Letter: Keith Roberts announces candidacy for South Lake Tahoe City Council

When I approached the City Council at the late April meeting to announce my candidacy for the 2026 City Council, I was planning on taking an "Information Tour" to reach out to our community to learn more about what is wanted and needed in our great city and for our residents.

Due to the continued rhetoric from Council Member Scott Robbins and his apparent team of devout followers Nick and Amelia; and judging from the frustration I am seeing from my fellow citizens with the most common complaint being how they are dividing the community; I feel it is more important to begin my campaign for the 2024 City Council Race instead.

As I stated at the April City Council Meeting; I feel our citizens are tired of this division.

I belong to several committees around town, and I hear it over and over,
We want a City Council that works together!

The frustration and rejection of Scott Robbins is not that we disagree with the Vacancy Tax; that is what we expect from our leaders, to think outside of the box, and to take the risks of presenting new ideas.

The challenge is that he has tried to prove he is the only one who knows what is right; that the rest of us including his fellow Council Members just don’t possess the same knowledge that he does.

Faced with objections from four fellow council members, he did not back down; faced with 100 or more passionate citizens he did not back down; his response was a lecture where he assumed we all just didn’t understand. Taking it to the streets to prove he is right is unbecoming an elected official, at least not in our small community, and not representative of someone who is working for the 'Good of All' but instead of for himself.

I respect Councilman Scott’s passion and intensity; again; good qualities in a leader but none of us know everything if your idea can’t even convince 2 out of four of your colleagues to agree, you should also possess the humility to be able to step back and learn.

To learn if not how to change your position, then at least learn how to take your idea and improve it, retool it, perfect it; not to take simple deceitful tactics and/or lies to seek approval of your idea, misleading people to the true goal or the effects of your plan.

The fact that Nick and Amelia have followed his lead so closely implies they believe this is acceptable behavior. Pushing so aggressively, so decisively, and needing to misrepresent the facts is highly suspicious behavior; not detailing and focusing on the needs or goals of the ideas other than taking rich people’s money lends itself to the question of, "What are they after?"

What is the next decisive agenda item does he have planned that this is just a setup agenda for?

I keep hearing from fellow board members and commissioners that most issues in front of our elected officials at the City and/or more blatantly at the national level are very rarely reviewed from the most very basic level.

- What is the goal of the agenda item?
- What are the desired results?
- Does it achieve those results?
- Conversely, those that oppose, what are the negative results that are feared?
- What are the obstacles before the desired results?

Instead, agenda items are all too often presented with emotional strings and insulting accusations or labels, quickly taking the conversation away from the facts.

I guess the term “transparency” is an abused term in today’s politics, but the antics pushed by this trio are clearly not what our citizens want in a path forward; they want solutions that work for everyone, not pitting friends against each other, not pitting employers against employees, not carrying signs saying “Tourists Go Home” but not letting Tourists walk all over us either.

These are not easy problems placed in front of our elected officials and I don’t believe solutions will be found by bullying each other but instead through impassioned collaboration and the desire to do what is best for all of South Lake Tahoe.

Let me be part of your next council to bring back creative and sane searches for solutions from our City Offices that will unite us as a Community once again.

- Keith Roberts for South Lake Tahoe City Council, 2024