Permit for South Lake Tahoe 420 Spring Event Denied by City Council

After two hours of discussion at the South Lake Tahoe City Council meeting on Tuesday, the event permit for the Tahoe Wellness Coop's 4th Annual 420 T.W.C. Cup was denied for a second time.

Event organizer Cody Bass, of the Wellness Coop, turned in paperwork for the April 20 event for the first time with the City on Friday, April 4. As with any event, staff needs time to review the documents and address concerns with those seeking the permit. In this case, the normal amount of time to review was not given due to the lateness of the permit application, but City staff expedited this in order to reply to Mr. Bass's request.

Bass was advertising for the event on social media and ticket sale venues even though he hadn't applied for a permit. The April 4 application was denied on Monday, April 7. City staff met with him for several hours on Tuesday, April 8 to review the permit application's inadequacies and to discuss alternatives according to City Manager Nancy Kerry.

"The overall issue with the event is the lack of a thorough plan for parking and security to control non-medicinal use of marijuana, which was a significant concern to the public last year," according to Kerry. The permit was originally submitted by Tahoe Wellness Collective, but due to restrictions of what a marijuana dispensary can legally do (this had to do with the selling of the T.W.C. Judges Cup tickets where participates would pay a fee for a bag of selected samples). Bass said, even though these events are permitted around the state, he eliminated the Cup and changed the name of the application to Bijou Haus Productions, which was issued a business license in the past 10 days.

No matter who applied for the permit, the bottom line was that a permit wasn't applied for until the last minute, security and parking issues were not address and other rules including participating vendor names and business license numbers was not provided. City Councilwoman JoAnn Conner, who is an event planner, said during the special meeting that everyone who puts on an event in City limits has a list of items they need to provide in order to be issued a permit. With Bass having the event for the previous 3 years, he would of had the same requirements this year as in year's past.

According to Kerry, "This year, the City would be able to process the temporary activity permit if the event was scaled back to a reasonable size for the location and if the adjacent property owners agreed to the use of their property to accommodate parking and security. Although a few of the business owners have agreed, not all of the impacted property and business owners agreed to the use of their property to accommodate parking and those who didn’t agree are immediately adjacent to the event."

The City offered having the event at Bijou Park with parking at LTCC (though the LTCC board would of had to still approve parking there), but Bass didn't want to be the experiment concert at that venue and preferred to be moved to Lakeview Commons which has a history of open air concerts. Citing no time to get the permit approved before Sunday, his appeal was denied.

Bass said he is moving the concert with Bob Marley's son Julian, as originally planned for South Lake Tahoe, to Reno at the Knitting Factory. A call into Knitting Factory confirmed that the 4/20 show will be $25, doors open at 8 p.m., show starts at 9 p.m. and lasts until 4:20 a.m.