New Year's message from South Lake Tahoe Mayor Wallace

Dear South Lake Tahoe, This is my first letter this year as Mayor, to the citizens of South Lake Tahoe. The statements and opinions in this letter are mine alone, not the official opinion of the city council.

I’m thankful to my fellow council members for voting for me to be Mayor. I won’t be running the city but will be running the meetings. I’ll be helping to set the agendas and representing our city in official settings, parades, etc. I still only have one vote, the same as the other council members. It’s many appearances with little extra authority, but still an honor. When I previously served as Mayor in 2021, we had COVID-19 that extended into 2021 (my first 6 months of being Mayor, all our meetings were virtual) and the Caldor fire and evacuation. I’m proud that we decided to evacuate the tourists before evacuating all our 20,000+ citizens in just an incredible four hours. The safety agencies had good evacuation plans in place. Our family was among the last to leave and we evacuated to the Town of Truckee. We had seven people, and six dogs joined us there. I visited every evacuation center our citizens stayed in throughout Carson Valley, Carson City, Topaz, and Reno. There were problems such as getting medicine, rescuing animals, getting shelter locations to accept people’s pets, and helping the elderly. We all helped each other. I did many radio, TV and print interviews in 10 days because of Tahoe’s notoriety. I sure hope this year is not as challenging as 2021.

This year, I intend to make the council meetings better for the public to attend and participate. One way is to ensure that issues with high public interest get heard first so those who take time away from their jobs and families don’t have to wait to be heard. I hope to continue to streamline routine staff reports. I’ll do my best to arrange the agenda so that you don’t have to endure the minutiae that come with some city business. We are already making the website more user-friendly.

Presently, members of the public only get 3 minutes to speak, while pre-arranged speakers on behalf of an issue and council members themselves can go on interminably. Council members are supposed to read the packets provided to us the Thursday prior to Tuesday’s council meeting. The agenda is available to the public the same day the council gets it. Some council members, having met with the City Manager and Attorney, already know the answers to their questions but do a little grandstanding, asking questions they already know the answer to. Our city council has an existing protocol (listed on the city webpage) where the mayor lets the council members know they’ve gone for over five minutes. I’ll use that if need be.

The most important thing we do as a council is to put together a strategic plan for the next year and beyond. We vote on WHAT we intend to do, WHEN we’ll do it and the WAY we’ll pay for it. The City Manager and staff are tasked with HOW it all gets done. It’s important we don’t get sidetracked by what I call chasing rabbits, micro-managing or new programs and ideas from individual council member philosophies and political agendas. Emergency issues being the exception.

Our five council members divide up and sit on many other boards such as TRPA, Tahoe Transportation District, California Tahoe Conservancy, CalTahoe (Ambulance) JPA, Clean Tahoe, Lake Tahoe Visitor’s Authority, both Chambers, Lodging, LAFCO, and many others. I joke that our council’s approximate $1,200/month salary comes out to -$0.27 per hour! Our goal is to inform those organizations about the city’s strategic plans and to report back to the council, NOT TO HAVE OUR OWN, INDIVIDUAL AGENDAS that we push on those organizations.

We each meet with the City Manager and Attorney once per week and of course, attend council meetings twice per month, as well as strategic planning, budget sessions and special topic community meetings such as State of the City, and things like Meet the Mayor. We answer scores of emails, texts, and phone calls.

Needless to say, time management is a necessary skill.

I’m intent on keeping the main thing the main thing. The city was incorporated 60 years ago for police, fire, roads (including snow removal), and standards for housing. I intend to stay in my lane, not letting political issues and social fads take precedence over our main purpose. Every time I hit a pothole, buy gas, groceries, or hear a siren; it reminds me of what is most important to our citizens. Just as you must live within your means, so should your city government. I’m not for creating new expensive programs that add city payroll with expensive benefits and retirement packages that your kids and mine will have to pay for. I intend to leave the city in better shape than when I was first sworn in. I want to help others by taxing less, having less regulations, and adding economic prosperity so that people can earn the future they deserve.

I believe in getting to YES. Rather than setting up roadblocks to prosperity, job creation and housing in our city. Our amazing City Manager Joe Irvin and his department heads see it the same way. Joe is constantly enforcing that philosophy. When all is said and done, we are public servants, not public rulers.

In that same spirit, I am committed to increasing our supply of workforce and affordable housing. One way is to have every single agency that regulates housing in any way NOT CHARGE FOR ANYTHING THEY DO OR HAVE, INCLUDING FREE LAND, INSPECTING FEES AND PERMITS. However, we live in paradise. The supply of housing may never be able to meet the demand of those who want to live in paradise. Also, we can’t supply all the housing that the Nevada side and El Dorado County should be providing, but we can make the supply and demand issue better than it is now. We’re already doing that with up to 600 apartments planned over the next few years, with the 248-unit Sugar Pine Village being the most recent. I believe that TRPA, with Julie Regan at the helm, understands that our city is supposed to follow state laws primarily.

To solve the housing crunch, we need to not burden everyone with unnecessary bureaucracy. There are over 20 state and federal agencies that overlay our local government. As Peter Uberoff lamented as he put together the 1984 Olympics in LA, “We have gone from the law of the jungle to a jungle of laws.” It sometimes takes two or three years to add a garage to a home here, even longer to get affordable housing built, not to mention the cost. Our city has one vote of five on the Board of Supervisors, one of seven on the LTVA, two of seven on the Conservancy and only one of 14 on the TRPA, none on Lahontan and USFS. Those agencies have authority over much of what goes on in our community. Most of their board members aren’t elected and don’t live in South Lake Tahoe. As a sovereign city in the state of California, our city council needs to make our needs known and vigorously defend our right to govern ourselves within the laws of this state. The federal government may have seen the light regarding the effect of over-regulation on the economy and I remain hopeful that the state of California will wake up soon.

I want to thank our voters for electing two very capable common-sense people to the council. I look forward to working with both Keith Roberts and David Jinkens. This year we will all listen respectfully to all of those who speak and write to us as we take in your collective wisdom. As I’ve written before “none of us is smarter than all of us.” Just as those who incorporated this city 60 years ago, we will do our best to peer into the future in our efforts to make the best decisions for ALL the residents of this paradise we live in.

I’m also extremely excited to see the new multi-generational recreation center making progress. It should be completed in 2026. It’s designed to serve all our citizens.

One issue that has a lot of citizens commenting on is the possible annexation of the Heavenly Cal Lodge property into the City. I’m personally in favor of having that happen. Here’s why: In 2001 the Gondola was inaugurated, coming right down into the city at Heavenly Village. It was a wonderful addition to that project. The agreement reached with Heavenly at that time was that no lift or sales taxes would be paid by Heavenly, in that location, for as long as the financing bonds were still being paid. The City refinanced that debt during an economic downturn extending the no-taxes provision. During the past half century, Vail/Heavenly while attracting skiers to our community who generate sales taxes and TOT taxes in motels and businesses, has paid zero sales or property taxes to the city. They've instead, paid tax to El Dorado County, even though the city, not the County, has maintained the streets leading up to the slopes, allowed their customers to park in the neighborhoods and has responded to the many incidents for the police and fire departments, such as hundreds of medical injuries and health emergencies, fender benders, fist fights, thefts and the Gondola Fire in 2003. Recently our city fire department put out a fire in the main lodge locker room well before the county showed up. All that service and your taxpayer money was never meant to go on forever. The city agreement has, in retrospect, not been an even deal as evidenced during the huge storm event in the winter of 2022. The videos show car after car sliding down the roads crashing into the ones stranded at the bottom. It makes sense that the government that maintains their access roads, answers their police calls, and puts out their fires should be the one that collects the tax generated. I’m personally very much pro-tourism and fully recognize that Heavenly, along with Sierra, Kirkwood, and the many other ski areas around the Lake, are a prime wintertime reason for employment and economic benefit in this town. However, fair is fair. Vail should either be reimbursing the city fully for the actual cost of the many services we provide in support of their existence or allow the city to collect the sales tax rather than the County.

I especially want to thank our citizens for showing up in the hundreds at council meetings to stop the slew of proposed new taxes and for resoundingly defeating Measure N. You sent a clear message to stop the anti-second homeowner, anti-tourist mentality. As a result of Measure T, in 2018, we lost 1,400 Transient Occupancy Tax-producing VHRs and an equal number of local jobs, by stopping people from temporarily renting out their homes to help pay their mortgage. That cost us many school children, as those families moved away to find work elsewhere. Almost none turned into long-term rentals as promised and Measure T reduced city revenues by over two-million dollars each year. A lot of potholes that could have been filled with that amount. The anti-tourism group, feeling their oats, then tried to push Measure N using the same failed logic. Recently, they proposed that temporary seasonal workers be given city funds to pay their rent. The hypocrisy of banning the temporary renting out of homes, then wanting to support temporary worker/renters, is incredibly obvious.

We just went through a contentious election season. That was then, this is now. Just as in sports, once the game is over, let’s shake hands and work together on local issues to make our town a better place to live. I’m looking forward to fixing and plowing our roads, keeping us all safe from crime and forest fires as well as doing everything we can to build more affordable workforce housing.

I will be hosting Meet the Mayor events this year, to listen to you, give updates and answer your questions. I’m also giving you my cell (530)545-2623 and e-mail twallace@cityofslt.us

Lastly, I want to thank all those who’ve been so supportive of our family these past three years as we have gone through many of life’s trials and losses as have many of you. Your prayers and gestures of support have been very much appreciated. We will pay your kindness forward. Life in a small town is so comforting. Together, we are Tahoe Strong.

Happy New Year and God bless you all,
Tamara Wallace