WELLS, Maine — Selectmen and staff spent the evening of Sept. 30 working through details of a proposed short‑term rental ordinance, moving toward rules that would limit some short‑term uses while leaving other questions — notably caps and allocation methods — for further study.

Why it matters: Board members said they want to protect public safety and neighborhood quality while preserving options for workers and property owners. The discussion covered owner contact/response expectations, which properties should be eligible, how to measure occupancy and safety, and whether to cap rentals outside the shoreline/tourist zone.

Board directions and agreed points
- RVs and campers: The board agreed short‑term rental rules should prohibit RV parks and commercial campgrounds from being treated the same as private dwellings and should prevent someone from parking a camper in a private yard and offering it repeatedly as a short‑term rental. This was discussed as a restriction on the type of property that may be used as a short‑term rental.
- ADUs: Selectmen confirmed accessory dwelling units (ADUs) would not be eligible for short‑term rental treatment under the town draft because the ADU definition the board is using requires six‑month minimum occupancy. That 6‑month threshold was discussed repeatedly as the mechanism that makes separate ADU exemptions unnecessary.
- School‑zone checks: The board considered a prohibition or additional checks for properties within 1,000 feet of a school but declined to adopt a strict distance rule after members questioned enforceability and effectiveness. One member said the existing state registration rules for certain registrants do not map cleanly to short‑term vacation stays.
- Designated contact and response time: The board settled on a requirement that a designated contact for each short‑term rental be available and that owners be required to respond within 1.5 hours to a complaint or inquiry; the discussion clarified that “respond” means phone or electronic contact, not a required immediate on‑site visit by the owner or the police.
- Occupancy and life‑safety: For occupancy the board directed staff to use established life‑safety metrics rather than bed counts: “NFPA and the building code” square‑foot standards were recommended (the board heard 70 square feet per person as the life‑safety benchmark to use when setting occupancy limits).
- Entire‑unit vs. rooms: The board agreed not to permit individual bedrooms to be marketed as separate short‑term rental units (the group treated classic bed‑and‑breakfast operations as a separate, established land‑use category that follows different zoning rules).

Caps, tourist zone and allocation
Board members returned to a previously discussed geographic approach: a tourist zone along the shore (roughly the area adjacent to Route 1 and toward the town’s ocean side) would be treated differently from inland, non‑tourist residential areas. The working consensus at the workshop was:
- Do not set a cap for the defined tourist zone.
- Consider a cap for the non‑tourist zone based on a percentage of available housing stock in that area (units, not parcels). The board asked staff to obtain a third‑party estimate of existing short‑term listings and to ask the assessor for the housing unit counts so any cap can be set as a percentage of housing stock.
- If a cap is adopted, the board favored a lottery or similar neutral allocation mechanism for newly available licenses rather than strict first‑come, first‑served to avoid a “rush” effect.

Limits per owner, grandfathering and enforcement
Board members raised concerns about commercial operators buying multiple homes. The group discussed limiting the number of active short‑term licenses per individual or entity (members suggested three per individual as a starting point) and directed staff to draft application language that requires applicants to disclose other licensed units they control (and to include penalties for false statements). The board agreed that existing short‑term rentals should be required to apply for a license (i.e., a grandfathering path), and that applicants should provide proof (tax records, platform records, or an affidavit subject to penalties) as part of the license process.

Enforcement tools discussed included using the town’s nuisance ordinance, license suspension/revocation or failure to renew for repeat or serious violations, and tying enforcement to licensing penalties rather than relying solely on police response. On liability, the town attorney noted that "under the main Tort Claims Act, there's this discretionary immunity," arguing discretion in enforcement decisions creates some legal protection for the town while noting exceptions exist.

Open questions and next steps
The board directed staff to:
- Ask the police department to advise on the 1.5‑hour response time and the operational implications (the board clarified the police are not expected to make immediate on‑site responses simply because an owner is required to respond by phone).
- Obtain an estimate of existing short‑term listings (the consultant’s preliminary number cited in the workshop was roughly 750 listings town‑wide after deduplication of platform data) and then map that to housing‑unit counts by area.
- Draft ordinance language implementing the tourist/non‑tourist boundary, a cap formula (percentage of housing stock), a per‑entity license limit, grandfathering proof standards, and a plan for license allocation if demand exceeds the cap.

No formal vote or ordinance adoption occurred at the workshop. The board set follow‑up work for staff and asked that a draft ordinance and supporting data be returned at a future meeting for public hearings.

Ending: The board closed the short‑term rental portion of the workshop after instructing staff to prepare the data needed to draft cap formulas and license language, and to consult with police, planning and legal staff on enforceability and evidence requirements.