Letter: City uses misleading words about parking
To the community,
Words, they bring people together, they drive people apart. We use words to inform. We use words to misinform. My friend says, “Information is a lot like water; it’s hard to hold on to, and hard to keep form leaking away.” Often language is misused to create complexities, to mislead, to hide the truth or facts. Michael Lewis calls it the art of torturing data.
Bill Crawford
Too often in politics there is disinformation, which is the deliberate use of incorrect and misleading information. Disinformation can become an art form by creating propaganda to control pubic opinion and behavior, telling a lie time and time again. Sometimes it’s called advertising. Sometimes it’s called public relations.
In local politics it’s called the financial need for city parking meters. City government has built an argument for parking meters using numbers that are hypothetical and projecting assumptions and suppositions as facts. Justice Oliver W. Holmes said, “You can build a syllogism for any conclusion.” And that’s what the City Council and city manager have done to sell parking meters. The argument is suspicious. The numbers are deceptively attractive, but have been shown by Tahoe-4-Tahoe to be fallacious. Mistrust is the result. And trust, like water, is hard to hold and hard to keep because false in one, false in all.
Language is the heart of the matter. And when abused there’s a price to pay. Always.
Bill Crawford, South Lake Tahoe
The City’s parking meter program is another failed government enterprise that the council and city manager are desperately trying to “sell” as a financial success.
A YES vote on Measure P removes the meters.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE. IT’S OUR TOWN!
Let’s simplify this situation:
No new revenue? No new stuff!
Too often in opinion letters there is disinformation, which is the deliberate use of incorrect and misleading information. Disinformation is an art form that creates propaganda to control public opinion and behavior, telling a lie time and time again. Tahoe4Tahoe has built an argument against parking meters using numbers that are hypothetical and projecting assumptions and suppositions as facts.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “You can build a syllogism for any conclusion.” That’s what Tahoe4Tahoe has done to sell parking meters as the evil mechanism that will destroy the entire City, causing pandemonium and making every tourist retreat from our town never to been seen again. Tahoe-4-Tahoe’s arguments are suspicious. Their conjectures are deceptively attractive, and they engage in inflammatory fallacies.
Parking meters certainly don’t have that same welcoming effect as those inviting boulders on Venice which were placed at Mr. Crawford’s directive. But I guess his delineation is clear when it comes to tourists and our locals needing a place to park their boat trailers.
Language is the heart of the matter. And when abused there is a price to pay. Here’s an idiom for contemplation: Janus-faced.
Leave it to government to further complicate and deliberately confuse: A YES vote means NO parking meters, and a NO vote means YES parking meters.
Disingenuous city officials know full well that when voters are confused, or do not take time to carefully review the ballot and its arguments, or simply do not want more government and its intervention, they tend to default to a NO vote, which slants the odds in favor of their foolish parking meters.
In South Lake Tahoe, No means Yes and Yes means No. No wonder it has racked up so many blunders.
it seems to me that old Hal and the Team are not telling the whole truth.
I’ve herd that they want to meter the entire Town
as you know Bill when you were on the Council Lies and Deception was the norm
This situation, like many others that the City has promulgated, isn’t mean-spirited lying, abuse or dishonest wordsmithing. It is merely the incompetence created by a leadership vacuum, IMHO. I haven’t seen any leadership for decades and don’t expect any soon. The City, like many others, is simply a group of petty and selfish people, pretending to run a City. The “sides” don’t matter at all.
Yes, disinformation! Even some who oppose the meters buy into the argument that the City needs to find some revenue source. I’ve heard some say, “There’s other ways the City can generate revenue.”
I know I’m a broken record on this. But since the disinformation is still being spread: there are retired City Employees getting 100% and more of their last year’s pay, pay in many instances over 100k!, and pay that got bumped up in their last year’s of employment just so they could get the most generous pension as possible, and also pay based on absurd raises that were handed out.
Those facts are all still true! As is many other wasteful City Govt. facts, including all that money spent on ‘consultants’. Don’t tell me the City is in need of revenue, or that they’re just trying to fund improvements.
If the funding improvements argument is even remotely true, it’s because the City has used money that should be going towards improvements, and instead blown it on the previously referred to excesses!
End the money grab. Yes on P!
“Level says:
Let’s simplify this situation: No new revenue? No new stuff!”
That’s exactly right. No new pavement for crumbling streets. No new equipment for Fire Fighters to safeguard the public and themselves in the conduct of their duties. No new equipment for Police personnel to safeguard the public and themselves in the conduct of their duties. No new snow removal equipment to perform snow removal. No maintenance to Lakeview Commons. No upgrades to the boat ramp. Etc., etc.
Parking meter revenue is a few drops in the revenue bucket to help start funding some of those things that everyone wants but apparently some don’t want to pay for. The problem is, nothing is free in this world. Even that winning lottery ticket cost money to purchase. We just may need to dig into our jeans and pull out some money, or we can just allow our town to further deteriorate into a latrine like appearance. Personally, I don’t want to live in a toilet and I want something better. And I’m willing to pay for that.
Vote NO on Measure P and reject Tahoe4Tahoe’s initiative and overall miserliness.
Parker:
I agree with you that retirees receive very generous retirement benefits at great cost the City’s taxpayers. But if you want to discuss those long-ago negotiated and agreed to retirement contracts for retired City employees you need to go talk to their Union representatives and to those City Council members from 20-30 years ago who gave away the farm along with most future revenue, and who for the record, were elected to office by this City’s constituency way back then. Good job folks.
Is it true and a private company outside of the Basin gets a cut from the new parking meters?
If it is true, that fact seems to be left out of the discussion too often. If untrue, my bad.
4-mer,
The City shouldn’t come to the Public for more money, in whatever form, as it wastes a lot of its current revenue!
For starters, what’s the incentive to not make even more absurd promises to the current employees? Heck, I guess the Public will just always have to pay the Bill whatever is agreed to in backroom deals?
Why not promise 200% retirement, cause down the road our City will go, “We’re broke. Give us more money or we can’t do our job!” If the people never stand up, the City can just count on John Q. Public always buying that line and agreeing to a never ending stream of ‘revenue enhancements’.
The City gets plenty of money to do a proper job. The exorbitant pay & benefits has been rationalised as necessary so as in order to attract skilled professionals to the City jobs.
Well on the average they’re making more than the City’s private sector counterparts. So they should at the very least should show they can do what the private sector does, (who can’t just have its hand out for more & more money all the time) and make it work with the plenty of revenue already coming in!
While I own property in SLT and pay taxes to support our city, I would like to have a vote in how the city charges taxes and fees like paid parking. I don’t have that say since I vote for the President of the US at my other address. I’d be willing to have fees/taxes increased on my property but not in a way which hurts the City.
So I’ll just have to express my opinion to those of you who can vote.
Paid Parking hurts SLTs businesses which hurts employees of those businesses. Every kiosk installed through the “Parking Management Program” should be eliminated.
Please vote YES on Measure P for me since I don’t have a vote in my own taxes/fees.
4-mer; Meters are not in the county so it’s OK for city folks to have meters? I don’t think you own a house where you have to get a permit to park in front of it. I don’t think you own a business where customers pay $2.00 to park so they can go in and buy a $5.OO sandwich. If they do not buy a sandwich they will park all day in your lot in order to avoid paid parking. These are the unintended consequences of paid parking. I will also add that this program looses money. The time and money wasted (3 new vehicles, 4 new employees ticket writers, all the meters and staff) on this could have filled a lot of pot holes. If meters are not stopped now they will be on Ski Run and back on Venice Dr. Also the city will start charging for the permits to park in front of your own home as that was in the original plan. So vote YES on P to end parking meters in the city!!! Take our beaches back!!
With regard to additional revenue…parking meters clearly will bring in additional revenue, at some level. Only trying it will see what the real return on the investment is because it will have to run for a few years to see how maintenance costs run, and how the fines are recovered. It seems that the tickets ARE the bigger dollar value item.
My comment is that, since the city has almost universally decided that tourism is the most likely source of economic activity, the city should go into a different form of revenue generation by actively promoting their own events, and therefore the town.
The City could organize and brand their own events.
A Snow globe type event for instance. Why couldn’t the city actively and from inside the city government promote events to bring people in for filling hotels and restaurants? The city would sell the tickets, get that revenue. They could book their own musicians through a booking agency etc, not pay money to other promoters.
How about bike races touting the high altitude challenge etc. Same for marathons, Iron Man or Iron woman events. A Rim trail endurance race over the entire 160 miles. A city branded pro-AM ski event. Use the natural splendor everybody talks about to actively attract visitors instead of just blathering rhetoric about the beauty and why they should come. Give them a city sponsored reason to come, insteqad or in addition to taxing them with paid parking and hoping to collect fines.
Why does the City wait for other promoters to bring these things in? Be proactive. Look at the income Reno-Sparks brings in from Hot August nights, the bowling center, Street Vibrations and others.
Not that I believe any one on the city staff has the skills to do this, but there are those skills out there to hire.
The college could teach courses in sports and event promotion and marketing. They’d have to hire that skill too, but so what? Right now they have all kinds of courses being taught by people who have passed “minimum qualifications” screening. Probably a mediocre education but it is working.
What is wrong with the members of the multiple and competing Chambers of commerce DEMANDING less infighting and paying some attention to these things from the Chambers, instead of being the puppets of just the gambling and skiing industries?
OK, this turned into a bit of a rant, but I would like to see an answer from the City regarding if or why not these sort of things were ever considered.
Parker:
Collectively the current City of South Lake Tahoe management and current employees made agreements to their present and future benefits structures where current and future employees are paying their portion of associated costs for their pensions and health coverage which reduced the City’s costs and thus the City now pays less for those employees’ benefits. The problem is those old, negotiated benefits contracts that former City Councils agreed to 20 or more years ago that pay those huge benefits and now uses up approximately 70% of the General Fund revenues (and growing) since there are so many retired former employees and there’s still more in the pipeline.
I believe it’s worth noting that two of the most vocal opponents to paid parking, Bill Crawford and Peggy Bourland-Madison, are both retirees and recipients of very generous taxpayer paid retiree benefits: Crawford for his teacher’s pension and insurance benefits, and Bourland-Madison for her tenure with El Dorado County for her pension and insurance benefits. I’ve yet to hear either of those individuals refuse those long-ago agreed to generous retiree benefits based on the premise that today’s taxpayers are so financially overburdened.
Buck:
I do own a house in the City. Sounds like you’re associated with Harrison Avenue judging by your concern of people parking for free park all day in your lot in order to avoid paid parking. FYI, when the Harrison Avenue streetscape project on which South Lake Tahoe’s taxpayers are paying the majority of costs is complete, the City is implementing parking management with timed parking and anyone parking in excess of that time period will be ticketed.
I don’t want my town to further deteriorate, I don’t expect something for nothing, I want my town improved, and I’m willing to pay for that.
Vote NO on Measure P and reject Tahoe4Tahoe’s initiative and overall miserliness.
4-mer The vote will take care of the problem and this moving program of parking management. It will also follow the council members who shoved it down our throats. If permit parking or parking meters were in front of your house or business would it improve it’s value? I think not. Put the shoe on your foot.
Buck:
I don’t think that having permit parking or parking meters in front of my house or business would have any impact on it’s value at all. Truthfully, it wouldn’t bother me one bit to have permit parking in front of my house in the City, it would be easier for me to get in and out of the driveway and I might stand a chance of parking in front of my own house once in awhile. And I don’t live where people are encroaching into my neighborhood to avoid paid parking.
The very small group of people who leave comments here confuse themselves with “the people.” In this echo chamber, everyone agrees that the “wildly unpopular” parking program was “shoved down their throats” by popularly elected officials who are “out-of-touch” because the city has “plenty of money.”
The city will require $300 million dollars over the next 20 years or so to maintain roads and services. The parking program is an appropriate way raise money. If we won’t ask our visitors to contribute to the roads and services they use, where do these bloggers foresee the money coming from? A bake sale?
4-mer,
I know City retirees who have retired since the 2008 crash, who got their retirements bumped UP to 100% of their last year’s pay if they agreed (I know you have to get them to agree?) to retire early.
The City clearly was in a push to make it appear as though they were reducing expenses. When in actuality they were just shuffling the books around.
But this could all be positive! Decisions like Paid Parking, (and maybe asbsurd retirement deals?), can now be made directly by the voters.
Since our City Council can’t handle such decisions, be it the current Council, or past ones, the General Public needs to handle it directly via the ballot box!
Hey City Res, I do not mind paid parking. The first parking meters were introduced in Oklahoma City in 1935 People! You would think this is the first time they have ever been used by a city before.
Parker:
I believe it was in late 2012 or in 2013 that the City and their current employees agreed to the present and future benefits structures, so an employee who was hired pre-2008 was entitled to whatever benefits that were applicable at the time of their hire date. That would have been the old, negotiated benefits contracts that former City Councils agreed to 20 or more years ago. The reductions in expenses to which I referred were not shuffling the books around and they were actual changes in expenses that the City’s current employees agreed to, and those people deserve some credit for their willingness to help the taxpayers of this City in those cost containment efforts. Would you agree to no salary increase for 5-years, to start paying all your dependents health care insurance premiums, and start paying 50% of what had been paid into your retirement? I don’t think you would.
cityresident, it really is funny how people in this town think that our visitors in this town dont pay for the services they use. they all stay in accomidations and pay a 10% occupancy tax. They buy things and pay sales taxes. the places they stay pay real estate taxes on their properties ie hotels, motels and vacation properties. as a matter of fact if we add these things together it would most likely add up to more than 15 million of the 30 million general fund budget.
4-mer-
Your post bringing in retirement sources is a cheap shot, and further blurs the issue which I think Bills letter was about.
Bill and Peggy have objections to the paid parking program the City has instigated, and Bill points out that in his opinion it was not well communicated to the residents.
I believe this is true, but in any event,what does the source of their retirement have to do with anything?
OK, so both were county employees and subject to agreements regarding retirement and benefits that seem burdensome in the light of today’s fiscal realities.
As we all know, by witnessing the series of bankruptcies of Counties and Cities, Bill and Peggy are in a situation where they could lose those benefits or have them reduced.
The city of South Lake Tahoe is a new entity (1966) historically speaking, and you must admit that to base the entire fiscal future of the city, which has never had a population that cracked 50,000, (now somewhare in the 20 thousand area) on continuing growth at the high rates of the 1960s and 1970s may not have been the best thought out plan.
Even then it was recognized that Tahoe was headed to become one of the most regulated places in the US. Which is absolutely bound to reduce growth.
The point being, just because mistakes were made in the past, and it seems an impossible task to pay historic obligations and still maintain facilities, it is ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE to look at new projects hard enough to determine if they are really a revenue source, or just one other “good idea” that will become a liability instead of an asset.
That is what the point of debating paid parking is.
observer:
I disagree that referencing the current high costs of retirement benefits is a cheap shot but is instead a reality. Many years ago former City Council members that were elected by this City’s constituents entered into agreements with City employees and their Union representatives to provide those people with very generous benefits which also extended to retirees. The taxpayers of South Lake Tahoe now have an obligation to live up to those contractual agreements, and doing so is and will continue to cost a lot of money. There is no way of getting around that—a deal was struck with those people and it would be wholly unethical to even consider backing out of that now.
However, just because those long ago Council members did not perform their due diligence and ask the important questions prior to entering into those agreements, thus depleting this City’s future revenues, does not mean that our City should be destined for further decay. I am willing to pay for the mistakes of this City’s former civic leaders, even though I didn’t live here then and didn’t vote for any of them, and help pay those employees/retirees what was agreed to, but I also want other methods of generating revenues introduced so that improvements to the town where I chose to spend my final years can be made. I want South Lake Tahoe’s built environment to be as appealing as the natural environment, and I will pay my fair share of costs to help make that happen and I will pay for parking when I’m fortunate enough to get a space that’s the equivalent of valet parking near a City amenity.
Vote NO on Measure P and reject Tahoe4Tahoe’s miserliness and their satisfaction with the continued decomposition of South Lake Tahoe.
4-mer,
People that retired post ’08 (or at least I know of some) got more in retirement benefits than they were expecting as long as they retired ASAP. The City then proclaimed they had cut expenses, when in reality they just created a huge, or even greater, retirement liability. That’s a fact!
And 4-mer, those of us in the private sector would love to have the current City Employee benefit program! Agree to it? I’ll say it again, Love to Have It!
That City Employees think they’re making some big sacrifice and that they thought this Paid Parking program was a good idea, shows how out of touch those in City Govt. are.
4-mer;
Since you are willing to pay and a meter will not hurt your properties value, the city has meters in storage that didn’t make money let’s put a meter in front of your house. I am sure you will NEVER have a problem finding the equivalent of valet parking. After 4 council members tried to stall or really just intimidated the voters it’s time for us to vote on more issues they can’t get right. Paid parking is like bending over a dollar to pick up a nickle.
Parker and Buck:
While I completely disagree with each of you I do respect that you’re entitled to your own opinions. Fortunately we live in a democracy where people don’t have to agree.
today I was told that a City Policeman in uniform on the clock was passing out Measure P flyers to local business.
these flyers state that there from the City of SLT.
for all of you folks who just don’t get it, the Marvelous Makeover that started in 1988 is the reason that the City is in trouble.
the farther that the City goes down the road with the Marvelous Makeover, the more trouble it will be in.
I had just seen a report that showed the individual income of every employee of the city. I was very surprised to learn that there were 64 employees that made over 90k in 2012 plus benefits.
Chief Slow, I have some doubts about the report you received. But I do recognize that when a political entity decides to go outside the Department for a chief, what they get is someone owned by the politicians rather than someone committed to the ethics and standards of the law enforcement organization they serve.
Chief Uhler seems like a nice guy, and I have no idea what his thoughts (or, to recognize the politics, his postures) are about the fought for and well established standards of the police department vis a vis the political necessities of the politicians who brought him in from outside. But your report is, at minimum, disturbing, and needs some follow-up.
So the business and home owners that are affected by the parking meters are just too stupid to realize what is good for them??
The business property owners have already paid increased taxes for the Harrison Ave project.
I NEVER go anywhere that I have to pay to park.
Instead of a study someone from the city should go out to Emerald Bay the next couple of weekends. They can witness first hand the number of cars that are parked there.
People show up months early to avoid the parking fees that start Memorial day.
reloman:
Would you please direct me to the report that you referenced. I’d like to perform follow-up.
Chief:
Would you please direct me to the source for your report. I’d like to perform follow-up on that also.
Thank you.
http://gcc.sco.ca.gov/
The website shows total compensation which includes health and the 25-32% PERS contribution. Defined benefit plans contributions are paid in the year incurred now(very arguable). So that is at least 25% of what is shown as compensation. Then take about $1500 per month for insurance as cops and firefighters have bad experience ratings for health.
Total compensation also includes overtime. So fire and cops frequently get a lot of overtime for crowd control and for wildland fire staffing during summer.
This is not W-2 income, and there is no way I would work for what they pay.
Bill nice story, but it’s complete garbage. “City government has built an argument for parking meters using numbers that are hypothetical and projecting assumptions and suppositions as facts.” Based on that statement no business should ever exist, you never know the real outcome until you try. The reality was that the revenue generated met or beat expectations and cost were below expectations, not sure where T4T gets their financials. I certainly didn’t see any impact to the number of tourist that visited our town considering the town was packed last summer as were the lots at Lakeview and Lakeside beach. Why is it such a terrible thing to encourage alternate means of transportation, carpooling, bikes, busses? Not to mention it creates turnover at store fronts and protects residents in the prime areas. The real scam is free parking, and those who don’t even drive have to pay for free parking. On another note…Lake Tahoe News needs to change its name to Lake Tahoe Blog or Lake Tahoe Soap Box! Calling this “news” is disinformation!
Here is the exact link you need to see all the wage data for South Lake Tahoe. Note: The average wage per employee is skewed down because of all the minimum part time workers.
http://publicpay.ca.gov/Reports/Cities/City.aspx?entityid=107&fiscalyear=2012
I’ve become convinced that there are a lot of very vocal people in this City that don’t want anything to change, would be happier with the return of some perceived “good old days”, and want all the “late-comers” who moved here and the tourists to just go away so they can have back what they muse they had in the past.
Maybe it is time for local government to just discontinue and let El Dorado County take over. Since South Lake Tahoe is the unwanted step-child of EDC it will be ignored and will turn to total crap, all the unwanted late comers will move away taking all their post Prop 13 property tax and sales tax money with them because they don’t want to live in a town that looks like crap, and tourists with money won’t be drawn here anymore because they don’t want to visit a town that looks like crap. They’ll just drive straight through town to Nevada and spend their money there. Visitors to South Lake Tahoe will be a mixture of low-lives and cheapskates that want everything for free and EDC won’t really care because South Lake Tahoe won’t be any kind of revenue producer to the County.
But that’s OK, don’t bother taking any steps to take control of your own destiny, just turn it over to EDC and be satisfied with a sub-standard built environment and with a sub-standard living. It’ll be “good enough”. Quality and pride are highly over-rated.
Moral n view thank you for posting your links as I would have felt very uncomfortable using my info as it did not have the names redacted
4-Mer you seem to have forgotten this story. https://www.laketahoenews.net/2014/02/slt-council-can-decide-allocate-surplus/
The current city council does not have the education or experience to manage an $80 million organization with complex compensation issues including valuing post retirement benefit liabilities.
And you want to give them more money? Man, that makes no sense. Yes I would love to fund street repair and snow removal. But that will not be where the money goes.
Moral Hazard:
I didn’t forget that story because I never read that story. I agree that there are some current Council members that don’t have the education, experience, or expertise to manage an $80 million organization but there are three Council member seats up for grabs this November. It would be my hope that the local towns-people possess adequate intellect to elect capable people, but with many of the posts I read on this blog I no longer hold out hope of that happening.
I’m giving up on South Lake Tahoe ever “being all that it can be,” because it seems like too many people just don’t care.
Garbage in, garbage out.
Moral Hazard:
At my work with the public I interact with people on a regular basis who indicate their interest in purchasing property on the South Shore. When asked if they’re considering South Lake Tahoe the reply is always the same: not in SLT because it’s too run-down; their first choice is Douglas County and second choice is in the EDC portion of SLT.
As I stated in a previous post, “Maybe it is time for local government to just discontinue and let El Dorado County take over.” Some people in this community never seem willing to work together to attempt to reach a compromise and possess a “my way or the highway” attitude. I realize that you can never make everyone happy but it’s appearing that this community is incapable of ever reaching a compromise with which people can live. I guess EDC couldn’t f-things up any worse.
I’m glad, truly 4-mer, that you see the need to change the fundamentals of our town! I agree! We just disagree on what those fundamental changes should be.
For over 20yrs. now I’ve seen the same, ever constant, pattern: The City cries broke. Claims the bureaucracy has made all these sacrifices. But that to do all these necessary things, a tax increase needs to be passed. More often than not, the Public buys the line.
It’s led to business license fee increases, sales tax increases, TOT grabs AND, pretty hefty pay raises for City Employees! (Not that they’re some good people working for the City. But the City does not understand the true concept of a sacrifice.)
Meanwhile, the private sector languishes. I see the same pattern now with this Paid Parking.
To change the fundamentals, the Public needs to send the City a new message. We don’t buy the line anymore! Yes on P!
Parker. If you have lived in town for 20 years then you should have noticed a few things that have changed radically from the (do nothing) past. Ski Run, Gondola, El Dorado Beach, College, Parks, Ice Skating etc.
A lot of our “problems” stem from Nevada Gaming and the “fight” to keep Indian Gaming from happening. (Tell everyone how that turned out.)
There is no free lunch. Paid parking has been around since the mid 30’s. Make the tourist pay for parking. NO on P!
Rock4Tahoe–it isn’t just the tourists paying to park. Local do to and even people who own the property they are parking at to use at Lakeside Beach.
And don’t forget, the money really comes from writing tickets not the kiosks.
2nd. I have lived in town for almost 40 years and have yet to pay for parking. Try parking in Torrance, Redondo or Hermosa Beach along 101 down south to get to a beach. We don’t live in a time warp stuck in the 1960’s, Parking Meters have been around for 80 years.
Rock4Tahoe,
You may want to point at some new buildings, but bottom line, our private sector economy has not grown. The Public Sector is making more money, but not the Private Sector.
Indian Gaming, a challenge sure. But both Reno & Vegas’ Economy, even after the ’08 Recession, are bigger than they were 20yrs. ago.
Yes on P!
Sorry Parker, but medium income in SLT has gone up over the past 20 years (look it up). Sales taxes and TOT are up too. “Point to a few buildings?” Is that a joke? Compared to the SLUMS that were at Stateline, Ski Run, El Dorado etc? The slums are now on the Nevada side of Stateline. NO on P.
Sarge you should go down to Grass Roots and buy yourself something good to eat
look around see what you will find.
Rock, they grabbed a portion of the TOT that was supposed to go to marketing, and they raised the sales tax. Throw in inflation, no real growth.
Plus, best barometer of all-have people moving into our town over the last 20yrs? The few new buildings haven’t translated into much.
Our City needs to focus not on a few show pieces, but on improving our economic climate. Something Paid Parking fails to do!
And I’d say Yes on P again. But it’s so unnecessary! 1422 signatures translates into P passing. The City shouldn’t wait until the election. It should start listening to its citizens now!
If you are in favor of this paid parking program, you are in favor of writing tickets to tourists and locals.
That’s were the money is made and it alienates everyone.
Charge for parking in the redevelopment building where no tickets are written but don’t support this fiasco which drives away tourists.
Ask yourself why the Stateline Chamber is in favor of keeping the ticket writing program in the city. They want them parking at the casinos.
Chief Slowroller and tahoeadvocate: thank you for making my point.
NO on P.
So Parker. We cow tow down to tourist, let them abuse our town and let them park for free. Improve the business climate with free parking is your solution? We got rid of the Native Americans, gave away large tracts of land, clear cut the forest, created huge developments, airports, the Tahoe Keys, golf courses, highways, casinos, hotels, motels, resorts, strip malls, ski resorts, marinas, sub-divisions , 2nd home markets rentals, sewage treatment, trash sorting machines, Cable TV, Fiber and DSL Internet, Wifi, etc etc; in the name of “improved business climate.” This is the pudding that has baked for 150 years. If paid parking is the number one problem with the city, I would say we have it pretty good… but in jest.
This guy has nothing nice to say about anything the city does. As an ex-council member that had his name physically removed form the ice arena plaque out of spite should keep his mouth shut. I travel a lot and have to pay for parking. I think it is time for us to collect money from visitors. Most of the revenue comes from the visitors; we should embrace this revenue stream. This guy doesn’t even visits these sites but he complains. If he has nothing nice to say then keep your mouth shut.
Anyone else been approached by on duty fire and police saying that their pensions will be affected if Prop P passes? And how ’bout all them paid advertisements by the city regarding Prop P in the newspapers – there’s money for advertising?