Letter: Measure F moves Tahoe out of status quo
To the community,
I’ve been closely involved with Lake Tahoe Community College since its beginning in 1974 when I was elected one of the first LTCC board of trustees members. I’d like you to consider, just for a minute, what would happen if the college’s Measure F bond effort failed to pass this Election Day.
Since the bond would cost homeowners $25 per $100,000 in assessed value, Measure F not passing would mean a homeowner savings of about $6 a month on average – that’s true. The college would continue to exist, and the board of trustees, college leadership, and faculty and staff would find a way to keep LTCC going. Our dedicated and professional educators would continue in their efforts to prepare students for transfer to four-year programs, for rewarding careers, and to lead them on enjoyable educational experiences.
But without the solid foundation Measure F provides, our teachers wouldn’t experience the excitement and freedom to create and innovate that reliable funding can make possible. Without funding, innovation is hampered. The spark innovation provides makes teaching a true joy, and that would be missing.
Our students deserve the best education we can give them. Measure F funds would continue and even improve the high-quality experience LTCC provides. Should we be satisfied with merely an adequate educational experience, in merely adequate facilities? I believe that in order to achieve their goals and do their best work, students need a well-supported and enthusiastic faculty, teaching in the finest facilities we can provide.
If Measure F fails, it tells our city and the world that the citizens of South Lake Tahoe are satisfied with the status quo, not interested in being the best, but rather in being just run of the mill. Great schools are the result of a dynamic, progressive, forward-thinking community that attracts new business and population to it. Will larger, healthier businesses be anxious to spend large sums of money in communities that don’t value exceptional education? Will the state of California be motivated to tap LTCC as one of its 15 pilot schools to offer four-year degrees in a community that’s satisfied with a status quo college?
True, everyone dislikes higher taxes. With Measure F, we’re talking about $6 a month to homeowners and businesses. But in the face of worldwide competition for investment and tourist dollars, can South Lake Tahoe afford to be labeled as “status quo”? The health of our local college is tightly bound to the health of our community. Please join me in voting yes on Measure F, and make the right call for our kids, college and community.
Sincerely,
Fritz Wenck, Lake Tahoe Community College board trustee
Well said! I believe in this community and truly believe that South Lake Tahoe is way above the status quo. This is a community that believes in the value of education and that a rising tide raises all boats. Voting Yes on Measure F is a just one more step towards a stronger community for us all.
Well said! “In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” We can not afford to do nothing. Nothing is what we have done and it’s not working.
Another jaded sales pitch for a Platinum bond measure.
If measure F fails it tells LTCC and everyone else that Tahoe property owners aren’t their “Golden Goose”.
This bond can be chopped in half and it’s still more than enough. This isn’t a do or die turning point.
Let’s stop this public shakedown now and discourage every other local agency with their extraordinary wish lists doing the same.
Come back with a dramatically reduced bare bones bond measure that puts the college back in repair with a few new small upgrades and maybe it’ll fly.
Vote NO on measure F !
Having gone to a well funded community college and transferred to get a 4 year degree, I can vouch for the necessity of a well funded community college.
Just look at the other bond measures for the public school system that have passed. Are are schools better? YES! Vote yes on Measure F
This is a not a hard decision. Yes on F.
This is a ill-conceived Measure. The pie in the sky, built it and they will come attitude is naïve. Come back next year with a scaled down version and maybe it will pass.
No on Measure F.
This is an excellent investment some folk just can’t see it.
Lake Tahoe Community College is the diamond in the rough of South Lake Tahoe! I would like to see it grow into a destination college which ultimately offers 4-year degree programs. The State of California has an incubation program to promote the 4-year degree program for Community Colleges, and hopefully LTCC will some day be able to participate. It would also be fantastic to eventually offer a full-degree nursing program and maybe even a biotechnology program. These are jobs we know will be available for the future.
$6 per month for forward vision is a pretty slim investment for such a positive opportunity. Remember, SLT is (trying) to go through a metamorphous – evolving into a sustainable future. Look at Salt Lake City: High performance education, sports training, and a solid investment in their future. SLT needs to get off the “nickel & dime” bus, and get a ticket to sustainability and smart growth.
I also think they should scale it down. Just because you build it doesn’t mean people are going to flock here and put money into the economy on top of it. We are already paying a lot of “It’s just a cup of coffee a week or only $6 a month” on our property taxes. If this is something that will benefit everyone, then it should be paid for by everyone, not just the homeowners.
I agree with Irish Wahini that LTCC is a “diamond in the rough”. Why wouldn’t one want to come to this beautiful community to further their education especially with a potential of obtaining a four year degree? I also agree with Mr. Wenck that this cannot be done with “merely adequate facilities”. Hence measure F. However, unless I overlooked something, I have not seen or heard of anything that remotely suggests that any plan of action has been put in place to accomplish these improvements to the college.
Everything has only been that measure F has to pass. I want to know how are the funds going to be used- what are the goals, what repairs or replacements are going to be made, how are the funds going to be used to improve the academic structure, etc.
Generalities can ultimately cost a whole lot of money. You have to have specifically stated goals.
So, I guess I agree with Arod as well- that maybe we should wait another year to give time for some plans of action to be proposed so we know where the monies are going and how they will be used.
It only makes good business sense.
I really don’t want to be in a position that down the road it is decided that there was not enough monies available to accomplish what has to be done at the college to change it into a “diamond” from it present “coal” condition. Another measure?
the farther that we go down the Road of Redevelopment the more it will cost us.
How many dormitory rooms are going to be built?
toxic and this paper got it right.
way over the top, and please stop with this $6 a month ruse. Is you house valued at $100,000? Mine isn’t even close.
My current tax bill has so many surcharges from previous bond measures I can’t list them all. Most will not come off in my lifetime.
The state used to fund education, but as others have commented, the shell game for taxation in this money grabbing state has moved to cover the state employee funding and so schools now turn to their local constitutes to fulfill education pipe dreams. Second home owners will pay for a measure they can’t even vote on. How’s that for taxation without representation? What about renters who make minimum wage, do you really think they won’t be held by landlords as the ones to offset this added expense to living at the lake? Of course they will.
This bloated bond is way more then what is prudent, and an independent editorial board of seven agreed. VOTE NO on F!!!!!!
Now is the time. Opportunity is here time to move forward. It’s a great project. Sitting and waiting gets us no where there will be a community advisory group to make sure the money is being spent well. The press and this site will be all over it. This community has had enough status quo. Now is the time not tomorrow or five years from now. Yes on F. Easy decision.
How about raising the tuition instead. Why should local homeowners shoulder the financial burden of educating out of town students?
Next will be a bond for dormitories.
A healthy local economy is what supports fee for service institutions like LTCC. We have no new agreement as a society to fund post-secondary education. When businesses and individuals have money to spend then places like LTCC are vibrant & healthy too. We are really deep in not honoring our existing agreements already. All levels of gov’t and public entities are struggling to keep promises that were made in the best of economic times. Look around people. How many people can’t even get a paycheck anymore with their employers paying the employers share of payroll taxes, worker’s comp and unemployment taxes? Society pays the price. It seems there’s an epidemic of tax avoidance happening in Tahoe. Let’s get back to basic economics and when the local economy is thriving the college will thrive also. No on F
What a concept; asking people themselves to pay for stuff they want!! Personal responsibility, and voluntary donation, instead of demanding that the collective put out for the few? Radical ideas.
Slow this measure will not have completed dorms, rather they have 1.5 million for development cost, my guess it will cost another 5 million to complete the dorms.
Steve tuition cost is determined at the State Level, the local community colleges cant just raise tuition.
So Dog, ex. who exactly would pay to put in the ports to receiver your computer from China, the highways to ship the computer from the port to your town and the road to deliver the computer to your house. Gosh what a radical concept… public transportation. This is the 21st century, not the 14th.
This bond is luxurious self-indulgence at it’s best.
Vote NO on Measure F !
Revolving advocations on this piece of PORK from yet another trustee or wanna be trustee.
Don’t be fooled by these visions which amount to nothing more than wasteful spending by these folks. This will be yet another black eye of loss to environmental wildlife habitat for Tahoe with the HUGE construction plans and destruction of natural areas along Al Tahoe Blvd not to mention additional effects on the Lake. Once its gone,its gone. (they want to remove trees to build a solar demonstratin buliding)
The cost to all of us will be much, much more than 75 dollars a year. (homeowners and renters) This will only be the start of a continued building and money grabbing fest.
Vote for the Lake –> VOTE NO MEASURE F
Vote Yes!
NO on F.
It is not really the money!
This is not all that large of a tax. I don’t like extra taxes either, but for a great college I would go for it.
The real problem with this Bond issue is that we are being asked to approve a 50 plus million dollar bond issue, with the hints that another +/-$50 million is available in matching funds or grants.
Mr. Wenk’s statement “The health of our local college is tightly bound to the health of our community” is a bit of a chicken-or-egg analysis. Building a larger college which will require a much larger student population to support is not certain to cause the community to grow. Neither is it certain that if the community swelled to a 35 thousand population that the college would see a significant enough influx of students to support the New Plan.
This bond proposal asks us to buy in to the accuracy of the concept.
How do you justify the whole enchilada, when the Administration has only identified SPECIFIC immediate needs for some deferred maintenance. An amount fractional of the $50 million requested.
This proposal was hastily assembled against a time line required to get it on the November 2014 ballot, and it plainly shows.
Tax payers are being asked to trust the administration to do the right thing when and if the details of new facilities and new programs get actually designed instead of the current “concept only” basis.
An example we can all look at in real time: New parking is planned. When has the current parking been actually fully utilized for academic purposes?
Note: Snow Globe is NOT an academic event.
The Administration and the Board have firmly established that we cannot trust them. This has been demonstrated largely by things they have done and said that have been later proven to be wrong, half truths, or simply shots from the hip aimed at sounding knowledgeable, informed and prepared.
They are none of these things, and this is readily visible by noting that statements by various individuals who theoretically are on the same team do not always match.
Vote no on F, and hope that it will teach the college administration that the voters are not going to be stupidly pushed into a bad decision by Bull S**t.
Bring it back when they have a believable plan that actually has some time frames and details which are done using something other than a digital dartboard.
Crank. If it is “not about the money” then vote Yes on Measure F. Yes, it uses “matching” funds via grant; so what. We have been using “grants” since the early 1800’s for guess what… encouragement of learning.
Scale it back and try later. As it stands now….NO!!!
Rock4-
The issue is, yes on F means giving LTCC the right to spend 55 to 100 million bucks, but the only detailed, coherent part of the plan is to repair the deferred maintenance.
Bring back a proposal that is not 10 years of concepts, but some coherent research based concrete plans and I will vote for it. What we have been furnished is a list of feel good, supposedly sustainable and green options.
I simply do not trust the administration or their (soon to be) hand picked group of citizen yes people to spend the funds wisely based on what we have been shown so far.
I fear a waste of a few million on consultants while they work out the details, engineering etc. I do not believe the money they have allocated for all the non construction management activity is sufficient, particularly if the inevitable arguments arise on the final plans.
Re grants: They are good but when an entity fails to realize they are often one time windfalls, and they begin to live as if the grants are perpetual revenue. They don’t know what to do when the economy throws them a curve and they are not often willing to economize.
Lake valley fire district (which has Measure H on the ballot) in the wake of the Angora fire is a perfect example of this. Post fire…a bunch of grant money rolled in, not so much any more. They have a tax item on the ballot that raises existing fire taxes by 600 percent, AND contains a guaranteed inflation increase,that is pegged at a maximum of 3 percent annually. Based on a CPI index for the San Francisco Bay area, one of the most expensive places in the country to live. This practically guarantees the tax charged will rise annually forever.
In what can only be described as a turf war, the City and Lake Valley fire depts refused to consider merging the two districts. The merger would provide streamlined leadership and many economies of scale.
That merger would also require a lot less of a non-fire fighting administrative burden and related overhead. Which is the real reason the concept failed. Fewer chiefs, board members etc who cant play well with others.
There are 26 letters in the alphabet for bond measures inflicted on property owners people.
Let’s nip this one in the bud before it gets outta hand.
NO on F !
If it passes, I will just raise the rent on my rentals to cover the new tax. That basically passes it in to the students that I rent to. I am sure others will do the same. Too high of rent for students will definitely keep enrollment down. The money should come from the state anyway, not us.
Vote No on F!