Letter: Don’t P on Tahoe

To the community,

The other day I saw a bumper sticker against paid parking in South Lake Tahoe on a nice car with a Nevada license plate. While the driver of that vehicle understandably would like to revert to the days of getting his front row beach access for free, eliminating the kiosks at Lakeview Commons and other locations simply means that South Lake Tahoe taxpayers will pick up the tab instead.

According to the city’s website, revenues gathered from the parking kiosks (approximately $250,000 per year) is dedicated to maintaining and improving the facilities where the kiosks are located, such as the boat ramps and restrooms at Lakeview Commons/El Dorado Beach. Without these dedicated funds, the city will either have to neglect maintenance — which would be unacceptable in this popular, highly trafficked destination — or use general fund revenue, aka local taxes, to pay for it.

Unlike the Lake Tahoe Airport, where city taxpayers subsidize high-rolling Nevada-bound golfers and gamblers, the paid parking program brings revenue to the city from those using city services, who paid on average $3.20 per visit last year. This is hardly an unreasonable price.

As a resident of El Dorado County, it’s in my selfish interest to get “free” parking, thank you very much city taxpayers. But as a resident of the South Shore community, I’m more than happy to make a small contribution for the privilege of parking right next to a great new gathering area on the lake that took tens of millions in public investment to create. If this were a private vendor trying to get a decent return on investment, rest assured the rates would be much higher.

Think of the community and the lake first when voting on the parking measure. Let’s not “P” on Tahoe – vote no on P.

John Friedrich, Meyers