Opinion: O’Rourke leaving is a good thing for S. Tahoe

To the community,

The recent announcement of City Manager Tony O’Rourke’s leaving can only be viewed as a positive direction for the city of South Lake Tahoe. In May 2011, we informed the city of an approximately $500,000 a year loss in transient occupancy tax collections. We spent five to six months working with the city to develop a program to audit and verify the proper payment of transient occupancy tax by rent by owners.

After the city’s implementation of the reporting forms by the Finance Department, Mr. O’Rourke backed his staff that there were too many objections to the form and therefore they abandoned the project. Mr. O’Rourke made a statement in a meeting with our company staff that they could procure any number of companies that would monitor and collect the tax owed the city and that this could be achieved through penalties and fines at no cost to the city.

We were to receive notification of the request for proposals from the city on or after the middle of December.

Here we are, a year has passed since the city was notified of the potential loss of over $40,000 per month for failure to pursue TOT collections and still no action by the city. Maybe now the council can act without their star manager who has moved on to greener pastures.

Let’s hope.

Jim Morris, Lake Tahoe Accommodations