The town of Tisbury could reap hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from short-term rental property registrations that became mandatory when the state passed its short-term rental tax last year.
“That’s above and beyond the six per cent [short-term room tax],” fire chief John Schilling, who chairs the town’s short-term rental task force, told the Tisbury selectmen during their regular weekly meeting Tuesday at the Katharine Cornell Theatre.
Selectmen accepted Mr. Schilling’s recommendation to issue a request for proposals from third-party compliance firms to ensure that all short-term rentals are properly registered with the town.
“We don’t have the resources to do that,” Mr. Schilling said. “That would require a full-time person. It’s much more effective to hire an outside firm.”
Compliance companies have already been soliciting business from Island towns, with two such firms recently pitching Tisbury, Mr. Schilling said.
“They were estimating in excess of $300,000 annually in registration fees alone,” he said.
The task force is not limiting its work to short-term rentals, he added, but will also press for compliance and accountability from longer-term vacation rentals as well.
“I think you will find all of us are in favor of both lines of effort,” selectman and board chairman Melinda Loberg said. The board voted to authorize Mr. Schilling to work with town administrator John (Jay) Grande to issue the RFP from compliance firms.
In their state-mandated annual tax rate classification hearing, also held Tuesday, selectmen set the town’s millage rate — the amount of tax per $1,000 of assessed property value — at $9.33 for fiscal year 2020, down from $9.79 in 2019.
Selectmen voted not to shift any additional tax burden to local businesses, and to keep the town’s residential exemption for 1,036 year-round homeowners.
Annual taxes on a property valued at the Tisbury median of $621,400, owned by a seasonal resident, would increase from $5,425 to $5,798.
The same property, if owned by a year-round resident granted the exemption, would be valued at $455,011 and taxed $5,245.
Tisbury is one of 14 Massachusetts cities and towns, and the only one on Martha’s Vineyard, with a residential exemption for property taxes. Others include Barnstable, Nantucket and Provincetown in the Cape and Islands area, as well as Boston, Cambridge and several neighboring communities.
Alternate members of town-appointed boards and committees in town will have voting rights in the absence of full-time members, following a vote by the selectmen, who then appointed Roger Moffat as a full-time member of the town’s natural resources committee and Laura Rose as an alternate.
Also Tuesday, selectmen heard a report on the town’s wastewater treatment facility by consultant Mark White, a principal in the Quincy-based civil engineering firm Environmental Partners, and with finance director Jon Snyder, began looking at numbers for the 2021 capital budget process.
Friday morning at 8:30, the board meets jointly with the town school committee to hear about the school building committee’s work to select an architect.
Dec. 3, selectmen hold a public hearing on one-day liquor licenses, followed Dec. 4 by a regular business meeting at 4 p.m.
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