Temporary stop to implementation of South Lake Tahoe's Measure T sought

Submitted by paula on Sat, 12/22/2018 - 12:23am
Paula Peterson

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - The South Lake Tahoe Property Owners Group has a court date Monday, December 24 to try and get a temporary restraining order against the City of South Lake Tahoe's implementation of Measure T.

Measure T, a citizen's initiative to ban vacation home rentals (VHRs) outside of the Tourist Core Area, passed by a very small margin in November. While the VHRs will be phased out in 2021, a couple of portions go into effect now including a reduction of the maximum occupancy to 12 people per home.

A lawsuit was filed on December 18 by the group's lawyer Andrew Pierce of Pierce and Shearer and a court date was scheduled for the following day but the hearing was vacated by Judge Mike McLaughlin. It was not revealed in court Wednesday why McLaughlin could not hear the case though it is possible he had a conflict of interest.

Pierce says the measure "contains numerous vague and ambiguous terms."

"We believe the ordinance is unconstitutional," Pierce added. "The entire ban (on VHRs) is discriminatory, depending on how many months one lives in their home. You can't discriminate based on where you live."

The matter will be heard in Department 7 at 11:00 a.m. by Judge Mark Ralphs in Placerville. Ralphs was named a judge in March 2018 after serving in the County's public defender’s office since 1997. He was the assistant public defender in South Lake Tahoe area from 2015-2018. The address of the court is 2850 Fairlane Court.

In the meantime, the City of South Lake Tahoe has said they will diligently enforce all existing VHR regulations pertaining to neighborhood disturbances (noise, parking, trash, hot tubs) and will enforce the new maximum occupancy limits only if the residents are creating disturbances.

"The City understands that many VHR reservations were made under the old maximum occupancy limits and is attempting to be reasonable during the initial Measure T implementation period," said Chris Fiore, the City's communications manager.