To the editor:

With its tight restrictions on short-term rentals, Eagle Harbor is raising a big middle finger to tourists, businesses and the hard working folk of the Keweenaw. Short-term rentals play an important role in a healthy tourist-recreation economy, giving tourists a rich array of choices beyond traditional motels and resorts. Their guests help support local businesses and families.

The Township Board feels they have too many short-term rentals. That may be true in the small 2 sq. mile village of Eagle Harbor, where the density of rentals is 8/1 sq. mile.  However, outside of the village, there is only one rental per every 4 sq. miles, a 32-fold difference.  

Having allowed its own residents – including the Eagle Harbor township supervisor and two members of its Planning Commission – to create and profit from their own rentals, they now want to bar the door for everyone else outside the village.  Well, they might want to start in their own backyard and police themselves first.

Why is Eagle Harbor rushing to pass this ordinance, which grandfathers in the nine owners in the village who own 54% of all the short-term rentals in the township? Could it be about stifling competition?

Of course, they’ll deny that. They claim they want to preserve the “character” of Eagle Harbor, long a haven for well-to-do retirees who summer there for 3-4 months every year before returning to their permanent residences.  

It must be nice to have that quaint luxury. Meanwhile, the rest of the Keweenaw will have to subsidize that lifestyle, because by impeding short term rentals, the ripple effects of this ordinance will raise the tax burden for the rest of us.