MANATEE COUNTY – At the urging of members of the district’s fire prevention bureau, West Manatee Fire Rescue’s board has approved changing the status of short-term rentals in the district from residential to commercial.
Fire Marshal Rodney Kwiatkowski first presented the idea to the district’s commissioners during a January meeting. He said that under the Florida Fire Code, the district has the ability to reclassify the properties for assessment and enforcement purposes. Under the code, short-term rental properties are known as transient lodging, a commercial classification.
Changing the classification of the properties is estimated to bring in an additional $1 million annually in assessment revenue. The funds will be used to implement an inspection program.
All short-term rental properties in the district will be inspected for fire safety, including where smoke alarms are placed throughout the property, availability and location of fire extinguishers, an easily visible floorplan of the structure with exits clearly identified and other safety measures. Kwiatkowski said that while owners may need to implement some new fire safety measures, they shouldn’t expect to have to do something costly, such as install sprinkler systems.
With the new program comes the hiring of a new fire inspector and administrative assistant for the fire prevention arm of the district to handle the increased workload. The district plans to post the jobs immediately with hiring and onboarding anticipated in July. Kwiatkowski said that there is enough money in the current fiscal year to cover salaries and purchase of new equipment for the new hires until the Oct. 1 beginning of the new fiscal year, when inspections are anticipated to begin.
During a Feb. 21 commission meeting, Kwiatkowski said that he had received good feedback from stakeholders in the local rental industry. The main negative feedback he said he’d received was concerning the percentage increase, not the dollar increase,
in annual fire assessment rates. The rate for commercial properties is about twice what it is for residential properties in the district.
District personnel also will be working with already-established vacation rental inspection programs, such as the one in Holmes Beach, to make sure there’s no overlap of efforts and rental owners’ businesses are disrupted as little as possible.
