The City of Belleville won't be going through with a licensing program for short-term accommodation properties at this point, but instead will be searching for the easiest ways to regulate them in the future.
 
Council agreed at its meeting yesterday to fulfill a commitment to collect a four-per cent municipal accommodation tax that was implemented in 2019.
 
However, Economic Development Manager Karen Poste noted in her report to council that it would be difficult, cumbersome and costly to keep track of the 150 or so STAs located in Belleville.
 
"Given the number of STAs operating on average and the resources required to implement a licensing system that would support compliance and revenue generation (i.e. office space, salary, training, equipment and time), staff suggest the fee would need to be too high in order to cover the costs required," she stated.
 
Poste added economic development staff have had discussions with MPP Todd Smith regarding a potential mandate for accommodation collection in places where a MAT bylaw has been approved, but there's no indication anything of the sort will come down from the provincial government any time soon.
 
Because STAs aren't inspected as thoroughly and are having a negative impact on the city, mayor Mitch Panciuk said it may be best to go through with licensing and regulating these properties.
 
"We have neighborhoods that are experiencing problems with these short term accommodations. It's contributing to our housing crisis and making things worse here in our city," Panciuk said.
 
"We have places that people could live in, but they're unfairly competing against hotels. So I think we need to take a look at at this policy to regulate it. I appreciate staff's comment, and we'll have to make a decision about how much we want to spend on enforcing it. But the first thing we need to do is look and see what our options are."

During the meeting, Panciuk acknowledged that the reason there have been few complaints about STAs is because there has been confusion surrounding what the city is planning for these properties.

"We were told by Air Bnb that they would handle this for us. They committed that they would implement this in the back end and they would report to us, so we would know which properties are operating. They did not do that. They said they would not deal with it on a municipality-by-municipality basis, they would only deal with it provincially."

He added he has "zero" expectation that the province will deal with it any time soon, if ever.
 
Councillors were largely in agreement that they cannot take their proverbial foot off the gas pedal when it comes to getting licensing done right, especially if sites like Air Bnb, VRBO, Hotels.com, etc. "won't play ball" with the municipality, as Coun. Chris Malette put it.
 
Coun. Tyler Allsopp agreed that it would be cost prohibitive to go through the regulatory process and said collection of MAT tax of approximately $80,000 for around 150 operations. would be sufficient
 
Noting Prince Edward County is dealing with a large STA housing stock that has driven the market up, Coun. Paul Carr said Belleville has to get ahead and be aggressive to make the STA properties more affordable.
 
When asked about a potential deadline date of Jan. 1, 2022 for collection, Poste said they would have to get a system in place and confer with partners to have that be a reality.
 
Poste's report had been approved at a recent meeting of the Economic and Destination Development Committee.
 
Staff was directed to report on the recommended process for collecting the MAT tax and will be expected to table that report at a meeting next month.