Letter: No on Measure N campaign is grateful voters rejected the measure

Editor: The No on Measure N Campaign in South Lake Tahoe issued the following statement this evening after election returns showed voters overwhelmingly rejecting the flawed and divisive vacancy tax proposal.

“This is a great night for South Lake Tahoe,” said Sharon Kerrigan, co-chair of the Stop the South Tahoe Vacancy Tax, No on Measure N campaign. “Measure N was a horribly flawed and divisive proposal that would have done nothing to address housing challenges in our community and everything to further acrimony in our community. The voters saw it for what it was and rejected it soundly.”

“Tonight, we celebrate, and tomorrow it’s back to work advocating for real solutions that will further South Tahoe’s goals of better housing affordability, better transit, and improved roads,” added Steve Teshara, campaign co-chair. “We’ve said from day one that the issues raised in this campaign are real, but the proposed solution was never going to work and in fact do farm while setting aside the avenues that are just starting to bear fruit.”

The No on Measure N brought together a diverse coalition of local leaders, business owners, full-time homeowners, renters, and part-time residents who all agreed that Measure N was wrong for South Lake Tahoe. The campaign pointed out numerous flaws in the proposal, including the lack of any guarantees of funding the stated priorities; the likelihood of a huge, invasive and expensive bureaucracy being needed to enforce the measure; the provisions that would require invasions of privacy of all homeowners and renters in the community; the overall divisiveness of the proposal; the harm it would create to the local economy; and the high probability that the measure was illegal or unconstitutional, as now borne out by the recent Proposition M decision from San Francisco.

“The great tragedy of this campaign is that it could have been avoided if the proponents had listened to pleas from the community not to head down this road,” added Teshara.