Saratoga Springs Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran has promoted himself as the successful architect of short-term rental management. In fact, his campaign mailing focuses on this as one of his main achievements.
A casual scrutiny of what he has actually done and not done reveals a very different story.
Moran had the city purchase the software for a portal to be used by short-term rental owners to register with the city. It was purchased on February 6, 2024. The cost for using the software for the first year was $56,000.00. It was not deployed, so the city wasted the money for that year. On February 6, 2025, the city paid for the next year in the amount of $55,000.00. By his own admission, the portal will not be functional until the end of the year, so that is another $55,000.00 wasted.
During this period, he successfully received support from the city’s civil service to hire an additional staff member to handle STRs. As the software has not been deployed, hiring anyone was premature. He also successfully raised the salaries of employees in his office because the alleged workload for STR was added to their responsibilities.
Accounts employee X was hired on July 26, 2023, at a salary of $66,668.00. On February 20,2024, her salary was increased to $83,380.00 to compensate her for her additional duties with STR. The new budget crafted by Minita Sanghvi raises her salary to $92,687.00
Moran has routinely announced at City Council meetings one date after another that the STR software would be deployed. In fact, on October 20, 2025, at the League of Women Voters forum, he announced it would be up the next day. Of course it was not. The latest date he has announced is now December 31, 2025.
There is further confusion because the annual registration date, which involves a fee, is in June. Therefore, if the owner of an STR registers on January 1, 2026, (it remains to be seen if the portal will be operational), they will be required to register at the full rate for a year, with their registration expiring in June.
There is also the problem that these STRs must be inspected by the city, and it remains to be seen when this will happen and how long it will take.
Many of the folks with short-term rentals are, not surprisingly, frustrated and angry at the mess that Moran has created.
This is yet another example of Moran’s desire for headlines and his utter failure to actually manage.
Saratoga Springs Politics 
December 31st is the deadline to register. The State gave 120 days for compliance. How many days of an active portal do Saratoga Springs residents have? Currently less than 60 because there is no portal. Every day that passes cuts into the 90 day timeline Moran gave residents to register. He should make it 90 days from the date registration is available. Currently that would be at least the end of January if it was live tomorrow.
Every meeting he says they are ready to go live or ready to send the first of two letters. Then he says credit cards are an issue, we need to beta test. It’s the same narrative month after month. I would fire Saratoga Springs if I were Granicus. Dillon has made it seem like their software is inadequate and defective. How can Granicus be so successful elsewhere, yet Moran needs nearly 2 years to produce nothing? It’s a wasteful embarrassment to the City and to Granicus. Someone is going to have to clean up his mess.
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I would like to know what the City is doing with the taxes that Airbnb took from our customers this year. I was not aware that they were taking the taxes until someone pointed it out to me. How can that happen when we don’t have a plan or registration in place?
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