Ballot initiative to keep vacation rentals in South Lake Tahoe lacking in signatures

Efforts to bring a second vacation home rental initiative to November's ballot have hit a roadblock after the El Dorado County Elections office said they did not have enough valid signatures to take it to the voters.

The Sustainable Community Alliance (SCA) turned in 1,843 signatures, thinking that would be enough to guarantee the needed 1,005.

Elections staff did a random count of 500 of those signatures to verify the person signing was a registered voter in the City limits. They found 243 valid signatures in that sample.

“Our signature gatherers appeared to have made critical mistakes on local addresses making many signatures invalid," said Jerry Williams of the Sustainable Community Alliance. "We are still working with the City and County regarding signature validation."

Based on the sample count, the County used a standard calculation formula that found the group gathered, if all were counted, 896 valid signatures, or 89.12 percent of the needed number.

"We apologize to all of the business owners, employees, and local residents who support our initiative," added Williams. "We want to let everyone know we hold fast to our position and we will continue to move forward with our efforts to protect our neighborhoods and our local economy. We will have more information on SCA direction in the next few days.”

SCA's initiative was keeping vacation rental homes in the City limits, but keeping them at the current cap and having rules enforced. The opposing measure created by Tahoe Neighborhoods Group seeks to ban VHRs in two years. The collected enough signatures to make it on the November, 2018 ballot.