St. Joe-Benton Harbor News

After a rough few months for New Buffalo and its new mayor, the city council plans to meet in a special closed session to discuss a federal lawsuit over attempts to regulate short-term rentals in the town.

City officials claim they're not trying to outlaw short-term rentals, which are important to New Buffalo's tourism industry, according to reporting by Michigan Capitol Confidential.

"Many people who own multiple properties have done a horrible job," Mayor John Humphrey said during a city council meeting, reported Michigan Capitol Confidential. "We have a lot of people here who are willfully failing to follow the law. The goal is to keep people who are irresponsible from renting their homes."

New Buffalo Welcome Center | Wikimedia Commons

Opponents of the ordinance don't see it that way.

"There are two main industries here, real estate development and tourism,” short-term rental property owner William Lenga told Michigan Capitol Confidential. "Instead of putting up a welcome mat (for tourism), you're putting up barbed wire."

The controversy over short-term rental regulation in the city is not the only problem New Buffalo has faced in recent months. In December, New Buffalo City Manager Dave Richards died, according to a Facebook post by the New Buffalo City Police Department.

The previous month, the city council chose Humphrey as mayor after he and two other new members were elected. Humphrey's run for a city council seat included a GoFundMe fundraiser the previous summer to raise $1,000 for his campaign.

Humphrey ran for city council specifically because of problems with short-term rentals in New Buffalo, according to his GoFundMe campaign. He claimed he'd been "fighting for residents' rights at our city council" and that "two sets of rules" exist in the town, one for New Buffalo residents and one for out-of-state property and business owners.

"Our town's inability to manage the short-term rentals is ruining the quality of life of our residential neighborhoods, the gutting and outsourcing of public services, the failure of managing our public works and protections for our lake shore," Humphrey said in his GoFundMe campaign. "Residents’ complaints on basic issues are routinely ignored, either through the inability or unwillingness to enforce the basic laws of our town charter, from parking regulations to code enforcement. Our municipality suffers from a complete lack of transparency and terrible communication with the public on important issues to all residents."

Once he was appointed mayor, Humphrey and the rest of city council endured negative comments from residents and property owners. The city also received "nuisance FOIA" requests, Humphrey said in a Feb. 12 post to his Facebook page. The post also included an update about work on the new short-term rental ordinance. That update included information about fee structure changes, removal of a moratorium and creation of a zoning cap of how many short-term rentals would be allowed in New Buffalo.

"Unfortunately, due to the emotional, misunderstood reaction to that meeting, the city has spent over 100 employee hours of your taxpayer dollars processing FOIA requests for information that is, for the most part, either published as public record or publicly available information through normal means," Humphrey said, according to his Facebook post.