SANDPOINT — The city did a complete overhaul of its short-term rental ordinance across a multitude of City Council meetings in 2017, and while many issues were addressed, tracking and permit compliance were still a challenge.

To address those challenges, the city, as well as Bonner County, recently began using Bear Cloud Software’s flagship product, STR Helper, to manage discovery and reporting of each short-term rental.

“We are just getting rolling with this software-as-service solution,” said Sandpoint planning and economic development director Aaron Qualls. “The software tracks vacation rentals by searching various online vacation rental marketplaces such as Airbnb, VRBO, HomeAway, etc. and pairing them with other public records and Geographical Information Systems data in order to geolocate them and provide contact information.”

The results are evaluated by STR Helper staff and updated for the city to review, Qualls said. Sandpoint is also using the software to generate a letter communicating deadlines and registration procedures to property owners as well as tracking compliance. STR Helper’s online registration portal ensures property owners can easily register and understand requirements of the governing municipality. In addition, STR Helper’s manned 24/7 complaint hotline enables citizens to quickly report short- term rental related nuisance complaints and enables the city to easily track each complaint.

“This SasS solution, along with others like it, was evaluated during the process of updating our short-term rental ordinance to ensure that what was adopted is enforceable in a way that is cost-neutral to the city,” Qualls said.

John Sphuler, CSO of Bear Cloud Software, developed the software in 2015 while serving as mayor of Garden City, Utah. Sandpoint and Bonner County are not alone in their struggles with short-term rental regulation, as it is a “big deal” in cities and towns across the nation, Sphuler said. He didn’t initially develop the software as a product, however, as he was simply trying to solve a problem in Garden City, which has 800 year-round residents, and about 25,000 summertime people, he said. So there were a lot of vacation rentals to keep track of, and very few city staff to take on the task.

“I have three people in my office who were going crazy trying to figure this out,” Sphuler said. “I was a software guy for a long time, so I thought, you know what, let’s work smart, so that was kind of the genesis of the development of the software.

When the Utah League of Cities and Towns learned that Garden City’s compliance rate went from 40 percent to 100 percent, Sphuler said they wanted to know more about what the city was doing. Spuhler said the software was developed in 2015, and was put out as a product around mid-year of 2016. There are now about 80 cities and counties using STR Helper, he said.

“It was really built for small communities to get their arms around it,” Spuhler said. “Sandpoint has a very good ordinance, and very thoughtfully done. We have literally been in so many meetings, and what they did in Sandpoint was really well done in terms of their ordinance and how they are looking at these, and it is very sophisticated — that is really unique for a small community.”

Mary Malone can be reached by email at mmalone@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow her on Twitter @MaryDailyBee.