GovTech · Short-Term Rentals · Outreach
Lessons from Our July Webinar with the City of Norman, OK
How a Three-Person Team Built an 85% Compliance Program
By Matt Davis August 6, 2026 6 min read
Norman, Oklahoma is a college town where the population nearly triples once you count everyone tailgating outside the stadium on a home football Saturday. That detail opened the conversation between Eric Brandenburg, Senior Director of Client Experience at Deckard Technologies, and Jeanne Snider, Assistant City Attorney for the City of Norman, our featured guest for the July 22, 2026 webinar.
That seasonal pattern, concentrated into a handful of weekends a year, is the reality against which Norman built its STR compliance program, going from a 2020 ordinance with no enforcement infrastructure behind it, to a resolution rate near 85% today, with a minimal team.
The Norman Story
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Norman, a college baseball and football city that built its compliance program almost from scratch.
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Ms. Snider described the starting point as a personal research project in which she was figuring out what to do about neighbor complaints, with no program behind it yet. That was the first step before Norman passed its STR ordinance in 2020. She mentioned:
"I was where maybe some of you are, about 6 or 7 years ago. I was starting my research on how do I start managing for the city of Norman all these short-term rentals [...] We had another monitoring service for a few years, but in late 2023 we switched to Deckard and we've seen a great improvement on our compliance." — Jeanne Snider, Assistant City Attorney, City of Norman, OK
That research, paired with the right data, became the foundation for the team running the program today, small, but built on consistency as much as on information.
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A three-person team, none of them dedicated to this full-time.
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Ms. Snider (the city attorney), Ms. Mindy in finance, and Ms. Janita in code enforcement, each with more than 25 years at the city, took on STR issues as a team, without stepping away from their main roles. In the webinar, Ms. Snider describes the process as an internal triage system: she's the first line, receiving every email and first-time phone call from operators. From there, she coordinates with Ms. Janita and Ms. Mindy to figure out, case by case, how to locate and follow up with each property. That division of labor is something they refined over the years, one that runs alongside the letters Deckard sends out on their behalf, as Ms. Snider puts it:
"I don't even worry about all that. Deckard takes care of all that. They send out the letters. We start getting better compliance." — Jeanne Snider, Assistant City Attorney, City of Norman, OK
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The hardest work happens before the third letter.
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61% of Norman's cases are resolved after the first letter alone, the rest move into a second warning, and it's there, Ms. Snider says, that the team spends most of its time: direct calls, tracking down owners through utility records, chasing down occupancy tax. That effort is likely why, out of 235 letters over two years, only one property ever reached a Final Warning. Ms. Snider sums up her approach this way:
"I just am concerned with getting people licensed. I don't have the numbers, but since we joined Deckard, we've had a huge increase in compliance." — Jeanne Snider
Nearly two-thirds of the properties that need a second warning still end up licensed, it just takes more calls, and more time, to get there.
What the Audience Asked
The audience's questions centered on what happens behind the letters: finding owners, collecting tax correctly, and giving operators and the city a shared place to track it all.
What happens if the owner doesn't live at the property and doesn't respond to the letters?
Letters go to the tax address tied to the parcel. When that's not enough, Ms. Snider turns to utility records to track the owner down directly. Eric explained this is rarely necessary: Deckard starts from the parcel information, which points to the property's tax billing address, that's almost always where the notice lands, even if the owner doesn't live on-site. When even that address doesn't lead to contact, Deckard has other ways to help the city reach the owner.
Doesn't Airbnb remit the occupancy tax (TOT) automatically?
Norman deliberately chose not to hand that collection over to the platforms. Ms. Snider explained that doing so would cost them audit capability: they wouldn't know which property paid, or how much, since Airbnb and VRBO remit a single consolidated check with no breakdown. Norman's system, instead, cross-checks what the operator reports against what shows up on the property's booking calendar, which lets them catch discrepancies.
Is there a portal where operators can track their permit and renewal status?
Yes, a single place where they see upcoming renewals, taxes due, and application status, including downloading the license PDF once approved.
Can the system handle a company managing multiple properties? ?
Yes, with bulk renewal and payment via spreadsheet upload, and dual access for both owner and property manager on the same property.
Does the system handle neighbor complaints?
Yes, Rentalscape includes a neighbor complaint module, with different levels of response and everything logged in a tab within the system. Norman uses it, and while Ms. Snider doesn't get many complaints through that channel, she noted that this visibility also gave the city council more comfort when they were deciding whether to allow short-term rentals at all.
"It made our city council feel better about the product and how we were tracking short-term rentals — that neighbors could access that complaint portal gave them a little bit of comfort when they were discussing if we were going to allow short-term rentals or not." — Jeanne Snider
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What the webinar made clear is that what sets Norman's program apart is how three people with other full-time jobs turned Deckard's letters and data into something to act on. The program never needed a large team or heavy lift from the jurisdiction, it runs on what Deckard identifies and delivers, and what the city's own team decides to do with it.
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If Norman's story sounds like your jurisdiction's problem too, see how Outreach with Rentalscape would work for you.
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