Council Overhauls Short-Term Rental Rules, Raises Member Pay for First Time in 25 Years

The Walnut Creek City Council used its Sept. 1 meeting to tackle two policy items that had languished for years — directing staff to scrap the city's outdated bed-and-breakfast permitting framework for short-term rentals and introducing an ordinance to more than double councilmember compensation from $650 to $1,600 a month, the first increase since 2002.

• Council unanimously directs staff to allow short-term rentals and replace the CUP-based B&B ordinance with a streamlined operator permit, sending the framework to Planning Commission for community input

• Ordinance introduced to raise councilmember pay to $1,600/month, effective Dec. 2, 2026, when the new council term begins — first increase in nearly 25 years

• DUI arrests nearly double year-over-year as police chief reports 89 arrests through September, up from 49 in 2025

• Measure O aquatics center hits construction milestone with pool excavation complete and gunite scheduled for September

• New trash hauler contracts bring pickup day changes for roughly 20,000 of 68,000 households across six cities starting in March, with $10 overage charges coming in November

• $1.8M recreation software contract approved after councilmember pulls item from consent to question omitted transaction fees

Why it matters: An estimated $169,000 in annual transient occupancy tax revenue is slipping through the cracks because the city's existing permitting process is so burdensome that virtually no short-term rental operators bother to comply. All five councilmembers agreed the current system is broken and directed staff to build something that actually works.