Summary of the Second Community Meeting on Short-Term Rentals

On Wednesday July 20, 2022, a second ‘Community Conversation’ was held to get further input from residents on the issues surrounding Short-Term Rentals 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. Stonington’s ‘Community Conversation’ meetings are utilized to offer residents different ways to engage outside of the more tradition format of formal Town Meetings. Too often we see the more formal Town Meetings put people into ‘For’ & ‘Against’ segments, and they do not help facilitate civil discourse and can lead to less productive outcomes.

This meeting was the second community engagement, the first was held on June 20, 2022. To re-engage, this meeting posed seven questions to attendees and input was captured by participants discussing their views among small roundtables set-up to encourage direct dialogue. All attendees were then asked to summarize their group’s responses in writing, as well as through a brief, verbal report back to the larger group.

The summary attached is our best attempt to capture the key points raised under different questions. We continue to learn from these new processes and formats and hope to continue to improve over time. 

We plan to hold another meeting in late September or October. In the meantime, we continue to welcome ideas, questions or concerns ahead of the next meeting, and that can come in the form of emails, phone calls or in-person meetings. Residents can contact the Director of Economic and Community Development, Susan Cullen, scullen@stonington-ct.gov or First Selectman Danielle Chesebrough at dchesebrough@stonington-ct.gov.