Douglas County’s master plan takes control from TRPA
By Anne Knowles
MINDEN – The Douglas County Commission approved an update to the county’s 15-year-old master plan, paving the way for the county to take over permitting in its portion of the Lake Tahoe Basin from the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.
“The TRPA wants to get out of the permitting process,” Douglas County Commissioner Nancy McDermid, who also serves on the Governing Board of the TRPA, said during the Jan. 5 commissioners’ meeting. “And as chair of the (TRPA’s) local government committee, I’m telling you it’s going to happen.”
The revision calls for the county to work with the agency on the update of its long-awaited Regional Plan and ordinance codes and “explore the feasibility” of taking over permitting responsibility through a memorandum of understanding.
With Douglas County taking more control of permitting in the Lake Tahoe Basin, it may have more of a say of what Edgewood Companies does with its land in Stateline. Photo/LTN file
Some of the work to update the county’s local plans cannot be completed until the TRPA delivers its Regional Plan update, promised by year-end. That’s because any plans for the Lake Tahoe Basin must comply with the TRPA’s yet-to-be-completed plan, said Candace Stowell, planning manager for the county, during a presentation to the commission.
“Well, yes and no,” McDermid said. “The city of South Lake Tahoe has adopted a plan and say they will comply” with the TRPA update after the fact, once the plan becomes available.
“We can’t make changes until the TRPA comes out with a plan,” Stowell replied.
Brandy McMahon, senior planner for the county, added that she has been working closely with the TRPA Planning Director John Hester and Regional Planning Coordinator Arlo Stockham, but said local plans can only be updated after the TRPA plan is finished.
“The message we get from the TRPA is different than what they tell the staff,” McDermid said.
South Lake Tahoe adopted its updated General Plan in May 2011, with the caveat that it would change the plan where necessary in order to comply with the TRPA Regional Plan update. A month later, the League to Save Tahoe filed suit in U.S. District Court, claiming the city plan was out of compliance with the TRPA Regional Plan. In December, South Lake Tahoe City Attorney Patrick Enright said he expected Judge Garland Burrell to rule on the case in early January. There has been no ruling to date.
Douglas County’s master plan update also calls for the county to assist in the completion of the Stateline-to-Stateline Bikeway and to work with South Lake Tahoe, Caltrans and others in the planning and implementation of the Highway 50 Stateline Corridor/South Shore Community Revitalization Project.
The Highway 50 revitalization project will get more attention at the Jan. 10 meeting of Douglas County Planning Commission, when the commission gets status reports on the master plan changes and TRPA Regional Plan, according to Jo Etta Brown, chair of the commission.
Brown and fellow planning Commissioner Kevin Servatius were reappointed to the commission by the board of commissioners during its meeting. Public comment was unanimously in favor of reappointing the pair. Some spoke about the lack of representation of the lake on the board, but agreed that it was more important to keep people already up to speed on the complex issues facing the county. Bob Cook, project coordinator for the Chimney Rock chapter of the Nevada Fire Safe Council, had also applied.
“Bob lives at Stateline and we live in the valley, but there’s no requirement to have someone from the lake and there never has been,” Brown told Lake Tahoe News. “We know Lake Tahoe needs our help. And 90 percent of the problems at the lake are problems here in the valley, too.”
The commissioners also added an action item saying the county would work with other stakeholders in the completion of the South Shore Vision Plan, a $70 million project to overhaul traffic routes, both pedestrian and vehicular, around the casinos. The item, proposed by Zephyr Cove attorney Lew Feldman, was approved but not before being changed to read that the county would incorporate the plan rather than adopt it.
Other master plan update items affecting the lake include changes designed to increase affordable housing throughout the county and development of green building codes.
So why do we need the TRPA?
The trpa as we knew them is over. They were unwilling to adjust to the changing needs of our community. With ineffective coverage as the anchor that sank them. Shame on their refusal to adjust to the needs in our community to enable regular folks to rebuild old infrastructure.
Over the past several decades the cronified California dominated TRPA has helped do so much damage to the Tahoe economy, the community itself and the continuing lake deteriation that it and the people running it should be held accountable.
More like a weird combination of the Wizard of Oz and Alice B. Toklas – look behind the curtain and there’s some little person trying to ‘buffalo’ us all into thinking they’re in charge – but of what ? – there is no “there” there. . .
And now, there really is no ‘there’ there . . . or at least much less than there was . . .at some time in the past.
The only saving grace is to have enough stewardship to let nature heal itself, but citizens still do not identify their own personal role enough that they can be trusted to do it. . . let “someone” else ! – the reason for ‘regulation’. . .
the goal of the TRPA is to
lower the number of residents
and the number of visitors.
The town has been at 1,350,000
visitors per year-tot heads in beds-
is how you come up with that number
the goal to reach is 900,000
If you don’t belive me ask the people in charge,
and look at all the things they have done for the last 27 years.
Seriously, the plan of the TRPA is to lower the number of residents and visitors in the Tahoe Basin. Have you actually tried to comprehend the proposed changes to the Land-Use section of the RPU? It’s actually the opposite. The TRPA is proposing densities increases to population centers. They propose that by increasing population densities in these “central” areas that it will facilitate the effectiveness of the public transportation system. That some how concentrating more people in certain areas will solve the transportation (air/water quality) problems.
What about everyone in the Basin who’s happy in their current homes and don’t like the idea of moving into these proposed denser areas?
Did you know that TRPA (and any other governmental agency in the Basin) has never attempted to define what the population carrying capacity for the Tahoe Basin is (resident and visitor). An intelligent mind would find this the first logical step in protecting (and enhancing) the health of the environment and the local economy. Who in there right mind is going to want to visit Tahoe when they perceive it as being over crowded? Tahoe will quickly lose it’s appeal and all the businesses that survive on the tourist visitors will start to hurt again.