Letter: Parking fiasco should cause heads to roll
To the community,
The city is a corporation. It has a board of directors. It has a chief executive, the city manager. It has a legal department led by the city attorney.
The shareholders are the citizens of the city. The citizens who created the parking meter initiative that has been prepared for the ballot and approved has given a thumbs down, a vote of no confidence, to the board of directors, the City Council, and city manger and city attorney.
Bill Crawford
In the private sector such an event causes heads to roll. Members of the board of directors resign, CEOs are given pink slips, lawyers are replaced. A shake up takes place for, hopefully, the good of the corporation. So perhaps members of the City Council, in light of the vote of no confidence, should consider resigning. And the city manager needs to take a hard look at how and why she recommends the course of action for the council. The city attorney played bad politics on the creation of the initiative. He is guilty of misfeasance. Thus, he should be shown the door for cause without any waling money.
It is time for those holding the reins of government in the city of South Lake Tahoe to realize that they have a social contract with the citizen, to govern in the best interest of the whole, not to create pet projects that are ill conceived and over the top throwing time and money to the wind.
Bill Crawford, South Lake Tahoe
Bill, Bill, Bill, so disappointed. Don’t you know this is America. The one place in this crazy place of a world where you get what you pay for. Those that paid for those in power won’t let any heads roll. They need to get their money’s worth!
If the energy involved in bashing the City Council at every turn, and folks calling for recalls and for heads to roll over the smaller picture issues (plastic bag ban, parking meters, etc) could be funneled into the effort to register and motivate MORE South Lake Tahoe citizens to actually vote, maybe then we would have what most would consider a council more representative of our needs and desires as a community.
Well said Bill, some heads should roll starting with Cole.
Will parking meters generate income? Yes but enough to pay for the staff to impliment and enforce it? Probably not. What a great way to look cheap and petty. Don’t we have enough unnatural things to look at with mail boxes. Now add one more thing for plow drivers to have to work around. Funny how the city allows UPS and the Transit District park on Shop and D streets at all times during all conditions. They park on the street even during snow removal events with no tickets ever being writen. Vote Hell No on Parking Meters
Better yet dissolve the city and all its continual problems, deficient oversight, naïve governance, unnecessary duplicity, wasteful spending, higher taxes and fees, poor service, inefficiency and cavalier attitude.
The undesirable parking program is only the tip of the iceberg of all of the above.
The City was a good idea that failed due to small-time thinking and bureaucratic overreach. Too expensive for what taxpayers get… Dissolve the City.
Steve, dissolve the city in favor of what? The county? Ask Meyers how they feel about interests other than their own making decisions about their town.
BiggerPicture is right on with the need to get people out to vote.
All around the lake, outside interests are imposing their will on development decisions within the basin. I’m thinking it’s time for our own county.
Biggerpicture:
Thank you for perfectly stating what I believe to be the truth and offering a solution. I wonder if those individuals who expended all that time collecting signatures from registered voters in opposition to paid parking made any effort to sign up those non-registered individuals so they will hopefully start voting. Would have been an ideal opportunity. Does anyone have any information related to that?
I wonder if those individuals who expended all that time collecting signatures from “registered voters” in opposition to paid parking made any effort to sign up those “non-registered individuals” so they will hopefully start voting.
say what?
4-Mer, why would anyone need to register voters during any of this. They went out to gain signatures and they did it. I wish they had washed and waxed my car too, but that is also completely unrelated to collecting signatures concerning paid parking.
You are trying to make Tahoe4Tahoe look bad for not doing a task they never should have considered.
The closest thing to eternal life on earth is a government job.
How can you have heads roll when they are all buried in the sand.
Living in So.Lake for 30 years it will never change ,oh yea the TRPA brought great changes LOL
To answer the question: Was Tahoe 4 Tahoe actively registering voters while at the same time gathering signatures? The answer is,Yes. We personally sent in 38 registration cards with the petitons and passed out another 150 registration cards for people to fill out and send in on their own. We discovered a population of people in our community that have become apathetical and disengaged in the political process. Our next project will be to actively work to register new voters and reregister people that we found on the inactive voter list. A chairperson has been assigned to this project. She and her committee will be working in the community to encourage SLT citizens to register and eventually vote.
Quite a read this morning.
hey a.b.-what about all the people laid off just a couple years ago?-try having an original thought before your usual bilious ‘hate gubbamint’ spew-kudos to T4T registering voters-we need less hate for the status quo and more participation in the gov’t-which in reality is not some foreign entity-it’s us
Moral Hazard and ljames:
Unless the individuals who sign a ballot initiative petition are registered voters in the jurisdiction of said ballot initiative their signatures won’t count on a petition. So when the collectors of those signatures asked people if they wanted to sign a petition against paid parking they would have also needed to ask if those individuals were registered SLT voters, which would have provided to them an ideal opportunity to influence people sharing their political like mindedness to register to vote if they were not already registered. As Biggerpicture said, maybe then we would have what most would consider a Council more representative of our needs and desires as a community.
My query whether anyone had information related to that was a simple question, and your saying that I’m trying to make Tahoe4Tahoe look bad is an incorrect assumption.
I hope my explanation is of sufficient simplicity for comprehension as I would not want my uncomplicated question to offend anyone’s tender sensibilities.
Tahoe4Tahoe:
Thank you for your response to my question. It is all so easy to sit back and criticize our government and democratic processes, but it takes real courage and tenacity to actually take an action such as this by Tahoe4Tahoe. Whether or not I agree with Tahoe4Tahoe’s position on paid parking is wholly my own business, but I applaud your efforts and extend my sincerest thanks for your proactive actions in encouraging voter registration in our community.
I also applaud Tahoe4Tahoe on all their efforts. It’s now in the citys court, lets see what they do with the ball. Bill in the old days showing someone the door was tar and feathers, after that they did’t want any more compensation.
In the private sector, the fired CEOs would also have had golden parachutes worth bajillions. It’s not exactly a germane comparison. No one would argue that the City has a revenue problem, yet we are fighting hard against a tool that many communities use to generate revenue.
If we were to apply a concept from the private sector that is germane to tourism, we need to look at all the special fees and surcharges that have crept into the travel and hotel industries since the recession and fuel price hikes.
Costs were going up across the industry just while Americans’ spending money was disappearing. To keep the sticker price of hotels and airfare low, the industry created special fees–and it worked. The global airline industry collected $27 billion in 2012 and $42.6 billion in 2013 from special fees alone. The shame of it is that none of the fee revenue is going into making travel better for any of us. It’s all going to their bottom line and quarterly reports to prove to investors their stock is still good.
But with the City, we can maintain control of how the revenue is used. It’s not whether we should have paid parking or other revenue generators. The discussion needs to be how the money that comes from paid parking can be used to directly help our businesses and residents instead of plugging a hole in the general fund.
ahem BiggerPicture – Many of us and many of our tourists do not think paid parking is a SMALL problem. It is not how we want to be defined. NOT how we want to treat tourists coming here to spend their money.
Just back from a weekend in a town about 3 times our size. LARGE parking structure. Sign said FREE PARKING – always. I asked in the very busy restaurant and was told they decided they wanted people to have no obstacle in coming to visit.
If this Counsel wants to get out of this they should present a cost benefit analysis and post it in all the local papers and other public spaces and then put the project to a vote. If the program is good it should show on the balance sheet. If not then it should go away.
My two cents.
Those that commended the effort of Tahoe4Tahoe should know that before the initiative process was undertaken, a number of us spend considerable time attempting the persuade the City that paid parking was a bad idea for this community. As Councilmembers who are out-of-touch with the citizens will behave, they implied that they knew what was best for this community. The revenues that were touted by the City relied on the mass-issuance of Citations. Recently I was alerted to an example of the mentality of parking enforecement, where citations were issued to patrons of the annual Xmas dinner for the less fortunate of our community who were enjoying a Holiday Meal only to discover that they were cited for parking along Lyon Avenue. Wonder why the community is up in arms.
FYI: From what LTN could find out the parking citations at Bread & Broth were in 2012 and all the tickets were dismissed.
LTN staff
Wonder what the total cost was to issue and dismissed those tickets?
Not only can parking cops run off tourists they can run off poor locals!
OMG! A city with PAID PARKING! Who came up with this idea of PAID PARKING ANYWAY! Throw ’em in jail! Oh wait, wasn’t it Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke?
Mr. Cefalu:
I fail to see what your reference to an incident that took place in 2012 has to do with this specific paid parking issue other than it being a mechanism you employed in your ongoing attempts to disparage the City.
I very closely watch the City Council meetings on the City’s website and am well aware that yourself, Ms. Bourland-Madison, Ms. Beller, Mr. Pierini, Mr. and Mrs. Crawford, Mr. Jinkens, Mr. Grego, Mr. Engelhard, and several others have gone before the City Council on numerous occasions to vehemently oppose the City’s Parking Management Program, or what you always refer to as “paid parking”, and you’ve all spent a tremendous amount of your time and have caused the City to expend a tremendous amount of the staff’s time on this. While you assert that the Councilmembers are out-of-touch with the citizens since the majority of the Councilmembers disagree with you on this parking issue, I personally believe that a certain Councilmember, very much like yourself, doesn’t really care about the true economic needs of this community and you both are only concerned with your own financial well beings. After viewing your theatrics at the City Council meetings on this and other topics, I have been led to believe that you are arrogant, selfish, and only care about what John Cefalu can get for John Cefalu. I think you are the worst kind of good old boy, long-time Tahoeian who along with your cronies raped this town for everything you could take. I would venture to guess that my opinions are likely along the same vein as that of Marjorie Johnson Springmeyer.
For those individuals who disagree with me, you are entitled to your opinion, as I am entitled to mine.
Blindspot has a blindspot-
Many of the insidious fees and extra charges that creep into the system (and especially the tourism and travel industries) are for the private sector to recover costs which they are required to live with due to the myriad rules, regulations. laws, and other fees they must pay just to do business in a given venue.
It is so easy to think that another half percent here another dollar there won’t make a significant difference in profitability. Looking at small increments individually, this is probably true, but when every government entity and many private ones are in distress and levying fees to try to stay even, the collective impact is huge.
The city’s need to get revenue from anywhere stems in a significant part with the need to live with both their bad decisions in the past (golden but unfunded retirement and health plans for instance), but also in the need to cover the legal and other costs to defend themselves against citizen uprisings due to their continuing head-in-the-sand city operations ( for instance the dumb attempt to kill the no paid parking initiative before it started by dissemination of information the city attorney either did or should have known was inappropriate).
Parenthetically, the swinging door of the City Attorney’s office must be telling us something about the working conditions of that position. I could discuss this, but that is a subject for another time.
I have been watching the City for around 30 years, and it looks to me like the same people keep playing the same game, which is “to see what we can get away with” that benefits them, and their cronies personally on both short and long term fronts.
Citizens voting in significant numbers is the most important and unused tool there is to force a different approach. Changing the current leadership might not be an instant fix, and it could possibly vote in a different kind of problem, but the long term momentum established over the years by the existing leadership would be upset.
The City would be more susceptible to a new dynamic being established. SLT needs this desperately.