Pacific Grove is joining multiple neighboring cities in raising penalties against illegal short-term rentals.

The City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to raise the fines for each violation, clarify language in the ordinance and added a hardship provision for people who may be facing economic problems.

The city’s position contends that illegal short-term rentals are a risk to public health and safety and under that assumption the council is allowed to make changes to the fines.

Under the new ordinance, the owner of an illegal short-term rental will be fined $1,500 for the first violation, $3,000 for the second violation within a year and $5,000 for any additional violations within 12 consecutive months.

The ordinance also details what constitutes as a violation or threat to public health and safety, including exceeding the occupancy limit, failure to dispose of waste and violating the city’s noise ordinance, amongst several others.

City attorney Brian Pierik said a summary and the full ordinance will be posted online.

The council will also request an extension for completing the process of potentially moving to a by-district election.

The council voted unanimously to declare its intent to start procedures, direct the city manager to create a tentative timeline for public hearings, request an extension, and sign an agreement with National Demographic Corporation for demographer services.

The extension, if agreed to by the League of United Latin American Citizens, would give the council until March 31 to complete the public hearing process.Pierik said the extention would be beneficial to the city because the holiday season is coming up and would likely affect the public turnout. Both council members and members of the public have stressed they want Pacific Grove residents informed about this process before the ballot measure is created.

The extension will also allow more time for planning in the long run, because it would have to be in place on the next election cycle in 2026.

“The time extension shouldn’t create an issue, because the timeline we are talking about isn’t going to impact any elections before March 31, 2025,” Pierik said.

The next steps will be to retain demographer information to be presented to the council and public before any maps can be drafted.

The public information sessions will occur before the maps are drawn. During these public hearings both the council members and residents will have the opportunity to go more in-depth and ask specific questions.