After months of discussion, debate and drafting, a proposed Greenfield City Council ordinance requiring landlords and rental property owners to register with the city failed, 4-2, to pass its second reading on a roll call vote.
As previously reported, the ordinance, which would require landlords to register with the city and pay a one-time $5 fee, passed first reading 6-1 on a voice vote at the council’s August 28 meeting with no discussion. At-Large Councilman John Jester was the lone vote against the proposal at the time.
When it came back before the council on Sept. 11, though, District Four Councilman Jeff Lowder was strongly opposed to the measure, saying it had grown well beyond its original scope.
According to Lowder, the original version of the proposal, which was backed by Greenfield Chief of Police Brian Hartman, would also have required owners of short-term rentals, such as Airbnbs, to register, and would have had a much larger fee of $150. Hartman, though, told the Reporter that he still supported the current version of the ordinance despite the fact that he would have preferred the earlier version that included short-term rentals.
District 1 Councilman Anthony Scott chimed in, suggesting that city planner Joanie Fitzwater didn’t actually support the proposal despite being the one who wrote it, as there was no representative from the city’s planning department at the meeting, but that was quickly shut down as Jester and At-Large Councilman Dan Riley, despite disagreeing on the actual proposal, both confirmed that they had conversations with Fitzwater who had said she supported it. Fitzwater had also previously said as much herself, calling the ordinance “imperative for public safety” last month. Town Attorney Gregg Morelock later said that town staff generally didn’t appear at second and third readings for proposals if there were no questions for them on first reading.
Riley went on to aggressively defend the ordinance, eventually putting forward a motion to pass it on to second reading. District 5 Councilman Thomas Moore hesitantly seconded, but on voice vote it was unclear whether or not the measure would pass. On roll call vote, though, only Moore and Riley supported the ordinance, ending the process, at least for now, although it was noted that the proposal could resurface at a later date.
Riley said that both public safety and zoning would have been helped by the passage of the ordinance.
“In case of an emergency or a problem like that, you would have been able to give them a call and let them know that their property was on fire or it was being used for drug sales or was in violation of something,” Riley said. “In zoning, there were issues where you needed to contact somebody to talk to them about their property and that wasn’t easily done because there’s some of these corporations and LLCs that own different properties and you can’t call the people [managing the property].”
Jester said after the meeting that he was concerned with landlords simply not registering, saying that there would be landlords that simply refused to register, making the tool incomplete for public safety and zoning. Had the ordinance passed, rental owners that refused to register could have been on the hook for a civil violation and a citation.
