The following text was published in the June 2023 Danby Town News and written by David West, Danby Town Planner.
In the Spring of 2023, the Town commissioned a survey of residents’ thoughts, attitudes, personal experience, and hopes and fears about short term rental of property in the town. The survey was specifically crafted to be as neutral as possible and not lead respondents to a particular outcome. The survey was mailed to every household and also shared online through Facebook and with links on the Town’s webpage. We received over 160 responses, which is an extremely good return for our community and gives a reasonable level of confidence that the results of the survey represent the perspective of the Town’s residents as a whole. A complete tabulation of results is can be viewed here.
The overall impression of the results shows a few things. First, the number of people who believe that short term rentals should be banned entirely is extremely low, and the number of people who would prefer no regulations is slightly higher than the number of people who think there should be some regulations. On this question the margin of error is greater than the difference between the two groups but it’s safe to say it’s close to half-and-half with a bias towards no regulations. Among those who want regulations, the responses showed that many more people were comfortable with light requirements, like registering with the Town, while few were interested in strict rules such as limiting the number of days a property can be rented. The Town Board got a first glimpse of the results on May 17th and appointed a committee of Leslie Connors, Steve Weissburg, representatives from the Planning Board, and Planner David West to get together and discuss the next steps that the Town would take.
Below is a series of graphs that put the results into a more digestible format. Please note that this presentation does not include data that was received after the deadline of May 10th.
