Williamstown Town Meeting Gets Short-Term Rental Bylaw

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — After three years of talking about the issue, the Planning Board on Tuesday wrapped up its work on a short-term rental bylaw proposal.

 

Now, it is up to town meeting to decide whether to implement the local regulation.

 

On a vote of 5-0, the board sent its proposal to the May 22 meeting after making one amendment and considering feedback it received in the form of letters from constituents.

 

The amendment is a provision that would exempt military members or foreign service members deployed overseas from the local limit on the number of days a house can be used as an "Airbnb" during the time of their deployment.

 

That idea came to the board late in the process through its outreach meetings this winter and was first discussed by the body at its March meeting. All agreed on Tuesday that the exemptions made sense.

 

The main business for the board on Tuesday was its statutorily-required public hearing on the two zoning bylaw amendments it is proposing for the annual town meeting.

 

One of those proposals first came up last summer, when the town's public works director asked the body to look at a regulation on closed-loop ground source heat pump geothermal wells in the town's Water Resource districts.