Rehoboth Beach officials target residential pools

Rehoboth Beach's elected officials may vote next month on a law that would require all residential pools to be licensed, and would let the city yank those licenses if the properties are cited for noise or nuisance violations.

In a workshop Friday afternoon to consider the law, several Rehoboth commissioners reiterated their unease with the number of vacation homes with pools that, they said, generate boorish, loud behavior on the part of their tenants.

"While we are a vacation community, we are a residential community first," said Lorraine Zellers, a commissioner. "This is our town. We live here and we welcome you to come, we do. But we have rules. Everybody is welcome. But this is our home."

Mayor Sam Cooper has floated another mechanism for controlling poolside behavior: requiring pools at rented homes to be locked away from renters' use entirely. That is not included in the draft ordinance reviewed Friday, but in exchanges with each other, several commissioners said they support it.

"I'd have to say I'm leaning toward the mayor's proposal," Zellers said. "The $1,000 to $2,000 extra you get for rentals [of pool-equipped homes,] I don't think we need to accommodate your profit margins."

During Memorial Day weekend, many tourists complained that a new noise ordinance, allowing police to cite people for creating "plainly audible" disturbances, caught them unawares and was enforced with a heavy hand. Police investigated 10 noise complaints over the weekend, Police Chief Keith Banks said Thursday, more than they did for the same weekend in 2014, but only issued a citation at one property.

The town also caught unwelcome publicity after multiple citations for public drinking and urination were given Saturday at Poodle Beach, a popular place for gay visitors and residents to congregate.

The pool ordinance, which has not yet been brought up for a vote, was written to address "an increasing proliferation of noise and raucous behavior associated with swimming pools, hot tubs, and spas," its preamble says. It would compel property owners whose homes have pools to obtain licenses from the city in order to use them; pools at rented would be charged $50 a year for the license, and the city would require them to be maintained by professional operators.

The city manager could suspend a pool license "for any violation of this chapter or other code," including noise violations or disturbing the peace. Pool licenseholders could challenge the suspensions. The license requirement, if enacted, would take effect next July at the soonest.

A commissioner, Toni Sharp, said she was sympathetic to Cooper's idea on locked covers for rented pools, beyond the proposed licensing regime. "If we walk away from these meetings with the status quo, that's not what was brought to us in the first place, to keep the status quo," Sharp said.

Some in the audience at the meeting cautioned the town it risked driving visitors away. "I think you're moving in the wrong direction," said Derek Turner, of New York City. "I'm renting a property with a pool, and that's why it's a valuable place to be." Cooper, responding to Turner, was unmoved. "I appreciate your position, but you've missed eight months of discussion," the mayor told him. "I appreciate your input but I don't feel the need to explain the whole thing."

In an interview, Turner said he and friends had rented an eight-bedroom house on New Castle Street for Memorial Day last year, and again this year.

Last year they enjoyed it, he said, but this year a neighbor made frequent calls to police about noise. Turner contended only one of the complaints, made late at night about people in a hot tub, was valid; it led to a citation from police for noise.

"One time we were just chatting in the backyard, 9 p.m., six people sitting around talking," Turner said. "We were flabbergasted when the police showed up. This ruined our vacation."

One commissioner, Kathy McGuiness, fervently argued against moving toward banning renters from using pools. "Because a home has a pool and there's noise, it doesn't mean the noise came from the pool," she said. "Half of these complaints were either owner-occupied, or no pool. It's a knee-jerk reaction. We can do better as a city."

But Cooper, again, was unconvinced. "I think what you just said totally ignores what we've heard in this room for the past eight months," he said, and was "not acknowledging the nexus" between pools and bothersome noise.

Cooper said the earliest the commissioners may vote on the pool-license ordinance would be June.

Contact James Fisher at (302) 983-6772, on Twitter @JamesFisherTNJ or jfisher@delawareonline.com.