Opinion: Suggestions to save South Tahoe money
To the South Lake Tahoe City Council,
Councilmember Bruce Grego returns the $937.50 to the city that the grand jury said was unlawful to receive.
No conference money for the City Council. Council takes the same cuts in benefits as city employees. No PERS for councilmenbers. No line item in budget for the City Council.
Bill Crawford
Reduce the number of city paid holidays.
No city manager’s gas allowance of $500 a month. No gas allowance for city attorney.
No city employee dines at city expense.
Itemize monthly all budget transfers in and out of accounts.
Warrants to be in council packets for the public to see.
No hiring of outside lawyers and consultants. Staff is the expert(s).
Declare the Redevelopment Agency bankrupt. TOT belongs in the general fund. Tear city credit cards up.
Bill Crawford, South Lake Tahoe
I agree with cuts but without addressing the cause you won’t solve the problem.
And the issues permeate throughout the entire political system, progressive liberalism.
The classic – Animal Farm, did you read it? “some pigs are more important than other pigs” So you regular pig get the bill. We special pigs get the benies. The problems in California are so large. Yet unknown.
In America what we did was allow the accounting industry to set up two accounting systems. In the one for the government they allowed for the “Hidding” of certain costs.
Enron but much bigger.
If you are a believer in Freedom and “free enterprise” I encourage you to
Leave the state.
Until such time as we have a city council that adopts each of Bill Crawford’s suggestions, South Lake Tahoe will continue its ugly decline in appearance, roads, services, jobs, beaches and residents. Sadly, neither the city council nor anyone else in local government is willing to admit how bankrupt the city really is. The first step in solving any problem is to admit it exists. Clearly, we are not there yet and the deception and coverups by city officials continue.
I agree about the outside experts….remember the cute little girl who was being paid $10,000.00 per month for six months, to bring in an airline to our airport…with a $10,000.00 bonus when she was successful? She worked for six months and I believe,received her $60,000.00, but alas, did not get her bonus, and we did not get our airline. Seems to me that the City should be courting the private plane owners if we can’t get the commuter airlines to commit. We could tempt them with free gas. By the way, how long were we giving airplane fuel away before it was discovered there was a glitch in “the system”?
Some pigs are more equal than others.
Other than that, I agree.
1. Revert ownership of the airport to the feds. Let the feds “foreclose”, and take ownership, if in fact there actually exists some type of deed of trust that some claim.
2. Combine City and Lake Valley fire departments. Reduce redundant overhead, overlapping, and bureaucracy. They already respond to many of the same incidents anyway.
3. Declare municipal bankruptcy and revise city employee labor contracts to more closely align with the private sector.
4. Adopt a county-wide ski lift ticket tax on the only industry in the area that is robust and growing, and has high inelasticity of demand.
5. Eliminate costly city council medical and retirement benefits.
Hi Billie Jo,
Please visit http://www.casislt.org to see the ongoing efforts to bring commuter airservice back to SLT. I have received no compensation for my time and efforts in building the CASI initiative since I started working towards it in Jan of 2010.
http://www.CasiSLT.org
Start with a blank piece of paper. List the things the city MUST do. I would think the list would be rather short since it didn’t exist before the 1960s.
Eliminate redevelopment and you risk the state taking the majority of the TOT generated from project area 1, and this city will be bankrupt. Redevelopment has exponentially increased the sales tax produced, built senior, disabled and low income housing, and except for only the last year generated tax increment income. It has produced jobs and revenue that is vitally needed. It has been the only source of income to attract tourism. Kill the Golden Goose and this town’s future is cooked.
The city council gets paid so little ($500 a month or so) and medical benefits that I can’t really understand why cutting their compensation is viewed as fair. I’m guessing the $500 probably covers their fuel expenses and lunch while at meetings. Cutting compensation further will lead to a city council of affluent individuals only. The way it is, the city council job, as Claire Fortier said, is a full-time job. I think that if you look at the bulk of paperwork they have to review for each meeting one would have to agree.
This council may not be the best, they may not be the worst, but at least most of them seem to be doing what they think is best. If we the voters don’t l;ike it, we vote them out when they run again. Thats how the system works.
To Ike…..Thanks for all the great information on the link you provided.
http://www.CasiSLT.org
Ike, if I am reading that right you are asking locals to guarantee seat sales. Is that right?
If air service to SLT was likely to be profitable, private industry would DO it. No government guarantees. Take your own risk.
Voting them out will be too late for the current 14-22 on the chopping block for next Tuesday’s September 27 council meeting at 6pm.
Thank you Whitt…you hit the nail on the head with Redevelopment and why we can’t get rid of it. Why do many listen to Crawford and not look into the reasons why its not always so easy to eliminate things (such as the airport)?
Government in CA has it’s paws in everything.
Including brain washing.
over reaching Government is the problem.
In better planned communities business parks are created around the air parks. Not here in El Dorado county. They know better. They got a cement plant instead.
SLT – A very poor plan executed well.
South lake tahoe and El dorado county are the laughing stock of economic development. You people follow them at your own risk.
Disfuncfional defined.
John,
Thank you for checking out the CASI site.
The idea is the local businesses that immediately benefit from a plane full of qualified tourists landing in SLT (restaurants/bars, lodging, gaming, skiing etc.) would all have a stake in the program. I wanted to keep it apolitical as much as possible so the city of SLT doesn’t feel as though it’s getting railroaded by big biz/gaming.
The money CASI is looking for are pledges. If a certain percentage of money is pledged, we are then opened up to FAA and DOT grant programs that would be the bulk of money that would, as you said “buy empty seats” So in theory, no money ever really gets exchanged
unless there is a substantial underage of seats sold. The way CASI wants to combat a substantial underage, is simply to use a smaller, more efficient aircraft. Revenue guarantee programs of the past have taken a “field of dreams” approach in that, they thought “if you build it they will come” and that’s just not the case of modern airservice dynamics. We need a targeted marketing program of ecotourism (not gaming) in order to rebrand SLT away from a has-been gaming destination and into the ecotourism capitol of North America.
So, yes, John. In a sense, CASI is asking the locals of SLT to help fill seats on planes. That is who we want to reap the rewards of planes landing. Locals. CASI is researching other ways for locals to benefit, such as travel savings accounts which grant overages help subsidize air travel tickets from SLT for local residents in order to have them use TVL instead of RNO or SMF in the event that the TVL airfare is more expensive.
This isn’t something that can happen overnight. It will take a few years to build a successful air service program, but it has to be done. Using city data and numbers, a declining economic line can be drawn from the time air service stopped in SLT to now. Local support will be crucial for this to work. In addition, I live, work, play and raise my
family here in SLT, and I’ve been working on CASI since Jan of 2010. I have received no money to do this. It’s simply a (another) hole that needs to be filled in this community and the example I choose to leave for my family, is of a man that sees a problem and tries to solve it with whatever resources are available to him instead of pointing and spreading negativity.
Does the RDA take in enough money to pay the interest and principle payments on the bonds? Probably not or the city would not have fronted money to the RDA to pay its debts timely. A default would destroy the citys credit. Of course, the RDA provides other benefits worthwhile for the community, but cash flow is not one of them.
Ike, no way we should be “pledge” to fill seats. The last time we did this the airlines had several flights a day with empty planes because we subsidized them or pledged to fill seats. If the airlines want to come up here they will but only if they make money and they can’t in today’s or even yesterday’s market. We should treat them as we treated the busses that used to frequent us and went directly to the casinos for their benefit, give em a roll of nickels. Let the casinos and Heavenly “pledge” the money as they are the one who will benefit most.
Business should not be subsidized, if it needs to be, than it’s a bad idea to start with.
Thanks for the opinion, Skibum.
The pledge is not to fill seats. The pledge of money is the “community buy-in” that the FAA and DOT needs to see now (it used to not be this way. Back in “the day”, the FAA and DOT had plenty of grant monies/subsidies they had to give away each year. That’s all over now and those funds are evaporating. Frankly, I think many of them should go away) in order for a town like SLT to qualify. The magic number is 20-25% buy-in. So, if SLT wanted $1 million in grant to “buy empty seats”, the DOT wants to see $200-250K in pledge from local businesses. This is understandable, as the DOT doesn’t want to throw money at airline guarantees (anymore) if the local population doesn’t support it or is not willing to work towards making it work without subsidies.
And I agree with you, Skibum, on the failed model of the past. Several flights a day?? That’s ridiculous. Theres no market here for “several flights a day”. Not yet. But there could be….it has to be grown slowly and methodically. ONE flight a day. Not several. On a quiet, green, turboprop 77 seater that gets better gas mileage than a Prius, and breaks even on flight costs at less than HALF capacity. And from only ONE market: Southern CA. And when that market can stand on its own revenue, move to another market…then another…but it will take time and certainly not “several planes a day”.
As a business owner, you understand that it’s better to have demand that outweighs supply, than the other way around. Is it better to have a 30 seat restaurant that is full every night with a line going out the door? Or a restaurant that has 100 seats feeding 50 a night and never goes on wait? I’ll take the first one. Lower overhead, debt, more manageable, lower labor,…this is the new reality of air service. I disagree with your statement that airlines cant make money in today’s market. The data proves the opposite concerning regional carriers.
One of the current reasons no regional carrier would come here isn’t profitability: Its regulation of the past few years. The TRPA settlement agreement. None of them have wanted to deal with it. But now the aircraft technology is such that the noise and emission levels fall beneath the agreement…and the agreement expires in 2012.
As for having Heavenly and the casinos pledge all the money needed, I understand where you are coming from. But the idea, is for SLT to receive the bulk of the marketing dollars of the program, and thus the bulk of the tourism dollars. Not Vail and the Casinos. The casinos should be the cherry on top. Not the whole ice cream sundae. I’m afraid that if Vail and the Casinos put up all the money (and they probably would), they would want the heaviest hand in how that money was marketed, which wouldn’t do much for re-branding the town of SLT into the premiere outdoor destination that it is. Im afraid it would be one more case of SLT being the bedroom community for big business, and sending money out of SLT and the state entirely. The initiative isnt as much about getting planes into SLT as it is about getting qualified second home buyers here that will be new property tax payers, restaurant eaters, BMP updaters and long term contributing members of the SLT vacation society.
There’s no other destination in North America offering anything close to what we have out our back doors, that can be purchased for under $250K. Not a single place. But the person that is buying that place, does not want to take 2 whole days out of the meager time off they have to drive here. They want to check the Weather Channel, hop a 1-2 hr flight, jump in their car and be at their home getting their skis ready.
Below are a few articles addressing your comment regarding the current profitability of regional airlines. They’re worth a look, as is http://www.casislt.org.
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/columnist/grossman/2009-11-03-regional-airlines_N.htm
http://seekingalpha.com/article/207801-regional-airlines-challenging-investor-perceptions
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2011/04/06/10-small-caps-to-rule-them-all.aspx
Check out the networth of past and present council members.
What do they expect for $500 a month.
If it is such a tough job! why do they hang on and retread? Could it be Health Insurance?
Did Bill Crawford cash his Checks when he was on the City Council? Has he accepted his retirement benefits?
did he ever accept reembursement for expenses while on city business?