01 - The Challenge

Regulating without choking the economy that sustains the town

By 2022, the average home in Telluride sold for $2.9 million, a price that demanded a household income of $650,000, in a county where the real median income for a three-person household was just $90,000.

Telluride is a town of roughly 2,160 residents that lives off tourism. In winter, the town runs on skiing. Telluride Ski Resort sits right there, with more than 2,000 skiable acres, around 150 runs, ice skating in the town park, and dog sled rides. Once the snow melts, from May through September, the town transforms with a new festival almost every week. Bluegrass, jazz, film, hot air balloons, wine.

The jurisdiction has spent decades figuring out how to regulate short-term rentals without losing the tourism economy it depends on. The town has been asking itself this question since the 1980s, passing ordinances and making adjustments along the way (Figure 1).

The pandemic pushed interest rates to historic lows in the years that followed. Mortgage rates hit a record 2.65% in January 2021, and many people saw short-term rentals as an investment opportunity. This accelerated the price surge described above.

In 2021, a group of residents pushed a ballot measure to cap STR licenses at 400. Before it reached the ballot, the Town Council declared an emergency moratorium freezing new licenses. That November, voters rejected the 400 cap and instead approved doubling license fees, dedicating the increase to affordable housing, and pausing new licenses for two years.

In 2023, before renewing that pause, the Town commissioned a dedicated study to determine just how important STRs really were to the local economy. The study's key findings:

With that evidence in hand, the Council chose not to renew the license cap. Instead, it approved a new administrative fee structure, a $288 Administrative Fee per license and an $857 Regulatory Fee per bedroom, to administer the program with the traceability that Telluride's existing STR taxes required. That traceability now spans a longstanding Town Sales Tax, the Excise Tax for Affordable Housing (2.5%, in place since 2019), the Excise Tax for Lodging Rentals, and the Town Lodger's Tax (in place since 2022) (see Figure 2).

02 - The SOLUTION

One system for four taxes and a new fee structure

Telluride had already been working with Deckard since 2022, using Rentalscape and Outreach Letter campaigns for property identification and license compliance. When the Town ratified its new fee structure in 2023, the partnership expanded to include the Tax Payment Portal, giving the Town a single system to manage both its existing STR taxes and the new fee structure.

The Tax Portal module automates the calculation, collection, and remittance of transient occupancy and lodging taxes at jurisdiction-configured rates. It connects tax calculation directly to collection, with penalties applied automatically for late or missing payments. It is integrated with the Town's existing Rentalscape, Registration Portal, and Outreach Letter infrastructure, letting the Town track each of its four tax streams (Town Sales Tax, Excise Tax for Affordable Housing, Excise Tax for Lodging Rentals, and Town Lodger's Tax) with precision.

"I think Rentalscape does a great job of tracking the four different tax buckets. It hasn’t made the process any harder. It works well, and I haven’t had any issues with it"

 

Ashley Berard, Business Licensing & STR Program Administrator, Town of Telluride.

The following section shows how that system performed in its first year.

03 - results

Precision that held steady under pressure

In its first full year, Telluride's STR program generated $7.86 million in total revenue: $5.92 million in STR tax and $1.93 million in permits and renewals. Deckard's platform processes that entire flow, matching listings against parcels, automating tax calculations, and distinguishing licensed from unlicensed activity:

The program's first-year performance breaks down as follows:

That infrastructure proved its value when Telluride faced one of its toughest stretches in recent memory. In late 2025 and early 2026, the region saw its worst early-season snowfall in over 30 years, layered on top of a 13-day ski patrol strike that shut the mountain down completely during peak holiday week. One local restaurant owner put it plainly: "It feels like COVID... it's almost a ghost town downtown." Another said her business saw a single sale on one day during the strike.

STR tax fell 24.3% year over year between January and May 2026. But thanks to the system's traceability, the Town could tell exactly what was happening. Licensed operators kept remitting faithfully regardless of demand swings; it was simply less tourist activity to tax. By May 2026, as the season normalized, STR tax was already back to growing 9.9% year over year, the first positive month of the year.

As Figure 4 shows, each stream has held its proportional share of total STR tax consistently between the full 2025 year and the partial 2026 year-to-date period (January–May), confirming the system applies each rate accurately regardless of season or volume.

Figure 4: Tax by stream, 2025 vs 2026 YTD. Source: Deckard Technologies, Internal documents. 

The system also shows where the remaining opportunity sits. Of 698 active STR properties observed, 598 operate with a valid license, a small and well-defined compliance gap rather than a systemic one.

"The Tax Portal’s weekly delinquency report is helpful. I can go through it line by line, see who has past-due taxes and identify where we may need to follow up"

 

Ashley Berard, Business Licensing & STR Program Administrator, Town of Telluride, CO.

And Telluride's annual renewal cycle concentrates that administrative load into a predictable year-end window instead of spreading it across the calendar, a structural strength that Deckard's automated reminders are built to support.

The licensing program, meanwhile, has kept growing steadily: from 732 active licenses in 2019 to 769 in 2023, and 831 in 2026, supporting orderly growth in the town's lodging inventory.

04 - what's next

A growing program with visibility into what comes next

May 2026 already marked a return to year-over-year growth, with STR tax up 9.9% (see Figure 5). The months ahead will be the clearest signal of how complete that recovery is, with Classic STR (roughly three quarters of the program's tax revenue) the category to watch.

Figure 5: Monthly STR tax, January–May 2025 versus 2026. Source: Deckard Technologies, Internal documents.

The platform also flags where to focus attention. Classic STR remains the foundation of total revenue through scale, but the 8 Lodging licenses carry outsized weight individually, generating nearly 20% of the program's total tax at 23 times the Classic STR average per license, a concentration worth managing closely as the Town heads into its next renewal window.