Letter to the Editor: Choose Unity over Division

We are both running for South Lake Tahoe City Council to move our community past division, negativity, misinformation and finger pointing, and toward common ground solutions on critical issues. We’re all in this together.

We’re both committed to running positive campaigns, free of attacks on fellow candidates. After all, we live in a small, interconnected community, and no matter who wins, we all need to work together to tackle our largest challenges, including our housing crisis and the need to invest in critical infrastructure like road repair and fire protection. Every candidate and their supporters have valuable perspectives that need to be considered in order to achieve the kind of community consensus that we’ve been lacking for far too long.

It’s disappointing, then, to see posts and articles -- including on these pages -- from some of the other candidates and their donors intent on bringing us down, rather than lifting up their own messages and plans. We won’t be responding in kind, because politics shouldn’t be about winning at all costs and power games; it should be about how we’ll represent the needs and concerns of all South Lake Tahoe residents. We’d rather lose than win by distorting and demeaning others. 

A couple of points have been made in these pages that we’d like to address.  We were both honored to receive the endorsement of the Tahoe Chamber, which was given in part because of our commitment to support policies and programs needed to help lift up our hard working local business owners and employees. We’ve also received broad support from small business owners throughout our community, which you can see on our websites, https://john4council.com/endorsements/, and https://cristi4council.com/endorsements/.

We both support immediate action to confront our housing crisis, which is critical to families struggling to stay in Tahoe in the wake of Covid-19 induced layoffs, and the surge of new home buying that is squeezing renters out and putting homebuying out of the reach of local families. It is by far the number one concern raised by the hundreds of residents we have each spoken with over the course of our campaigns. Small businesses can’t find the workers they need, because workers can’t afford to live here. We don’t need more study, we need action. Our first actions in council will be tackling this crisis through specific measures, including pushing for immediate action to permit Accessory Dwelling Units (also known as cottage units), and establishing tangible incentives for owners of vacant second homes to rent them to local families.

We both support making investments in critical infrastructure like community broadband to provide high-speed, affordable internet for all, which is crucial for both businesses, and students studying at home during these Covid-19 times. We need to invest in fixing our roads, which are in horrendous shape in our neighborhoods, as all of us can attest.  

We need to invest in fire protection. Fire Station 2 and its seven firefighters were funded with a grant, which is being wound down over the next few years. We won’t be able to keep this station and firefighters without new funding, or major cuts somewhere else.  

We need to invest in public safety and mental health programs like the new South Tahoe Alternative Collaborative Services (STACS) program to better meet the needs of people experiencing homelessness, struggling with addiction or a mental illness, or overcoming domestic violence.  

We need to invest in walkable town centers, including the Main St. Management Plan, the 56-Acre project and similar efforts throughout South Lake Tahoe, which will bring new business to these revitalized community gathering places.

We need to invest in new bicycle trails and the arts.

To make the investments local businesses need to thrive, we need to pay for them. While every politician likes to pander for votes by promising they will give you everything you want without making you pay anything, that’s of course a false promise, and fiscally irresponsible.

While neither we, nor any City Council candidate, put Measure S on the ballot, we’re both voting yes because we need to invest in our community, at a time when we’re facing multi-million dollar budget shortfalls in the years ahead. While no one wants to pay more taxes, the status quo is creating significant hardships for our most vulnerable community residents. Too many of our neighbors are living in crisis, and facing enormous rent increases as well as increased risk of contracting Covid-19 when forced to share housing. Without new revenue, we won’t be able to make the investment we need to adequately respond to the scale of the stresses workers in our community are facing.

If Measure S fails, that task of generating new revenue to solve our challenges will be all the more urgent. We both support a participatory budget process where citizens get deeply engaged in the process of setting budget priorities, along with proposals for how to pay for them. Hopefully that will help us all get aligned in the community about the choices we’re facing, and the best solutions. This process needs to be inclusive of diverse perspectives in our community, and transparent. Any source of potential additional revenue will need to win broad support in the community.

We’re both committed to creating a community that works for all, very much including members of our Latino, Hispanic and Tagalog-speaking community, who have been underrepresented in city decision-making for far too long. We’ll make it a priority to give all parts of our community a voice and make sure all concerns are being addressed, like the need for a more diverse economy with jobs with health care benefits that pay a wage high enough to afford to live here.

As parents of kids currently in the school system, we’re deeply committed to doing everything we can to make a better community for them, and for all their peers. For each of us, this is our primary motivation to run. 

Cristi is a small business owner as a partner in Cowork Tahoe and her husband Bernard is a longtime South Lake Tahoe contractor. John started the Tahoe Green Jobs Initiative this spring to train unemployed and underemployed Tahoe residents for work in livable wage jobs like solar installation and affordable home building. John’s wife Kim is working with the Lake Tahoe Unified School District and Lake Tahoe Community College to develop curriculum and training to prepare students for careers in growing industries.

To make our community a better place for current and future generations, we choose unity over division. If you want leaders who will give all residents a stronger voice in city council decisions, and who will always work to unite and not divide in order to solve our shared challenges together, we’d be honored to have your support.