Town Of Stonington: Summary Of The Community Meeting On Short-Term Rentals

Press release from the Town of Stonington:

June 24, 2022 - 9:47am

Stonington’s “Community Conversation” meetings are utilized to offer residents different ways to engage outside of the more traditional format of formal Town Meetings. Too often we see the more formal Town Meetings put people into For and Against segments, and they do not help facilitate civil discourse and can lead to less productive outcomes.

On Monday, June 20, 2022, a “Community Conversation” was held to get input from residents on the issues surrounding Short-Term Rentals (STRs) in Stonington. While this is a challenging issue, community members deserve to be further engaged so that the diverse views on this topic can be better understood by all.

This meeting was the first community engagement on this topic in over five years. To re-engage, Monday’s meeting posed five questions to attendees and input was captured through participants’ written responses. Attendees were then asked to review all responses, and put a star next to no more than two responses per question. This was a way to gauge which ideas and/or concerns were most prevalent to the attendees.

Stakeholders were encouraged to attend in-person to offer their views, but input was also accepted ahead of the meeting. The summary below is our best attempt to capture the key points raised under different questions from both in-person attendees and those that shared their input ahead of the meeting. We continue to welcome input ahead of the next meeting, and that can come in the form of emails, phone calls or in-person meetings. Any input received before July 19th will be summarized, as needed, and added to the below. All input received outside of the Community Conversation is captured in a separate segment below, to help differentiate the input process.

The next meeting will be on July 20th from 5:30pm to 7:30 pm, at the Velvet Mill. For this meeting, we plan to continue to explore new formats; the plan is to have small group discussions and then offer each group a chance to summarize their discussion with the larger group. Depending on the outcome of this meeting, there will likely be further informal and formal meetings on this topic. To share views, ask questions, or provide further input please contact the Director of Economic and Community Development, Susan Cullen, scullen@stonington-ct.gov or First Selectman Danielle Chesebrough at dchesebrough@stonington-ct.gov.

SUMMARY OF INPUT RECEIVED AT THE IN-PERSON MEETING (items that had two stars or more; or similar items written more than once are represented. Photos of the entire responses are attached)

Benefits

Concerns

Town Actions

The Town Should . . .

The Town Should Not . . .

What Did We Miss?

SUMMARY OF INPUT RECEIVED OUTSIDE OF MEETING

This press release was produced by the Town of Stonington. The views expressed here are the author’s own.