Bylaws that would regulate short term rentals (STRs) in Westport are still a long way off, but are expected to get a boost Monday when the select board votes on whether to convene a working group to study the issue in advance of an expected public vote on the matter at next year’s Town Meeting.

Westport has never regulated STRs like those advertised on AirBnB and other similar websites. But there is a strong motivation from town boards to codify something, and soon. What form eventual bylaws take is still up in the air, but members of the planning board, who first started researching the issue several years ago before setting the matter aside, say the time has come:

“This really needs to move forward quickly,” planning board member John Bullard said at a meeting earlier this week. “Nobody wants to turn Westport into Cape Cod, because when every house becomes an STR, it destroys your housing stock, it destroys neighborhoods. It’s a calamity and that’s what happens.”

“You’re going to get more and more headlines of the ‘House from Hell’ and it’s happening right now, and it’s accelerating, because people like the almighty buck.”

Bullard’s ‘House from Hell’ comment referred to recent Westport Shorelines coverage of a vote by the zoning board to reject an appeal by a Spinnaker Way property owner, who had previously been ordered to cease and desist renting out the home, which lies in the town’s residential/agricultural zoning district.

In his order, building official Ralph Souza wrote that such rentals aren’t allowed in that zone as they're not specifically permitted in the town’s table of allowed uses. Zoning board members agreed unanimously with Souza’s interpretation of the zoning use table and upheld the cease-and-desist order, in effect setting a precedent that STRs are illegal in that zone.

Codifying rules governing STRs here will give the town a standard to follow, planning board members said, as right now complaints about rentals are handled on a case by case basis.

“Because of staffing constraints, we’re really just operating on an ‘enforcement by complaint’ basis,” town planner Michael Burris said. “Yes, technically ... those folks who are operating STRs are probably running afoul of the zoning by-laws.

At last week’s meeting, Bullard argued that putting bylaws in place will protect those who do it right, and penalize those who don’t, including property owners who don’t live in the homes they rent out. Referring to residents who occasionally rent out rooms in homes they occupy, and have been doing it for decades, he said, “make them legal and make all these people who are destroying neighborhoods illegal.”

As the board has discussed the issue on and off for several years, board member Mark Schmid said the working group will be ready to go once the select board approves its formation.

“We have a series of different bylaws we’ve looked up from different towns,” he said. “We’ve got about a half dozen. There’s already sort of an informal draft, as it were, that’s looking at cobbling together bylaws from different towns. When we do get formally blessed (by the select board) we’ll be educated and ready to go.”

Once public meetings are held on the matter, the public will be welcome to speak their piece on STRs. From there, a proposed bylaw will be drafted and the select board will vote on whether to put it before voters at the 2024 Town Meeting.

Bullard thinks a positive vote is nearly a lock:

“I really don’t see opposition to solving this problem,” he said.