Short-Term Rental Ordinance Will Go to Board of Supervisors | News | Hidesertstar.Com
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9/6/2019 Short-term rental ordinance will go to Board of Supervisors | News | hidesertstar.com http://www.hidesertstar.com/news/article_45b8e608-d0f2-11e9-b520-3b04fe196abb.html TOP STORY Short-term rental ordinance will go to Board of Supervisors By Jené Estrada Hi-Desert Star 58 min ago JOSHUA TREE — About 50 Morongo Basin residents gathered in the Bob Burke Government Center to partake in a public forum Thursday morning on possible changes to short-term rental ordinances in the mountains and deserts. The San Bernardino County Planning Commission called a second hearing to vote on proposed language that would update the county development code. The ordinance would allow short-term rentals like Airbnbs in unincorporated parts of the Morongo Basin, but would also place more conditions of their operations. Staff member Suzanne Peterson presented the Land Use Department report, which she said was created with the input of code enforcement to expand the range of allowable short-term rentals and address concerns about issues like occupancy limits and parking standards. The report was originally presented in August and has since been updated to address some public comments brought up in the rst public forum. The county originally proposed to require rental owners to keep records on renters and their vehicles. The ordinance also banned additional dwelling units, or ADUs, like casitas and RVs from being used as short-term rentals. “People had comments on ADUs, advertising, pet restrictions, record keeping, density limitations and more,” Petterson said. “We also heard a lot of people say that the desert is different than the mountains.” After the August hearing, the ordinance was updated to allow for electronic record-keeping to take place on a host website, like Airbnb.com. Updates also allowed accessory units to be used as short- term rentals if the owner or manager occupies the property’s main house. While these changes addressed some of the concerns brought up in the last meeting, the public still had several issues with the ordinance. www.hidesertstar.com/news/article_45b8e608-d0f2-11e9-b520-3b04fe196abb.html 1/3 9/6/2019 Short-term rental ordinance will go to Board of Supervisors | News | hidesertstar.com One group of speakers voiced that they still believed there is no place for short-term rentals in the desert. Another group voiced that the restrictions were too harsh. They said short-term rentals were vital for the desert economy and the restrictions would make it so that the only people who could earn money from short-term rentals were large-scale developers. Jane Jarlsberg, of Yucca Valley, was concerned that the inux of short-term rentals would worsen the housing crisis, lowering the number of affordable long-term rentals in the Basin. “My concern for many years has been affordable-housing long-term rentals,” she said. “I think these regulations need to include something to limit the conversion of former long-term rentals to short- term rentals.” Several people from Morongo Valley echoed her sentiment and added that, in their community, short- term rentals bring in people who do not know how to live in the desert. They said these visitors often don’t know how to drive on dirt roads and can damage private roads that locals have lived on for years. David Irwin with Terra Projects in Joshua Tree said he also believed that short-term renters can be harmful to the local ecology. He hoped in the future there could be a way to tax the rentals so the community can put that money back into xing their roads and parks. “When renters do come here for the short-term rentals, they don’t have the same love for the community that we do,” he said. Clint Stoker, a planning commissioner with Yucca Valley, thought some of the current language did not address specic desert issues because the ordinance was not taken from the desert region. “I think campres are something that need to be addressed and have been a problem in the past,” he said. The ordinance allows campres in short-term rentals in the desert but bars them in the mountain regions. Mirian Seger, from Joshua Tree, agreed with him that the language could be more specic to the desert, noting that the ordinance includes information on snow plowing. www.hidesertstar.com/news/article_45b8e608-d0f2-11e9-b520-3b04fe196abb.html 2/3 9/6/2019 Short-term rental ordinance will go to Board of Supervisors | News | hidesertstar.com After hearing from the people, the planning commission voted to send the ordinance to the board of supervisors. “I would remind everybody that you have another chance to talk about all of these issues when it goes to the board of supervisors,” Chairman John Weldy said. The board of supervisors will hold its next meeting at 10 a.m. Tuesday. The meeting will be available for viewing at the Bob Burke Government Center in Joshua Tree. www.hidesertstar.com/news/article_45b8e608-d0f2-11e9-b520-3b04fe196abb.html 3/3 9/9/2019 Visit to Big Bear Alpine Zoo makes for a great and rewarding trip - News - vvdailypress.com - Victorville, CA Visit to Big Bear Alpine Zoo makes for a great and rewarding trip By John R. Beyer For the Daily Press Posted Sep 7, 2019 at 5:30 PM The first time I encountered a grizzly bear was in Yellowstone National Park. A gorgeous hiking trail led me through magnificent, awe inspiring vistas. Passing beneath an umbrella of Engelmann spruce, just enjoying the remoteness of the park, I suddenly stopped in my tracks. Fifty feet from where my boots stopped, was what appeared to be a juvenile grizzly bear sleeping a few feet off of the trail. What a great opportunity for a photo of this marvelous creature in its natural surroundings. It dawned on me, as I was snapping a few photos, the warnings of the national park concerning such encounters. Please keep a distance of 300 hundreds yards and the park’s bears. As the juvenile opened its peepers, raised its rather large furry head, and stared at me, I thought, hmmm, maybe there is something to the warnings, after all. After five quick snaps with the camera, I slowly backed up the trail. By the time junior stood up and started sniffing the air, I was barreling down the trail, trying not to look like a tasty salmon in the process. “I’m glad your life insurance is paid up,” my wife, Laureen, said after I returned to camp and explained adventure. The second time I came eye-to-eye with a grizzly bear was at the Big Bear Alpine Zoo in Moonridge, just north-east of the Bear Mountain Ski Resort. This time though, the bear and I were separated by a chain link fence. According to the zoo curator, Bob Cisneros, the zoo has been captivating tourists and locals alike for more than 50 years. The zoo started as a rescue mission for injured and misplaced animals after a terrifying and destructive forest fire descended on the San Bernardino National Forest in 1959. Locals volunteered to https://www.vvdailypress.com/news/20190907/visit-to-big-bear-alpine-zoo-makes-for-great-and-rewarding-trip 1/3 9/9/2019 Visit to Big Bear Alpine Zoo makes for a great and rewarding trip - News - vvdailypress.com - Victorville, CA take care of the animals injured in the fire with little or no direction of how to run an animal recuse but soon, the Moonridge Animal Park (its original name) opened. Through the generous donations of everyday people and a few government grants, the animal park continued to grow. Today, now known as the Big Bear Alpine Zoo, the facility is home to more than 85 species of animals and birds. “Our rescues and imprinted animals (those animals that have been raised in captivity and then given up or released by their owners and cannot survive in the wild) equal roughly 90 percent of the zoo’s population,” Cisneros said. The zoo takes up nearly 2½ acres, nestled at roughly 7,100 feet above sea level, in the mountains and hosts tens of thousands of visitors per year. But a new facility is in the works, and according to Cisneros, the 5½ acre site should be completed sometime between this fall and spring of 2020. “We don’t want to make the move during the winter,” he stated. “That would be hard on the animals and us, if there’s a lot of snow or ice.” The $8 million state of the art facility is just a short distance from the present site. “This will be an amazing zoo when we get it completed. Many changes in the way it is run, including monthly wellness checks on all the animals in our care,” Cisneros said. “Top-notch and a big-league move for us here in Big Bear.” Cisneros, who worked at the San Diego Zoo for nearly 25 years, wants the Big Bear Alpine Zoo to follow suit. “We’re on track to be accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, only about ten percent of zoos in the United States have achieved that honor.” “When I got here about four years or so ago, there was a lot of work to be done,” he acknowledged. “The people were doing an outstanding job, but we needed to move in a more progressive manner, for the animals and tourists alike.” Though the new zoo has been in the works for nearly 20 years in all its phases, the movement for completion has really picked up speed under Cisneros’s vision.