Vacation rentals in South Lake Tahoe again the focus of City Council workshop

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - The South Lake Tahoe City Council has been working with the public, home owners, residents and vacation rental companies for years in trying to get a vacation home rental ordinance that works for everyone.

The balancing act will continue during a Vacation Rental Workshop during the next City Council meeting on July 11.

After adopting the last ordinance in 2015, the Council hired Michael Baker International to prepare a socioeconomic study on the impact vacation home rentals (VHRs) have on the community. This report was released to a packed house during a special City Council meeting on June 13 after the company held public workshops, conducted interviews and compiled data.

Joshua Priou of Lake Tahoe Accommodations, a company renting homes for three decades in Lake Tahoe, asked the Council to postpone the workshop due to what he others feel is an incomplete socio-economic study.

Priou and others in the VHR industry have formed the South Lake Tahoe Vacation Rental Association to address the rules, their businesses and future adjustments to the ordinance.

Data used in the 156-page study was not complete, Priou says. He said Michael Baker International used complaint figures that haven't shown up in his prior requests for data, nor did the company have enough data to come up with a report that the council members could base their future decisions on.

"I still feel that the Council should postpone any further discussion on vacation rentals until the economic side of the RFP is completed and proof of the 880 complaints is shown," Priou said in a letter to SLT City Manager Nancy Kerry. "This is too big of an issue to plow through without having all the required data to make an educated and informed decision."

Priou requested a list of all VHR complaints and received a report with 208 on it, but Michael Baker is using the figure of 880.

"I find it very hard to believe that there was an additional 672 complaints to the 208 complaints I received," said Priou in his letter. "As requested, I would like the evidence of these complaints and the dataset that was provided to them."

In response to his complaint, Amy Sinsheimer, lead on the project for Michael Baker said the following: Throughout the report the research team made efforts to obtain data that had been independently sourced and verified to prevent the kind of issues identified by Mr. Priou. The team was able to independently source data for all but three datasets; the lists of registered VHR units, building permits, and code enforcement complaints. These three data sets were obtained from the City. All three of those data sets had problems with consistency, completeness, and accuracy and required a significant amount of processing before they could be integrated into the report. Data inconsistency is recognized as a significant problem in the report and whenever the research team was working with datasets that seemed incomplete or that were not consistent, the inconsistency was noted in the report. We feel we addressed the parts of the RFP and issues raised by Mr. Priou to the best of our ability with the data that was available for City of South Lake Tahoe geography on sales tax revenues and employment and income from the VHR industry. In regards to the data used for VHR complaints we verified it to the best of our ability using the information we were given.

The workshop, which will be at the end of Tuesday's regular meeting, the Council will get comment, input and recommendations from city staff, council members and the public to address possible changes to the current ordinance.

It is possible that future changes to the VHR ordinance will be in the following five areas:

1. VHR Cap: Should the City establish a cap and limit the number of VHR permits outside of the Tourist Core Area, and if so, should certain neighborhoods or areas have caps and not others?

2. Permit Processing: What changes to the permit process would provide a greater level of certainty to potential applicants, VHR owners and residents alike?

3. Enforcement: What additional changes to the current code enforcement are needed? City staff plans to demonstrate new user-friendly community access to all VHR complaints.

4. Saturation Threshold: Should permits be authorized based on the number/percentage of current VHRs in an area and how will that be determined?

5. Fines/Fees/Compliance: What changes to the fine structure would increase code compliance by VHR guests and eliminate current confusion?

Enforcement continues to be at the top of the list from both the resident's point of view, and the vacation home owners and management companies.

The meeting will be held at Council Chambers at the airport. The regular meeting begins at 9:00 a.m. and the VHR Workshop is planned for the end. For a complete agenda and how to follow it on line or on television can be found here: http://www.cityofslt.us/index.aspx?NID=84.