If you thought the city of Bend would have sweeping, new regulations in place this summer for vacation rentals, you may be disappointed.

Bend’s vacation rental task force met Thursday night. It tried to push forward toward consensus. But it spent about as much time doing that as it did debating if it had enough time to reach consensus, which of course, meant it had less time to reach consensus.

That’s not all the task force’s fault.

There is not some gleaming answer to regulating vacation rentals that will enable everyone to go home happy.

Conflicting interests stew in the community and on the task force. It’s not easy to impose new regulations on an important economic benefit for some when others feel the rentals undermine a neighborhood’s livability. There are also built-in delays in state law before land use changes can be made. And the city staff is justifiably cautious about doing something that will shove the city into another lawsuit that it could lose.

The task force did move toward consensus Thursday on requiring an on-site inspection to evaluate parking and the number of rooms available before the city approved any new vacation rental. The discussion included requiring an annual renewal.

That sounded reasonable enough to everyone.

As much as that progress is to be admired, the task force should be taking on first the most potent of all its possible solutions: density of vacation rentals in a neighborhood.

It gets at the heart of the livability issue. It reduces the potential for problems. It reduces the need for enforcement. Of course, density limits don’t solve everything. And limits could very well face legal challenges. That shouldn’t stop the city.

Start with density and figure out what else is necessary to make it work.