Summary of Third Community Meeting on Short-Term Rentals and Next Steps

On Thursday December 8, 2022, a third 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 structure of traditional government meetings put people into ‘For’ & ‘Against’ segments, which does not help facilitate civil discourse and can lead to less productive outcomes.

This meeting was the third community engagement, the first was held on June 20, 2022. At this meeting a draft Ordinance was shared with residents, along with a table discussion guide that posed specific questions to attendees.

This meeting had lighter attendance than the previous two, but yielded productive dialogue among attendees. 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.

Attached you can find the draft ordinance, along with the discussion guide. This draft was written based on research both from within CT and around the country, as well as input received since this process started early this summer. 

We plan to hold a fourth meeting in January, at which time we welcome final input on the draft ordinance before putting it forward to Stonington voters at a Town Meeting (date TBD, possibly in February). In the meantime, we continue to welcome ideas, questions or feedback ahead of the next meeting, and that can come in the form of emails, phone calls or in-person meetings. Residents can contact the First Selectman Danielle Chesebrough at dchesebrough@stonington-ct.gov.

Thank you Stonington.