It’s coming up on five months since the city of Sedona implemented a new hotline for those who have complaints regarding code violations by short-term vacation rentals in the area.

In September the city, in partnership with the third-party vendor LODGINGRevs, established a 24-hour hotline and incident reporting form that people can use to report concerns, issues or problems they have with a short-term rental.

“This should not only provide better response to short-term rental issues for residents but also gives us better and more complete information we can use to lobby the legislature and the governor for better laws and greater local control,” City Manager Justin Clifton said at the time of its launch.

Those who have issues with short-term rentals may call the 24-hour short-term rental hotline at 203-5110 or fill out the online incident reporting form on the city’s website at sedonaaz.gov/str.

Megan McRae, the city’s management analyst overseeing the program, said the short-term rental system was designed and implemented to follow the limited additional authority municipalities were granted with passage of House Bill 2672, which went into effect in October 2019.

In December 2019, the city officially contracted with LODGINGRevs to support its efforts to collect emer­gency contact information and customize the program to the unique challenges presented by state regulations and Sedona as a community, she said. By February of last year, LODGINGRevs had completed its initial discovery of short-term rental properties, and the city mailed the first notice of emergency contact registration require­ments in mid-March.

“While the project admittedly lost some momentum as city priorities shifted to the pandemic response, short-term rental owners continued to register their emergency contact information,” McRae said. “After follow-up notifications were mailed in late summer, the city had emergency contact information for over 50% of identi­fied short-term rental properties.”

When the hotline was launched in September, the city had about 65% of emergency contact information for short-term rentals in city limits. Today, it has over 80%.

“The last 20% have been the most challenging to gain compliance,” McRae said. “The city manager’s office, in collaboration with legal, police and code enforcement, will begin issuing citations for non-compliance with emergency contact registration next week.”

To date, the hotline has received 180 complaints. The majority of those calls — about 44% — are related to trash. This means either cans that are left out on the curb or sidewalk too long or trash that is strewn along the street either because of wildlife getting into it or the cans fell over.

Next have been noise complaints, accounting for about 32% of the calls.

The rest were related to others issues, ranging from parking, dark sky violations, potential illegal conversions and number of guests.

McRae said developing the script for the hotline staff was challenging. LODGINGRevs monitors short-term rentals in the Sedona area, which allows the city to have a pulse on how many short-term rentals there are in the area including the Village of Oak Creek and Oak Creek Canyon. Since emergency contact requirements are currently only enforced for properties within city limits, the city has a complex script that begins with the repre­sentative needing to determine if the property that is the subject of the complaint is in city limits, or outside of city limits in Yavapai or Coconino counties.

If a complaint is received about a property outside of city limits, the complainant is directed to call the Yavapai or Coconino counties’ sheriffs offices.

Once the representative has verified the complaint relates to a property within city limits, the staffer will take down all of the relevant information from the complainant and determine whether or not an emergency contact is on file for the property. If there is not, the complainant is notified that there is no emergency contact information available.

City staff reviews those complaints and initiates a response or resolution based on the nature of the complaint. For any complaints related to noise, the hotline staff reaches out to non-emergency police dispatch so they can respond whether there is an emergency contact or not.

McRae said if the property is identified as short-term rental within city limits that does have emergency contact information, the hotline staff makes two attempts to reach that person. If they can, they share all the details of the issue and inform the contact that Sedona city code requires telephonic or in-person contact with the occu­pants of the property and the city or the city’s designee within 60 minutes of a call for an incident.

The emergency contact is instructed to call the hotline back to report the resolution to the issue. If hotline staff does not make direct contact, they leave a message detailing the issue and requirements. City staff does addi­tional follow up as needed, such as sharing a trash or dark sky complaint with the Code Enforcement Department to investigate further.

If a call comes in that is of a more serious nature, the caller is instructed to call 911.

“The city has received mixed responses from owners and short-term rental property managers alike,” McRae said. “Some are very proactive in quickly responding to and resolving issues, seeking to ensure their guests are treating their property and the neighbors with respect. Others are frustrated with the calls if they perceive them to be non-emergency, such as trash strewn in the neighborhood.

“As an example, for one complaint regarding over­flowing trash the notes from the hotline representative stated the emergency contact said they ‘Do not want to be called for this kind of thing and are only to be contacted if the house is on fire.’”