Letters: Issues with El Dorado County Transient Occupancy Tax

News of the Board of Supervisors approving a ballot measure to increase the Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT0 is met with some ambivalence. While the increase to offset or mitigate impacts from tourism is welcome, the shell game continues.

TOT revenues, also referred to as a hotel/motel tax, fund the impacts of tourism, and economic development, and are used in support of tourism and promotion activities and veterans programs in the county. The county said TOT revenue has increased from $2 million to $8 million over the last six years and 78 percent comes from the Tahoe area. “...55 percent of the TOT revenue (is) to be allocated to our partners and county operations in the Tahoe area which historically is responsible for the vast majority of tourism in El Dorado County,” Board of Supervisors Chair Parlin said.

The existing 10 percent TOT rate was established in 2004, when Measure H was placed on the ballot as a general tax. Because it was a general tax, funds may be used for anything, but county policy calls for the money to be used “toward the impact of tourism and economic development, with consideration for support of tourism and promotion activities within the county and for continued support for grant fund allocations to support veteran programs within the county.”

Last year, the board allocated $3 million toward offsetting tourism impacts; $1.3 million toward economic development; $621,000 toward tourism and promotion activities and $281,000 to support veteran programs. If both measures pass, the county said the combined estimated funding dedicated to road maintenance and snow removal would be $2,840,000, which would free up about $3 million that the county contributed last year to road maintenance.

My issue with this is we don’t need to advertise Tahoe since we have been discussing overtourism. People know about Tahoe!! Why are we spending over half a million dollars on promoting more tourism??!

Another issue is the County looks to free up $3 million in funding they spent for roads by using the increase in TOT to backfill that fund. Have you driven on our roads? They are bone-jarring! I support using TOT to mitigate the impacts of tourism. However the cost of road repairs alone will certainly exceed the amount programmed due to rising oil prices (bitumen for pavement), the cost of transport of materials since no batch plants are located nearby, and the rising cost of labor to meet the inflation being realized. We need to use other methods and technologies that provide a better, sustainable road base that does not need repair after only 3-5 years and continued funds for those repairs. Where is the quality control? According to TTD, more than 50 million vehicle trips are made into, out of, and within the Basin annually. The heavy amount of traffic is destroying our roads faster than we can repair them. How is the current practice mitigating the impact? The amount of traffic on all of our roads has had dire impacts on the condition of these roads, known as a Pavement Condition Index (PCI) rated on a scale of 0-100. The general PCI in Tahoe is 53.

Many roads have not seen any repaving in 20 years, well beyond their life expectancy. Our road conditions have been ignored and they look like an alligator skin with a few shotgun blast holes. We are taxed for repairing roads and inspected for the vehicles to be safe. Yet the table is flipped, where we are paying for vehicle repairs and the roads are not safe.

How about the fact that five of the seven snowplows are so old they cannot source parts for them, leaving us unplowed for days at a time after major storms? Part of that is the labor. We cannot hire drivers to staff the few plows that do work.

Road maintenance is expensive and depends on the price of oil. When oil prices are up, the cost of materials also goes up. Road construction can cost around $1 million per lane mile. Shipping the materials is a big part of the cost because we don’t have any batch plants nearby. We should be looking at new processes and technologies that recycle the existing road materials with plastics and rubber to make the pavement more resilient and reduce our dependence on the current bitumen and shipping of asphalt. With the money being spent on transporting materials from far away batch plants and constantly resurfacing poor workmanship, we should be able to afford better technologies and have a road surface that will last longer. That $621 thousand can leverage up to $6.2 million in capital for our infrastructure.

Another $1.3 million was allocated to economic development. Has anyone seen a change in our economy? What was developed? We still have a low-wage service economy that is unaffordable to most that live here. Our economy is not supporting the many demands for services. The infrastructure is our lifeline in many ways. Commerce depends on the infrastructure to be in good repair. It is our escape route during natural disasters such as wildfires. If it is not able to support the demands, then our government has failed us as infrastructure and public safety are the primary goals of good government.

Then there is the suggestion that TOT should fund a full-time enforcement officer for the VHRs. I think A) it would take more than just one full-time officer who may work 8-5; B) the violations are typically in the evening hours, and C) why pay to send a sole person that is untrained and not a sworn officer into a situation where a dozen or more partiers are violating the peace? That would be crazy and certainly a liability for the County if anything were to happen!

Many things are needing attention. For one is how the residents are being represented. Their voices have not been heard and their quality of life has been diminished. The lodging in neighborhoods, traffic, economy, environmental damage, degraded resources, and public safety have affected our residents. We need to know our budget is being used to pay for essential services such as road repair, snow removal, police and fire protection. We need tenable solutions to traffic with a sustainable system that meets our environmental goals.

Jeffrey Spencer
Meyers, CA