Survey: SLT voters warm to upping some taxes
By Kathryn Reed
South Lake Tahoe voters are open to spending money on infrastructure, but they don’t want to foot the entire bill.
The city submitted a few questions for a recent survey that Lake Tahoe Community College contracted for in regards to its proposed general obligation bond. The city paid for 25 percent of the survey at a cost of less than $5,000.
“Since the college was conducting a survey, which is typically expensive, it was a good opportunity to see if for very little cost the city could tag onto the college’s survey,” City Manager Nancy Kerry explained.
Harrison Avenue upgrades are being funded by a variety of sources. Photo/LTN file
The results show that 65 percent of voters would support increasing the hotel tax. On previous city surveys the voters have said the same thing – it would be fine to up the transient occupancy tax.
When it came to be willing to support a sales tax for infrastructure, slightly more than half the voters, or 54 percent, said do it.
“The City Council does not have on its work plan to go to the voters anytime soon on a tax increase,” Kerry told Lake Tahoe News.
Still, money is needed if the city is going to make any kind of dent in upgrading, maintaining and bringing some of its infrastructure to code.
“We also need money for recreation upgrades and facilities and services. The question is whether there is an appetite of the community to invest in these key strategies – infrastructure and recreation – or if funding will need to come from another source,” Kerry said.
The massive Harrison Avenue project, which has started, in part is being funded by the city taking out a loan.
Here are the actual survey results.
Since the city would need 66% voter approval for any of their tax increase ideas, it doesn’t look like the community would support any of these ideas. Did Nancy Kerry really need to spend $5,000.00 of taxpayer’s money to find this out?
the streets are falling apart because the City has spent all of the maintenance money on Redevelopment Dept. since the 90’s
the Marvelous Makeover is going to bleed the Town Dry
Chief,
Do you have any information that would back up that comment? I get angry at the city quite often in regards to wasting money.
If your comment is true heads should roll. The cost of replacing streets that could have been maintained is outrageous.
Does anyone know if the grand jury could look into this or are they limited to county issues?
HOGAN what is another $5,000? Chump change for our city. I do not have an appetite to waste any more money after the parking meters. Now half of them are in storage because they do no work and we still have all the staff of community service and vehicles to pay for. What will staff do if they can not write tickets when we vote yes on P?
As one of the persons called for this survey, I can attest that the way questions were asked, respondents were steered toward answering how they wanted the results to turn out, so pro-tax increase articles like this could then be written.
They don’t dare ask questions like “Do you think city management is paid too much or given too many perks”, “do you think the convention center was a good idea”, or “would you like to see parking meters removed”, or “should the city continue subsidizing the airport”… knowing full well what the responses would be.
Like Steve said, the polls ask questions in such a way as to get the answers to slant in the direction they desire. And contrary to popular opinion (!) polls do not exist to let people know what popular opinion is; they are designed to show you how you SHOULD think.
The tourists come to our town, use our roads, use our facilities, dump their trash everywhere, leave their cigarette butts and are pushy and rude to boot. Here is my Poll, I say raise the TOT too.
rock4tahoe:
I know I agree with you on raising the TOT and think a majority of residents may also agree, but will there ever be a fight from the Lodging Association. They act like they’re doing us little resident folks some kind of huge favor by “putting heads in the beds” as they like to say. I sometimes get the feeling that certain local businesses consider the local residents mostly unimportant and expendable.
4-USMC. As the saying goes… you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. I would say your assessment is correct.
Well, an awful lot of cities’ residents feel the same way. Yeah, raise the TOT, WE don’t have to pay that, the visitors do! Scraw the tourists!
We used to go away on weekends often and stay in other little towns, and started noticing their TOTs (or whatever the particular locality called the transient tax). When it got over 10% we stopped going. Because we always felt like, the locals are are saying Scraw the tourists to US!
We bought a trailer and go camping now. Heck with the locals.
Dogula:
I don’t consider increasing the TOT as “Scraw the tourists” but rather their assistance toward the rising costs of our infrastructure maintenance and use of our City services since the tourists make substantial use of both. (Also, I checked my dictionaries and couldn’t locate the word “Scraw”, so I checked online and found it being from the Irish and defined as “a turf, a green sod”. Quizzical.)
Just trying to get the message across without igniting the censors. ;-)
You may not regard it that way, but I think a LOT of residents, AND our city fathers/mothers, DO. Shouldn’t we be able to pay for the infrastructure out of existing property taxes and sales taxes? Our visitors buy stuff here, and a regular sales tax on hotel rooms would also be reasonable. Really, additional TOT is taxation without representation for the folks visiting our fair town.
Just my opinion.
Dog,
I disagree that we should be able to pay for the infrastructure out of existing property taxes and sales taxes since the amount of visitors to our community is so much greater than the number of residents. Visitors place a huge demand and strain on our infrastructure and services and I think they should pay their fair share of associated costs for enjoying the benefits of our town. Whether people like it or not the cost of everything has gone up and unfortunately we can’t turn back the clock on the costs of materials to do paving or to repair public amenities. I wish I could pay 1990 prices for 2014 products and services but that’s not going to happen. Just like I wouldn’t want to accept 1990 wages in 2014.
Anyway, that’s just my opinion.
Duly noted, 4-mer. But the people who own homes and don’t live here pay for the services they don’t use. And the hotels pay a higher rate of property tax than residents do, as well as higher utility taxes, etc. When our visitors are here, they eat at our restaurants and pay taxes there. . . they pay for taxis, or rental cars, and if they do injure themselves, they must pay their own hospital or ambulance fees. Those things aren’t free for anyone.
I just don’t see the justification for a higher TOT. What, exactly, does it pay for?
I believe there is a significant amount of TOT which is not collected today which would make a big difference in not having to raise the rate.
If you own a timeshare outside of South Lake Tahoe but trade your time to stay at say the Timberlodge, you don’t pay TOT.
That doesn’t seem right to me as you are trading the value of the daily charge but you are not trading ownership. You don’t own a timeshare in Tahoe but you don’t pay the TOT. I can see where they would not pay a TOT at the property where they purchased their ownership but they should here.
Can you imagine how much more TOT would be collected if all non-owners of the Tahoe Timeshare were charged.
Does anyone know why this loophole exists????
How many other properties besides the Timberlodge have this loophole?
Sunriser the City Overlay was a yearly project to re- pave a portion of Town.
the budget was about $1,600,000.00 the last Hood to get paved was St.Line motel district.
our City Council put a stop the project about 20 years ago.
to use the money for the giant redevelopment loan payment $9,000,000.00 per year
the TOT and other taxes never covered that note.
Dogula,
I as a taxpayer have an expectation of having my street paved and having good public services in the form of fire and police protection and snow removal when I need them. Having those available for me and for visitors to our community is my justification for a higher TOT. Street maintenance/repairs and public safety services cost money; if the local taxpayers don’t want to pay for these and we don’t want visitors to contribute then the end result can be the continued deterioration of our infrastructure and not to expect help when it’s needed.
I don’t want to nit-pick and dance around what I believe is the real issue so I’ll just come out and say what I think: governments at local, regional, state and federal levels gave away the farm a good 20-30 years ago when smart Association/Union representatives convinced those elected decision-makers to give employees, their dependents, and eventual retirees and their dependents such generous healthcare and retirement packages that those elected decision-makers in essence spent nearly all future revenue. Unfortunately that future is now and when an excess of 70% of General Fund revenues (and increasing every year) has to pay for those old negotiated contracts that were agreed to by former Council members some 20 or more years ago you don’t have much money left over to pay for today’s infrastructure and public safety needs.
I suppose the real problem that occurred was that people were elected to office that lacked the business acumen to ask the simple question “What if insurance costs go up in the future, like from $150 per person per month to $1,500 or $2,500 per person per month?”; or to recognize the importance of extrapolating the potential future numbers of covered individuals which included current employees and their dependents, and all retirees and their dependents until their demise. This is the result of historically unqualified decision-makers and their poor business management and poor planning.
Then of course there’s the PERS investments debacle where those money managers lost nearly all the paid-in retiree funds which now we taxpayers get to pay all over again.
A lot of former elected officials created a real mess which we’ve been left to deal with. But in spite of that, I want my street paved and I want good public services.
Yup. I remember back in the mid-80s when I heard the argument for the first time that civil servants deserved higher pay and better benefits ‘because if they were in the private sector, they’d be getting so much more’. My first thought was, ‘Then go WORK for the private sector!’
That was the beginning of my radicalization. Oh, I was already a libertarian. Had been since ’76. But I wasn’t really paying attention much till 10 years later.
You’re right, 4-mer; it’s a MESS. But continuing on in the same way we’ve always done it will not fix this. We need radical change.
Dogula,
I don’t advocate going on in the same way. Collectively the City of South Lake Tahoe’s management and current employees have made agreements to the present and future benefits structures for current and future employees to reduce those costs. Someday, way down the road those savings will be more easily recognized. The big problem is what to do with those old, negotiated contracts to which those former (and at least one present) City Council member agreed. What would you do–renege on those contracts? Or would you live up to an obligation and responsibility for the decisions of incompetent people that our City’s electorate voted into office all those many years ago? Do you leave the City’s infrastructure to crumble to a point where it’s past being repaired and just needs total reconstruction at a much greater cost? Do you not replace old and outdated equipment for fire and police staff so when safety personnel are needed they don’t have what they need to do their jobs for the public? Do you just not replace aged snow removal equipment so that when we return to the winters of the good old days there’s no way to clear our roads?
The fact is, many years ago our City’s electorate voted into office people who made bad decisions for which we are now paying the price, whether or not we personally voted for those individuals. I would compare this situation to co-signing for your 16-year old kid’s credit card, and then they go out and charge it to the max and don’t pay a cent on the bill. You co-signed so you have the obligation for that debt and responsibility which you entrusted to that 16-year old, unless of course you’d rather renege on the debt to the creditor and destroy your own credit rating, but that’s not very responsible. This community is full of people who in essence say “Don’t charge for anything, I want everything for free, and when I want public service you better show up immediately and give me what I want”. I’ve got news for those folks, nothing in the world is free. Even that winning lottery ticket cost money to purchase.
Dogula, you’ve stated that radical change is needed. Could you please provide specificity on what those changes would be that would fix THIS mess?
Such is the phallus-y of capi-take-it-all-ism. The individual citizen first gets screwed by those who claim they will represent them but are corrupted by corporate money(what our activist Supreme Court calls ‘free speech’ by ‘individuals’), then the public gets blamed for the excesses of those who set up the system so they can game the system. Those are the very same people who sell the myth of continual economic growth. Shallow thinkers(woof) drink the Flavor-aid and pile on with the Social Darwinists, claiming PEOPLE want something for nothing when the sad truth is that CORPORATIONS-big and small- are the ones who bargain from that exact position of demanding perks for doing business in a given area or sector, avoiding responsibility for their excesses, abuses and malfeasance (example-GM doesn’t think they should be held accountable for deaths that occurred from them putting a product on the road that THEY KNEW WAS FAULTY, and even hid the data from the scrutiny of the public eye and of government regulators. Other examples-corporate tax breaks and dirty money in politics). Welfare for a person is abhorrent, welfare for a corporation is expected. And the costs are all heaped on the back of the lower and middle class worker. Shameless! And as far as proudly proclaiming to be Libertarian… Hmmppffhh! They are the worst.
Welfare for a corporation is abhorrent.
Capitalism is not corporatism. Learn the difference. It matters. Corporatism is impossible without the support of the government. Government protects corporations through regulation and licensing. Corporations kickback to government through lobbyists. AND politicians enrich themselves through insider trading connections that would be illegal for the rest of us. For their own continued enrichment, Government officials ride the revolving door: Washington DC, corporate lobbyist, Wall Street. Repeat.
It’s all corruption. None of it would be possible without the excesses of the Federal government.
Hmmm: Do you mean Vail Corp who does not pay a penny to the city for a gondola ride starting in the city limits?
“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” – Benito Mussolini.
It’s questionable whether Mussolini actually said that or not. But it’s still a good one. Pretty accurate. I know you’ve heard me refer to our ‘fascist’ government more than once. It’s appropriate.
4-USMC. If you haven’t figured it out by now, Dog has no answers; only complaints. BTY. America ranked 19th in ethical governments worldwide last year; Denmark and New Zealand were tied for 1st, I believe.
rock4tahoe:
I don’t want to cast any aspersions but will admit that I’m still waiting for a reply to my query of specificity regarding the radical changes that will “fix THIS mess.”
Out of curiosity, what were the total number of governments that were ranked?
4-USMC. 175 Governments. Don’t hold your breath waiting for Dog to answer your question; might be down at that Cow Bundy or Don Sterling rally.