By Grace Chinowsky/Lookout Eugene Springfield
Dunes City voters will decide in November whether to halt new short-term vacation rentals and impose new requirements for the properties, a controversial proposal that has dominated the small coastal town’s election cycle.
If passed, Measure 20-386 would bar the city from issuing permits for new rentals and require the existing 26 rentals to have an on-site host, among other changes.
But interpretations of the initiative as written vary, leaving details up to the discretion of the City Council — or the courts — if it is passed. Even before the measure hit the ballot, it had a checkered history within Dunes City, sparking debates over its intent and the interests of the players involved.
“It’s become very polarizing,” Dunes City Mayor Ed McGuire said in an interview. “It’s kind of become a one-issue campaign season.”
Dunes City, a town of 1,400 about 6 miles south of Florence, relies heavily on tourism. But the city is almost entirely residential, with only a few RV parks, motels and a restaurant and bar — a combination that led the city to cap the total number of short-term rentals like Airbnb and VRBO at 35 two years ago.
Existing city law requires short-term rentals to obtain permits and comply with operating requirements.
One is a rule requiring short-term rentals to have emergency contacts available to address concerns around the clock. If the owner lives outside the city, the emergency contact must live within a 30-minute drive.
Complaints about noise, occupancy or parking generally must first go to the short-term rental owner or emergency contact, who must “respond” within 30 minutes, according to Dunes City code. If the owner or contact does not respond, neighbors can file a complaint with the city, which determines whether a violation occurred.
The city can revoke permits or deny permit renewals for rentals that fail to address complaints that the city substantiates as violations. Dunes City hires one part-time compliance officer to enforce the rules.
City Administrator James Divis said the short-term rental program brings in about $88,000 per year between application fees, permit fees and a 5% monthly fee on the rental’s gross revenue.
“The short-term rental program takes quite a bit of time and energy from city staff trying to maintain it, license it, and then when there are problem properties, to have to cite them and go through appeals processes and all that,” Divis said.
‘They don’t know the neighbors’
Resident Linda John, who proposed Measure 20-386, says existing rules are not strict enough. She and her husband, Chris John, who is running to unseat McGuire as mayor, live across the street from a rental whose permit was recently revoked by the city due to multiple rule violations.
She said renters hosted large and noisy parties that exceeded short-term rental occupancy limits and caused problems with trash, traffic and trespassing.
She described their monthslong effort to gather evidence to file complaints on the property, including trying to count the number of guests who showed up to gatherings and recording the noise outside the property to determine if it exceeded decibel limits. She said she wrote the measure to prevent other neighbors from experiencing the issues she did.
“I just feel like a lot of them don’t care about the neighbors,” John said, referring to short-term rental property managers and owners. “They don’t know the neighbors. They don’t. They just want the money.”
John and dozens of others on both sides of the ballot measure have repeatedly brought their opinions about short-term rentals to the Dunes City Council.
At one February council meeting, Councilor Larry Farnsworth — who did not return requests from Lookout Eugene-Springfield for comment — introduced a resolution to ban all vacation rentals. The council, led by McGuire, tabled the resolution, then voted at a later meeting to reject it.
“It kind of died on the vine because we said ‘We’re really going to have to revisit the ordinance and not just try to wholesale ban something that wasn’t going to gain traction,’” McGuire said.
The failed resolution led John to introduce the city ballot measure in March. She collected 166 signatures.
If passed, the measure would require each short-term rental to have an on-site host living on the property during a guest’s stay, either in the main house or an accessory dwelling unit.
The measure also seeks to shift more responsibility onto the owner for addressing complaints. Under the measure, complaints would be directed to the owner, on-site host or emergency contact, not the city. The person responsible for the property would have 60 minutes to correct a violation, rather than the current 30-minute requirement to “respond” to a complaint.
“We’re zoned for residential, but it feels like we’re like we have a hotel next to us,” John said. “We don’t want, at least I don’t want it, and I think a lot of our neighbors feel the same way. They want it to be peaceful and quiet, and they don’t want to be the police.”
But there are doubts about how widespread these issues are.
Divis, the city administrator, said just one of the city’s dozens of short-term rentals — the one across the street from John — has been “problematic with ongoing, sustained complaints.”
“It’s really subjective because somebody can complain about any property any time,” he said. “Unless it’s an actual violation of city ordinance, the city won’t get involved with a complaint of that nature.”
Opposition campaign
Mike Worsham, an accountant who operates a 4-acre vacation rental on Woahink Lake where he hopes to live in retirement, has launched an opposition campaign against the measure.
He requested short-term rental data from the city and found that there have been six substantiated violations in the past two years — one in 2025 and five in 2026. Four of the five violations this year involved the rental property across the street from John.
He says the existing rules are strict enough and have already come a long way from what they once were. Dunes City had about 87 vacation rentals before spending years of “trial and error and implementation” to introduce new regulations in 2024, like the 35-rental cap, he said.
“I, as a vacation rental owner, I don’t agree with everything that they do, but honestly, I think they’re doing a pretty darn good job,” Worsham said.
Worsham said guests won’t want to rent a home with an on-site host, hurting their business, and voiced concerns that the measure, if passed, could dissolve the distinction between a complaint and a violation substantiated by the city.
The septic system is another concern. Dunes City has no infrastructure for sewer or water, so residents get their water exclusively from springs, wells or lakes, and their sewage goes exclusively into septic tanks.
Worsham said proponents of the measure have featured the phrase “septic danger” in their campaign materials, sparking fears about overflow and leakage. But Worsham and McGuire said there have been zero septic system leaks or overflow in Dunes City for years. John said there was one occurrence of a rental’s septic system leaking into the lake in 2024 and 2025, but Divis said he wasn’t familiar with the incident.
Worsham said five of the city’s roughly two dozen vacation-rental owners have listed their homes for sale since the measure was introduced.
He said the “vast majority” of the owners have had their homes for generations and still use them for personal use or plan to live there once they retire.
“I’m very certain that if this measure does pass, these short-term rentals will not be able to operate,” Worsham said. “That’s just the truth of the matter. You cannot operate a whole home rental with somebody living inside it and being present at all times, including overnight, when a guest is there. It doesn’t work.”
Points of confusion
If passed, the new rules are supposed to go into effect within 30 days of the election and could not be amended, revised or repealed without going up for another vote in an election, per the ordinance. Short-term rental owners would have to comply with new rules within a year.
But before that can happen, the Dunes City Council would need to approve an ordinance that carries out the ballot measure — which would require clarifying points of confusion in the text, the city administrator said.
“It says no new permit, but [the city has] already been authorized for 35,” Divis said. “So does that mean that 35 is the number, or does it mean that 25 is the number? These are things that City Council and perhaps the courts will have to work up.”
(In John’s interpretation, 35 is the number until the 30-day window passes and the new rules go into effect, blocking all new permits.)
Divis said the city would likely no longer be able to afford its short-term rental compliance officer if the measure passes because it is one of few cities in Oregon that doesn’t collect a local property tax. The broader financial impact of the initiative would be “negligible,” he said.
John suggested raising fees to make up for the loss in revenue, and said her husband Chris, who is running for mayor, would “make sure” the city doesn’t remove the compliance officer if elected.
“I thought it would be a slam dunk,” she said, of her measure. “But on social media, there’s been some people that have said they’re more for property rights. I don’t know how it’s going to go.”
This story was first published in Lookout Eugene Springfield and is used with permission