Yeah. I mean, all of a sudden there you're going to have a whole community right there that's going to... "Oh, now we can do short-term rentals with a little signature." [00:35:55] **Planning Commission Chair**: Even some of—we go to Palm Springs most years for a good month or so. [00:36:00] **Jane (Commissioner)**: Must be nice. [00:36:02] **Planning Commission Chair**: Yeah. Just—that's all I have to say. No. [laughter] Um, but no, but even those communities—many of them, because that's a big—that's everywhere you get—they're pulling back and many of them are saying 30 days is the minimum, for example, because of the issues that short-term is causing. There was a community-wide vote in Cathedral Hills, which is one of the communities, and they voted—I think Palm Desert's the same thing. I couldn't rent mine for less than 30 days. Now I could still rent it. But my point is, they're even starting to pull back because of the impact to some of the neighborhoods. Now, that's different because every street has, you know, 30% of them are rentals. So, I totally get that and we would never be there. But there's just a downside, is what I'm saying. [clears throat and cough] [00:36:55] **Jane (Commissioner)**: We have a housing shortage. We have a big housing shortage. People want to own homes and build equity and have their families. [00:37:05] **Sophia (City Staff)**: Okay. Are there more questions for us? [laughter] [00:37:10] **Planning Commission Chair**: Come on. We're only on number one. Actually, so you know, the consensus of the commission is that "no." [00:37:20] **Matt (Commissioner)**: I mean, it's not majority. It's almost a majority—two to four. I'm sorry, Matt. It's not unanimous. [00:37:28] **Planning Commission Chair**: But I think if it is allowed, I don't think there needs to be a zoning district or a lot size. I think there does need to be a conditional use permit. I think there should be a limit. And I don't know that the R1 or R3 occupancy regulation fits a short-term rental description that well. And in my opinion, it could be a single-family home, it could be an apartment, it could be a townhouse—as long as it's, you know, obviously the HOA needs to be approved if they're in an HOA and it needs to have a conditional use permit. [00:38:05] **Jane (Commissioner)**: The CUP is going to cover that. [00:38:07] **Sophia (City Staff)**: Is that good direction? [00:38:09] **Planning Commission Chair**: It is. [clears throat] It clears. [00:38:12] **Matt (Commissioner)**: The minority would say that should be the restrictions. [00:38:16] **Planning Commission Chair**: If they go ahead with it, I agree with what you just said. [00:38:20] **Tom (Commissioner)**: Yeah. And if I could just add one more thing on there: if that is the case, could it not be everywhere? Just find, you know, maybe in transitional areas where it's commercial on one side and we're coming into the residential or there's a buffer in there somewhere? [00:38:35] **Sophia (City Staff)**: You're conflicted whether there should be any zoning district confinement because you're saying yes and we're saying no to zoning—that it should be able to be anywhere. [00:38:45] **Tom (Commissioner)**: See, I think if we do it, it should be by certain areas. [00:38:48] **Planning Commission Chair**: Yeah, areas. [00:38:49] **Tom (Commissioner)**: Well, I could see doing it in certain areas—outer edge, suburban against commercial. I don't know how you do that necessarily, but multi-family units, things where there's already activity, where you've got a lot of activity going on instead of in a quiet neighborhood. [00:39:05] **Planning Commission Chair**: All right. [00:39:07] **Sophia (City Staff)**: All right. Thank you. [00:39:08] **Commissioners**: Thanks. [laughter] [00:39:10] **Planning Commission Chair**: All right. Moving on. That was a lot of fun. We all still like each other. Next item is the 2026 work plan. [00:39:18] **Sophia (City Staff)**: I hate it. [laughter] My topic's not as fun. [laughter] All right. So tonight we're looking at the 2026 planning commission work plan. I wanted to first start off by talking about what the 2025 work plan had on it and what we accomplished this year. In February, the planning commission reviewed the batch of housekeeping amendments. For the second item, we did not have any cannabis applications this year, so we didn't need to do any refining or tweaks to our cannabis ordinance. Jason provided an update in November on the old village study and that getting rolled into the 2050 comp plan process. We talked about short-term rentals tonight—so I didn't check that off the list yet, but we had that discussion today. The planning commission reviewed the CIP in November. We had our annual training in March. There is a city council workshop tomorrow regarding public hearing notices and city staff has updated the mailing notice template to have more robust information. There was the joint planning commission city council workshop in February. And then we received two "gold leaves" in step four and step five of the green steps program for promoting sustainability and sustainable actions in the city. We implemented an interactive city map that was provided to you in an update in October. And then throughout the year we've reviewed a handful of land use applications and hosted public hearings on those. So that's what we did this year. Looking at 2026, I built it off of the same 2025 formatting. The items with the blue circles are new for 2026. So I'll just go line item by line item and then we can stop and discuss any changes or updates on the fly. First is processing the housekeeping amendments we identified this year. Again, these are minor non-policy related items, just cleaning up text or corrections. I have on here "short-term rental registration and regulation ordinance." Based on our conversation tonight, it sounds like maybe the planning commission is not interested in pursuing that. So, we can take that off the list if you all agree. Reviewing the CIP, again, that's an annual item. Preparing for the 2050 comp plan process, that's a new item. Providing training to the planning commission—that's another annual item. And then the next three are processing land use applications for city property. First is the fire hall and parks building. Second is the city 76-acre park and third is for the 180 acres. Not guaranteeing that all three of these will come forward in 2026, but we'll be doing community engagement and I assume maybe towards the end of 2026 or early 2027 we'd be looking at some sort of application. And then holding the planning commission city council joint workshop—that will be in January of this coming year. Reviewing some AURs that are expiring soon. And then I left on "promoting sustainability"—that was bumped up to a level two based on planning commission request. And then also based on planning commission request, I added language relating to promoting open space developments and wildlife habitat corridors. And then leaving on there again is processing land use applications as they come up. [00:42:15] **Jane (Commissioner)**: I have a question for the commission. Does anybody—can anybody tell me what is gold leaf B3 and greenstep programs? [00:42:25] **Sophia (City Staff)**: Those are all sustainable programs, if I'm not mistaken. [00:42:30] **Jane (Commissioner)**: Do you know any details on them? [clears throat] [00:42:32] **Sophia (City Staff)**: I can chime in if you guys need it. The green steps program is a five-step program for cities to promote sustainable initiatives. We got steps one and two, I think, in 2012 and 2013. So it's a long-standing voluntary program. In 2024 we got step three. Step four and five we got in '25. Steps four and five are around collecting metrics around sustainability. There are, I think, 29 action items and then gold leaf has 44 action items. So this is just to continue our work on green steps and gold leaf. [00:43:10] **Jane (Commissioner)**: Okay. I would ask staff that they do a formal presentation to us on each of these so we understand what we're committing to as a number two. [00:43:18] **Sophia (City Staff)**: Sure. Just so you know, there's... I think we're planning on having the green steps coordinator from MPCA come out early next year to present to council. [00:43:25] **Tom (Commissioner)**: Did this used to be that Tree City stuff? [00:43:28] **Sophia (City Staff)**: Tree Cities is part of Green Steps, but it's just one small part. [00:43:32] **Tom (Commissioner)**: One small part of it. [00:43:33] **Sophia (City Staff)**: Yeah. I'm happy to send out a link—it's a pretty robust program. So, it's kind of difficult to explain all the steps and initiatives that are associated with it, but I'm happy to send out a link so you guys can get familiar with it. [00:43:45] **Jane (Commissioner)**: Could you also share what those first five things were that we've accomplished? [00:43:50] **Sophia (City Staff)**: Sure. So step one... I can't speak to step one through three, as it is before my time. But I know it was a resolution to be a part of green steps. Step two is reaching those milestones or at least working towards some of those milestones. Step three is working towards the 29 action items, but within those 29 action items, there are like 10 steps that the city can take to hit those action items. Step four and five again are our metrics. So, I know that a couple of things that we accomplished, I think between '24 and '25, I think we had a storm water assessment improvement, improved energy efficiency in city buildings, mostly due to LED lighting. Just build a new building and you're much more energy efficient than your old one—easy points. Average miles per gallon for the city fleet decreased. I think new green space was added. There are a couple more but those are some of the top-line ones. [00:44:50] **Tom (Commissioner)**: The holding ponds maybe are one of the... [00:44:54] **Sophia (City Staff)**: Yeah, maybe initiatives towards that. [clears throat] Gold leaf is kind of a program that comes after green steps. So to continue on your green steps work, you join gold leaf—we only got two leaves this year, but one of them is for forming a team that we do internally and then the next was for being part of the tree stewards program with Washington County. And B3 is just a way—it's part of green steps—but it's a way for the city to track energy efficiency in city operations, more of a reporting thing. [00:45:30] **Jane (Commissioner)**: Okay. Do that in a number of buildings. [snorts] [00:45:35] **Sophia (City Staff)**: Um, so are there any changes the commission would like to see? Adding items, changing priority levels of items? [00:45:42] **Planning Commission Chair**: Sophia, if you go back one—by the way, this all looks good and I'm fine with this. It's more of a question. So I know the 2050 comprehensive plan process starts in '27 or '28? [00:45:55] **Sophia (City Staff)**: We're doing some initial work this year, I would say. Yeah, it's a long process. [00:46:00] **Planning Commission Chair**: Yeah. And so, yeah, I know. Does that need to be considered as a three or four? I'm fine—I just—because if you're going to do some things on it anyway, I guess if not much happened until '27, then are we having to do a run on that? I'm just curious. It's nothing, I'm just wondering if that should be a three. [00:46:20] **Sophia (City Staff)**: I imagine this item would be on the planning commission work plan probably until 2029. And so I originally put it at a level four, and then my goal would be as we get closer to finalizing the plan, the priority level would increase because you guys are spending more time on the plan. [00:46:38] **Planning Commission Chair**: I'm fine with that. I just—get your feedback. [clears throat] Sorry. Any other changes or comments on the 2026 draft? You did great on my first try. That's the first. [00:46:50] **Sophia (City Staff)**: [laughter] All right. Um, so the other item I'd like to discuss with you guys tonight is that joint workshop with city council that's happening in January. Typically I like to field if you guys have any questions or topics you'd like for staff to prepare for this discussion with city council. Otherwise, typically all that we would review is the work plan together. [00:47:15] **Jane (Commissioner)**: I'd like to learn a little bit more about this $2 million they spent on this 70-some acres between the two passive parks—the regional park reserve and Sunfish Park—to put that big ball complex, supposedly. That's one of the plans. And I was wondering if that might be a little bit more appropriate over in that 180 acres. They might want to consider a different site for that type of use. You know, that kind of blindsided me. I didn't know that was happening until the other day. [00:47:45] **Sophia (City Staff)**: All right. So, I'll just prepare the work plan and then that one discussion item for the joint work. [00:47:51] **Jane (Commissioner)**: Yeah. Because from one of my council members, he said it's already a done deal and I don't know how it can be a done deal when it hasn't gone through any process or even the residents knowing that this has been done, supposedly by taking a million dollars from the sewer fund that we have to pay back. [00:48:05] **Tom (Commissioner)**: Updates on paths and crosswalks, especially tied to the county. You know... [00:48:11] **Planning Commission Chair**: Yep. [00:48:12] **Tom (Commissioner)**: The sidewalk over here on Wildflower that the city said they're going to take responsibility for. [00:48:18] **Planning Commission Chair**: Yeah. Not yet. [00:48:20] **Tom (Commissioner)**: Another thing is Stillwater Way. That's kind of like a freeway down there. It's the cut-over by the gas station and past the cemetery. They did a real sharp curve there. It's not the safest place in the world. [00:48:33] **Jason (Commissioner)**: And I think any other updates? You know, Pioneer—we've got to hear the report that the school is up for sale to a community group. [00:48:43] **Sophia (City Staff)**: I heard it sold. [00:48:45] **Jason (Commissioner)**: It sold for four and a half million. [clears throat] [00:48:48] **Sophia (City Staff)**: An update on that is the Valley Community Center has been looking at sites throughout the St. Croix Valley. We've been talking to them for over a year now. Um, they are in their due diligence process to see if their project is feasible. So they should know by the end of the month. [00:49:05] **Jane (Commissioner)**: Are they locked in on that site or would they consider the 180 acres? [00:49:10] **Sophia (City Staff)**: I think they really like that site. [00:49:12] **Jane (Commissioner)**: And any update on other properties for sale in the city? Fury is still... phase two hasn't come back yet from the fire station? [00:49:22] **Sophia (City Staff)**: Has not come back yet. We have emailed. So we are in the process. We have ordered an appraisal for the site. The survey is basically done. We had to survey the site. Title work came back for that. So hopefully the survey will be done and we can do a right-of-way dedication that will come to the planning... we're kind of jumping outside of—now we're kind of in staff updates. So let me go back to the questions for the council. [00:49:52] **Jane (Commissioner)**: Okay. We'll need a recommendation from you guys on the work plan. [00:49:57] **Matt (Commissioner)**: I move to recommend approval of the 2026 planning commission work plan as presented by staff. [00:50:02] **Jason (Commissioner)**: I'll second that. [00:50:04] **Planning Commission Chair**: All in favor? [00:50:06] **Commissioners**: Aye. [00:50:07] **Planning Commission Chair**: Thank you. Have your answer. Thanks, Sophia. [00:50:11] **Sophia (City Staff)**: Okay. Um, so this agenda was drafted prior to the 12/2 city council meeting. So the RLS 132 has been pushed to a later meeting. They requested to be tabled. [00:50:23] **Planning Commission Chair**: RLS 132—give us, is that... [00:50:26] **Sophia (City Staff)**: That is the creamery. Applicant is John. [00:50:30] **Planning Commission Chair**: Platting. Yeah. Okay. [00:50:31] **Sophia (City Staff)**: Upcoming meetings: we won't meet again until next year, January 12th. And then the joint city council planning commission workshop is January 13th, which is a Tuesday, at 6:30. [00:50:42] **Planning Commission Chair**: It is the date... January 13th is the workshop. January 12th is the first planning commission meeting of the year. So you'll have a double header there. All right. Anyone else have any other comments or concerns? If not, 7:25—I can do this. We will adjourn the December 8th planning commission meeting for the city of Lake Elmo.