City employees at Bainbridge Island have been scouring the web looking for vacation rental spots on the island.

No, they haven’t been looking to find a room for friends or family coming to the island for a visit.

Instead, officials have been investigating whether islanders who are offering their homes as short-term rental properties — on websites such as Airbnb.com and VRBO.com — are licensed to do business on Bainbridge.

Officials have also been looking at home-sharing rentals on the island to see if the property owners have registered with the state Department of Revenue and are paying city B&O taxes, as well as lodging taxes to the city and state.

The Bainbridge city council will get an update of the city’s investigation into vacation rentals at the council meeting Tuesday, June 9.

City Attorney Lisa Marshall, in a June 5 memo to the council, noted that jurisdictions across the country are struggling to make sure home-share property owners are licensed and paying local fees and taxes.

Other cities — including Portland, Oregon; Austin, Texas; Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.; and Palm Desert, California — have passed ordinances that regulate short-term rental properties.

In Portland, homeowners who offer one- and two-bedroom rentals in private homes must remit city lodging taxes of 12.5 percent, pay a $180 permit fee every two years, and have their homes inspected every six years. Homeowners must also live on-site at least nine months of the year.

Regulations on home-share rentals vary from city to city.

Marshall also noted that officials in Santa Monica, California adopted an ordinance that prohibited property owners from renting out spaces unless they lived in the housing unit with their guests, and Marshall said that ban would eliminate about 80 percent of the Santa Monica homes listed on home-sharing sites such as Airbnb.

During the search for Bainbridge offerings on Airbnb, city officials found 42 property owners who were offering rentals, and discovered just 17 had business licenses that would allow lodging. Eleven of the 42 were also not registered with the state.

The city’s inventory of Bainbridge home shares is still ongoing.

Once that’s completed, the city attorney is expected to send letters to property owners asking that they obtain a city business license and register with the state.

The city may also expand the authority of the city’s code enforcement officer to enforce regulations on business licenses and taxes.