The timing of a rezoning application and new provincial legislation around short term rentals has vanquished a Tofino couple’s bed and breakfast.
During their June 25 regular meeting, Tofino’s municipal council reviewed and denied a temporary use permit application from Scott and Julia Payne that would have allowed a bed and breakfast to continue operating at their Neilson Place property.
District planner Peter Thicke explained that the site had been zoned for short term rental use, but was rezoned earlier this year to subdivide the property into four lots, with each allowed to have a single-family dwelling and secondary suite with all short term rental permissions removed.
“The applicants, through that process, voluntarily gave up their nightly rental permissions. However, they were continuing nightly rentals under legal non conforming permissions as was I think understood to be their intention all along, however this permission was removed by the province as per Bill 35,” Thicke said.
He added the legal non-conforming permission was extinguished by the provisions of provincial Bill 35, effective May 1, 2024.
He said the temporary use application to allow the bed and breakfast to continue was received in April and that the applicants had also submitted a zoning amendment application to create a more long-term solution.
His report noted that district staff was recommending the temporary use permit be denied due to vacation accommodations not being a priority in town and the Official Community Plan discouraging any new short term rentals.
“It generally supports any efforts to encourage long-term housing and to avoid turning what could be long-term housing into nightly rentals,” he said, adding the district has not approved a short term rental application in over a decade.
“It’s my understanding, at least, that the last time that the district of Tofino added nightly rental permissions to a property that didn’t explicitly have nightly rental permissions was 2011,” he said. “It’s been over a decade since the district has actually added these permissions to a property.”
He said the district had not changed any bylaws or aspects of business licensing and that the removal of legal non conforming status is entirely under the province’s jurisdiction.
“We have no ability to add legal non conforming privileges to a property or take them away. That’s something that’s done at an entirely different level of government,” he said.
He added that while the site’s previous zoning had “wide open nightly rental permissions,” the applicants’ temporary use permit would be restricted to a two bedroom bed and breakfast.
Prior to Thicke’s presentation, the applicant Scott Payne spoke during the meeting’s public comment period and suggested misinformation had caused confusion.
He said the site has been zoned to operate a three bedroom short term rental for the last three years.
“We volunteered to give it up while being guided by staff to believe that we would be able to continue to operate as legal non conforming while providing our town with two family sized lots,” he said. “It feels like an obvious compromise in which the province has given you full ability to do.”
He also argued against the district’s statement that legal-non conforming uses would all be obliterated by Bill-35.
“We challenged that and confirmed that permissions can be written in at the local level, as we saw Ucluelet do for their community,” he said.
About 49 bed and breakfasts in Ucluelet faced losing their legally non conforming status earlier this year, despite Ucluelet not opting in to Bill-35, and the town’s municipal council amended a bylaw to help those properties obtain legal zoning to keep their rentals running.
Payne said he had reached out to staff and recorded his conversations, but felt there had been dishonesty on the district’s end.
“We have been honest and transparent with our intentions from the very beginning. We now personally understand why there is no confidence in those leading our town,” he said. “There is an outright lack of integrity, accountability and concern for the best interest of the taxpaying citizens in this town. We have no confidence in the outcome of this application, but hope that each of you use this as an opportunity to think deeper about the decisions you are making and how it affects all of us who call Tofino home.”
Mayor Dan Law said his experience of the rezoning process was much different than the applicant’s and that he did not feel it was transparent that bed and breakfast use would be part of the new site.
“Through the application process for the rezoning, I was fully under the impression that the applicants were voluntarily giving up short term rental permissions for these properties so that they could subdivide,” he said. “There was no indication in the reports or in the presentations that the applicants had fully intended and in fact, as they say, required a continuation of their nightly rental operation. So, from my perspective it was quite a shock to find out that that was in fact not the case…I just want to say right out and straight up that my experience with this rezoning was much different than presented by the applicants.”
He suggested council might not have approved the property’s rezoning if short term rentals had been part of that application and opposed backtracking to add them in.
Coun. Duncan McMaster said a key reason for his support of subdividing the property was that the applicant was giving up nightly rentals.
“I know when we came to discuss Bill 35, we deliberated on a lot of things and it was a hard decision. I think now, faced with a hard decision, we’ve got to stick to our guns,” he said.
Coun. Sarah Sloman agreed with the confusion over whether the applicant had intended to forfeit the site’s short term rental permissions, but added the rezoned subdivision had created higher long-term housing density potential on the property overall.
Coun. Al Anderson said it was a tough decision to make, but he supported staying consistent with council’s path to limit short term rentals in the community.
“This is a very difficult one for me because I’m very sympathetic with the applicant’s request and seeming misunderstanding,” he said.
Coun. Ali Sawyer agreed.
“There is compassion towards community members that are going through these things right now and we’re acting as best we can within the OCP. We do realize it’s a hard decision,” she said.
Sloman was the only vote opposed to denying the temporary use permit.
