6A • January 26, 2018 | Cannon Beach Gazette | cannonbeachgazette.com
Cannon Beach rejects tax deal with Airbnb
City concerned
about fairness,
transparency
By Brenna Visser
Cannon Beach Gazette
Bucking a growing trend,
the City Council has decided
not to pursue a voluntary tax
agreement with Airbnb where
the vacation rental giant would
have paid the city a quarterly
lump sum of lodging taxes.
The responsibility for pay-
ing the tax is with the property
manager of a vacation rental.
With more and more transac-
tions happening online, cities
often have difficulty keeping
track of whether rentals that
use Airbnb are registered and
paying their fair share.
To help address that con-
cern, Airbnb has contracted
with more than 360 juris-
dictions around the world in
voluntary tax agreements,
which promise to pay cities
COLIN MURPHEY/EO MEDIA GROUP
Vacation rentals, including many listed on Airbnb, are
common in Cannon Beach.
100 percent of the lodging tax
owed, including from vaca-
tion rentals not registered with
the city, under the condition
that the vacation rental own-
ers remain anonymous. If the
agreement were in place last
year, 150 rentals the company
has on record would have paid
$110,000 to Cannon Beach.
Unlike other lodging in-
termediaries like Travelocity
or Expedia, Airbnb only pays
lodging taxes directly to cities
through these volunteer agree-
ments. Seaside entered into an
agreement with Airbnb last
summer, joining more than
20 other cities and counties in
Oregon.
While the possibility of re-
ceiving previously untapped
revenue was attractive, city
councilors ultimately took
issue with the lack of trans-
parency, which would make
it impossible for the city’s fi-
nance director Laurie Sawrey
to track whether Airbnb is
accurately reporting all of its
revenue.
Sawrey said the agreement
would also restrict her ability
to audit Airbnb to only once
every four years, impeding
the city from enforcing other
codes related to safety.
“In Cannon Beach, au-
diting is a practice we’ve al-
ways employed. Our last audit
showed inconsistencies with
gross rents, and we were able
to change an ordinance to ad-
dress it,” Sawrey said. “The
ability to audit is also a coun-
cil priority.”
Airbnb
spokeswoman
Laura Rillos said these agree-
ments make it easier for hosts
to comply with local tax laws,
help create an even playing
field for short-term rentals and
hotels and streamline the tax
collection process while al-
lowing for audits.
“We remain willing to
discuss the possibility of an
agreement with the city of
Cannon Beach, so the city can
receive the full economic ben-
efits of short-term rentals,”
Rillos said.
Cannon Beach has joined
an emerging skepticism about
these agreements in the past
year. Astoria has been hesi-
tant to allow Airbnb to collect
lodging taxes on the city’s be-
half, even as city staff strug-
gle to enforce city rules and
collect all the taxes owed. At
a work session in December,
staff brought up concerns
about not knowing who is op-
erating these types of vacation
rentals.
Hoteliers like Cynthia
and Stephen Malkowski of
the Arch Cape Inn came out
against Seaside’s agreement
because of what they saw as
unfair treatment.
Jason Brandt, president and
CEO of the Oregon Restaurant
& Lodging Association, said
he dissuades cities from enter-
ing these agreements. There
should be an equal playing
field in the marketplace, and
that all lodging should be held
to the same standard to ensure
cities have accurate informa-
tion, he added.
“We consider ourselves
a partner with cities to make
sure revenue is collected so
cities can promote tourism,”
Brandt said.
Seaside, however, saw the
agreement as a way to col-
lect money the city otherwise
would have never received,
said Public Information Offi-
cer Jon Rahl.
“Previously, if you booked
a room through Airbnb, you’d
get a notice of a state lodging
tax, but no notice of the local.
You were just paying $1.80 on
a $100 rental,” Rahl said. “It
was really left up to the host to
collect the local tax separately
and charge the person after the
fact or take it out of their own
pockets.”
Literary figure, Cannon Beach resident Ursula K. Le Guin dies
Le Guin from Page 1A
Early in her literary career,
a frustrating period of rejec-
tions gave way to a venture
into a new genre.
The author’s success was
immediate. Science fiction
opened Le Guin up to writing
not only about aliens but from
“alien” points of view, The
New Yorker wrote in a 2017
profile.
From ‘Searoad’ to
Cannon Beach
Le Guin’s literary output
— poems, short stories, chil-
dren’s books, novels — often
depicts futuristic worlds, using
fantasy settings and tropes to
confront serious human is-
sues: politics, spirituality, en-
vironmentalism, then-Cannon
Beach Gazette reporter Erick
Bengel wrote in a 2014 profile.
She often incorporated
Cannon Beach into her poems,
sometimes by name and other
times through coastal imagery.
“I loved it from the start,”
Le Guin said in a 2017 inter-
view. “Way, way back, in the
’60s. It was a little artists’
hideaway town. The sculptor
Joe Police was mayor. There
were no mega-mansions
owned by out-of-state mil-
lionaires, no big ugly cement
walls on North Beach, it had
its own hardware stores and
indie drugstore and Osborne’s
excellent grocery. It was more
self-contained and a good
deal, well, gnarlier. But it’s
still pretty gnarly, thank good-
ness.”
Her 1991 novel, “Searoad:
Chronicles of Klatsand,” por-
trayed a community that re-
sembled Cannon Beach. The
novel is chock-a-block with
familiar imagery: the kite
shop, the year-round Christ-
mas store, Tom’s Grill and the
volunteer library.
“I mentioned Cannon
Beach in one of the stories
so that people would know
that Klatsand is NOT (quite)
CB,” Le Guin wrote in a 2017
email. “Klatsand has a lot of
elements of CB, but it also has
bits of Seaside and Manzanita
and Nehalem.”
Rex and Diane Amos of
Cannon Beach met the Le
Guins when they visited their
house in Northwest Portland
to share a mutual love of mu-
sic.
“Diane brought her up-
stairs to meet me and to give
her a tour of the house,” Amos
recalled. “When we met, Ur-
sula asked me about my art.
I told her that many people
found my stuff radical and
provoking. She laughed and
said, ‘Good, we need more of
that. Keep it up.’ Of course,
for that bit of encouragement I
liked her immediately.”
LeGuin’s
“No Time
to Spare,”
released in
December.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN
HARCOURT
ty at large in “a giant way.”
“She spoke her truth,”
Ayres said. “I would say it was
her and Terry Brooks: Those
were our two literary luminar-
ies from Cannon Beach.”
Ayres said Le Guin’s voice
when it came to writing about
women offered clarity in her
own life.
Cannon Beach resident
Rainmar Bartl remembers Le
Guin and her husband stop-
ping by a weekly community
coffee that happens at Cheri’s
icies that deny the very prin-
ciples our republic is founded
on, makes such a resolution
necessary,” Le Guin said in
an interview with the Cannon
Beach Gazette.
‘Freedom’
In later years, Le Guin’s
work became increasingly po-
litical.
At 85, she was the surprise
star of the National Book
Awards in 2014 with a speech
that encouraged people to be
masters of their own desti-
ny, like a Le Guin character
whose dreams can alter reality.
Le Guin was given the
Medal for Distinguished Con-
tribution to American Letters.
She accepted the medal on
behalf of her fellow writers
of fantasy and science fiction,
who, she said, had been “ex-
cluded from literature for so
long” while literary honors
went to the “so-called real-
ists.”
Her most recent book,
“No Time to Spare: Thinking
About What Matters,” was re-
leased to widespread acclaim
in December.
It is Le Guin’s message to
future generations of writers
and readers that will be re-
membered by her many fans.
In the National Book
Awards speech, she called
upon her fellow artists to resist
the temptation to kowtow to
corporate pressures.
Freedom, she said, will be
their reward.
The author received a
standing ovation.
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Le Guin became a part
of Ayres’ life after Le Guin
moved into the same neigh-
borhood as her grandparents
decades ago.
For Ayres, Le Guin’s poi-
gnant sense of humor paired
with a “clear, uncompromis-
ing voice,” impacted the liter-
ary community and communi-
Cafe whenever she
was in town.
Bartl remembers
her as a “very unpre-
suming person” with
“very strong values.”
Though she didn’t
live on the coast, she
cared about Cannon
Beach and took an
interest in city affairs,
Bartl said. “She was
very generous with
her time, especially
as someone at this level of
world renown. I remember she
would come and give talks,
read from her books. She
would make herself available
for these community events
when she could.”
Le Guin publicly supported
an immigrant inclusivity reso-
lution that ultimately was pre-
sented and passed by the city
in 2017.
“It is unfortunate that our
current federal government,
by attempting to enforce pol-
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