Following an impassioned plea by Gardiner Town Clerk Michelle Mosher that her office wouldn’t be able to process short-term rental applications during the busy tax collection season, the Town Board decided to delay approval of a short-term rental law until at least March during a public hearing on Jan. 11.

The resolution to postpone a vote on the short-term rental law was approved by a 3-2 vote with Supervisor Marybeth Majestic, Deputy Supervisor Warren Wiegand and board member Franco Carucci voting in favor of the delay. Board members Laura Walls and Carol Richman, the latter attending her first board meeting, voted no in the meeting which was held virtually via Zoom over concerns of the growing Omicron wave.

During the public hearing, Mosher asked the board to postpone voting on the short-term rental law because her office wouldn’t be able to handle the expected deluge of short-term rental applications during the tax collection season.

“What I’d really like to bring to everyone’s attention is a staffing issue,” Mosher said. “If you adopt it tonight, there will be people in tomorrow looking for that (short-term rental) application, which I do not have. This has been going on for three years, but now we’re at a point where I have to administer everything that needs to be done, which I have no problem doing. I like my job. But this is a really bad time of the year for me to be having to do this when I’m the tax collector and I’m in the midst of doing the tax collection.”

Mosher said she’d probably have to put aside any applications if the board approved the law at this time because she didn’t have enough help to collect taxes and process the short-term rental applications in January. She said there could be as many as 100 applications once the short-term rental law is approved.

“The job that is involved with doing the licensing is far more involved than just giving someone a license,” she said. “I have a lot of other work that I have to do to make this work and it’ll take up an awful lot of time that I really just don’t have in January if you want me to collect taxes.”

Mosher said adopting the law in January would also be difficult for the building department, which she said is “slammed” with work right now.

She said her office relies on the building department to get information regarding the properties applying for licenses.

“And preparing everything and notifying everybody that lives around 250 feet of the people that are applying for licenses is a time frame (where) I’d be working 24-7 and I really can’t do that,” Mosher said.
Mosher suggested the town set a specific date for a one-year renewal for a short-term rental license that wasn’t during the tax collection period.

“So that it doesn’t interfere with what I’m doing right now,” Mosher said. “Otherwise, you can’t get blood from a stone. I’m going to do the best that I can but something will have to fall aside.”

Carucci was sympathetic to Mosher’s request, but said he wanted to make certain that a vote was taken at the next meeting to finally decide if the law would be approved or not.

“I think to keep kicking the can down the road I think is the wrong move,” Carucci said. “At some point, good, bad or otherwise, we have to take a leap of faith. There will just never be consensus on this. Even with a different town board, it always falls to a 3-2 vote. It’s always been that way from the beginning.”

“I think we need to delay the vote until the first or second meeting of March and whatever happens, happens,” Wiegand said.

“I’m OK with that,” Carucci agreed. “At this point, another month or two after three years is it going to change anything?”

In other news, Majestic reported that the Town of Gardiner recorded an all-time high of 166 positive COVID-19 cases, an increase of 67 over the previous week.

Majestic said she and two family members tested positive for COVID-19.

“Cautious as I am, it got us,” she said, “Luckily nobody is too sick. I quarantined. I’m feeling fine. I do have a little bit of a fuzzy brain. I’m in my sixth year as Supervisor and I’ve never missed a meeting so I hope I can continue with that.”

The board rescheduled a public hearing on the proposed Kennel Law for Feb. 8. A revision in the law that bans commercial breeding in certain zoning districts where they were previously allowed is a zoning change that must be reviewed by the Ulster County Planning Board and the Town Planning Board, Majestic said.

The board voted 5-0 to hire Ted Fink to work on a Community Preservation Plan at a salary of $10,000.