A Jim Thorpe resident’s frustration over a bed-and-breakfast he says has been operating without adequate parking for two months prompted borough council to vote Thursday to close what he called a loophole in the borough’s zoning code.

Council voted unanimously to direct the borough solicitor to draft an amendment to Section 595 of the zoning ordinance that would require bed-and-breakfast establishments to ensure all guest vehicles park on the property, not on public streets, mirroring stricter language that already exists in the borough’s separate short-term rental ordinance.

The resident, Troy Brown, declined to name the specific business publicly but told council it had filed with the borough as a single-family dwelling before beginning to operate as a bed-and-breakfast.

“They’ve been operating illegally for two months and it hasn’t been shut down,” Brown said. “And I can tell you, they only have two parking spots and two garages, and cars can’t fit in the garage. So now the people that live there are parking on the streets on the weekends or whenever somebody shows up.”

Brown said he was not appearing before council to target one business but to fix an underlying problem before it spread.

“I’m trying to correct the problem so the problem doesn’t happen in other places,” Brown said. “There’s a loophole. There’s adequate parking and if you don’t keep them off the street, then we shouldn’t have these businesses. Because I’m tired of trying to find parking spots. I’m fighting for my neighbors.”

The current zoning ordinance requires bed-and-breakfasts to provide one off-street parking space per rentable room, one space per nonresident employee and two spaces for the owner’s dwelling unit. The word “adequate,” Brown argued, creates wiggle room that lets guests park on the street without triggering a violation. The borough’s short-term rental ordinance, by contrast, explicitly states that all renter and guest vehicles must park on the property and may not use any public right of way.

Council President Connor Rodgers read that language aloud to underscore the gap: “The maximum number of all vehicles allowed to be parked on the property, and the requirement that all renter parking must be on that property, and not in any private community or public right of way.”

Brown said that kind of language, not the “adequate” standard, is what he wanted applied to bed-and-breakfasts.

“I just wanted them to know you could complain about it to zoning and say, ‘Listen, you can’t have your cars in the street, or you’re going to lose your (bed-and-breakfast) license,’” Brown said. “Just like you have the three-strike rule in short-term rental.”

Borough solicitor James Nanovic cautioned that even with stronger language on the books, enforcement has its limits.

“What we can do is mandate that the owner of a bed-and-breakfast has to provide adequate parking space,” Nanovic said. “We can’t force people to park there.”

Council Vice President Mike Yeastedt raised the same concern.

“How do you enforce it?” Yeastedt said. “Can we legally say that the public cannot park on the public streets?”

But Brown pushed back, arguing the deterrent effect matters more than perfect enforcement.

“Most people aren’t going to park on the street,” Brown said. “I just want it in the wording before they start the business, so they know they have to park off the street.”

Nanovic also flagged a significant limitation of any ordinance change: It would not apply retroactively to existing permitted bed-and-breakfasts.

“If it’s an existing bed-and-breakfast, it’s probably grandfathered under the current language,” Nanovic said. “If it closes down or another one opens up, it would apply to that one, but it would not apply to an existing permitted bed-and-breakfast.”

Yeastedt noted there were permit applications already in the system that would also be unaffected by any future amendment.