By KREIG KOHL
Special to the PRESS
The City Council of South Padre Island held a special meeting on April 11 to discuss a new short-term rental call center and program by Deckard Technologies LLC. According to the presentation given, the city has been working for the last few months with Deckard to improve the existing short-term rental program. The four components Deckard is wanting to implement are a systems overview, an outreach campaign, a complaint hotline and a public portal.
One of the parts of the system that Deckard finds crucial to the program is to reduce the barrier to entry. The first way they suggest to reduce this is good educational material. The second suggested way is usability, making it easier to pay taxes or registering businesses. The registration portal for this is already live.
The goal Deckard is trying to achieve with this new system is increased compliance. The largest issue they see in the short-term rental sector is non-compliance.
“You’re ten times more likely to see a complaint on an unregistered property than on a registered one,” Gimmenez, the speaker for Deckard said. “Once I see clients get into the high ninety percent compliance rate, I see that their code enforcement gets a lot less busy.”
The outreach program portion will be beginning in May 2023 as Deckard sees education as one of the keys to success. This program will continue as new operators are registered. Letters will be sent out to non-compliant operators using language approved by the city. Three letters will be sent out over a three-month period, after which the issue will be escalated to local enforcement if the letters have not been responded to.
As for the complaint hotline and webform, there is to be a number that can be called where live operators will be available at all times in both English and Spanish. Escalation of issues will also be passed to local enforcement as need be. The webform is a mobile-friendly platform and will accept audio, photographic and video files for evidence of issues. As with the hotline, escalation of issues will go to local enforcement as needed.
The public portal for South Padre Island is live, though the URL has not been released yet. When a member of the public goes to the portal, they will be presented with a map of the properties registered. When they select a property to look at, they will be given three pieces of information: the permit information, the property manager contact information and the property’s exact address.
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