South Lake Tahoe community engaging during monthly conversations

South Lake Tahoe Mayor Wendy David held her second "Community Conversation" on Wednesday, opening the avenues of conversation between government and the public. This time Councilmember Brooke Laine joined her.

During the first such meeting in January the crowd got too big for the chosen area, Peet's Coffee, so this month they moved to the SLT Senior Center. Everyone attending agreed the center was much more conducive to good conversation.

"I thought it went really well," said Wendy. "I really appreciate the respect everyone shows for each other and opinions can be shared freely."

Wednesday's community meeting had almost 40 people attend, up from January's 30. The hot topics were SnowGlobe, Vacation Home Rentals and Global Warming, many of the same topics that citizens voice concern on during City Council meetings.

"To be more productive we'll do more coffee talks on highlighted topics," said Wendy. "This event is getting some legs to it so next time we'll be listing the subjects that will be highlighted."

What is making the monthly meetings popular is that the mayor and fellow councilmembers that join her can actually have conversations with the public and not held by constraints of the council meeting format where they can only listen during public comment.

"The conversation is good," added Wendy. "So many topics I'd love to have conversations on. I am enjoying it."

The SnowGlobe conversation concerned safety, the venue, noise and nightly fireworks. Each question was addressed by Wendy and Brooke, or by SLT Police Chief Brian Uhler who was also there. If they didn't have the answer they went to work to find it out.

Fireworks: The City would never sign off on the permit if the fireworks producer didn't set it up safely.

SnowGlobe: Chad Donnelly, his staff and City staff are in constant communication during the event. Daily meetings are held to address issues and concerns for public safety and other aspects. Some residents thought the City was getting ticket revenue, something that was talked about when a ten-year contract for Donnelly was discussed, but is not in place at this time. One person complained that her calls to the SnowGlobe hotline was not addressed. Uhler went back to the station and pulled all call logs and found that one of her calls went to a City business line, and the one about NYE fireworks was responded to in 18 minutes. The hot line is answered hourly by City staff and contents are logged and addressed. Some wanted the City to look at new venue locations.

The environment: One local said that people on her street are dumping the oil from their cars onto public land during weekends and evenings as well as other discharge from their working on cars. Chief Uhler was going to have an officer look into the situation.

The conversations went past the planned one-hour with the engaged group wanted to stay and here (and say) more.

Uhler also went back to the office to pull figures on car theft after one person in attendance said they felt so safe they left their keys in their car. Uhler said, like other property crimes, They have seen a tremendous increase in auto theft crimes in our City. Last year, there were 54 cases of stolen vehicles.

"In fact, here’s the alarming part, we average 2.49 stolen cars per 1000 people compared to 2.37 per 1000 people for the rest of the United States," said Uhler. "California has had increases across the state—thanks to relaxing the penalties associated with all property crime. So the sense of security by virtue of having a great police force may have caused you to believe there’s no need to worry about such things (because this is Tahoe)."

The next monthly conversation will be held on Wednesday, March 21 back at the Senior Center (they are always held on the day after the second City Council meeting of the month from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.