‘Show some guts’ and ‘don’t contribute to a disaster,’ Tahoe residents tell Washoe commissioners

(Photo courtesy Pamela Tsigdinos)

Ambitious people willing to sacrifice the common good and the potential health and safety of communities in the name of power and money are nothing new.

But it still takes your breath away when you witness it up close. The Washoe County Commissioners meeting July 15 evoked a scene from the movie “Jaws” — the one where Richard Dreyfus’ character tries to get the mayor of a popular destination to prioritize health and safety, but to no avail. The mayor of “Jaws” fictitious Amity Island didn’t want to jeopardize tourism revenue or future development. Harm was done.  Lives were lost.

Washoe Tahoe community members in chambers and via remote link echoed Richard Dreyfus last week pleading again with authorities not to approve development codes that would allow increased building height and density and population in a geographically constrained mountainous area lacking an up-to-date wildfire evacuation plan.  

It’s well known that Tahoe’s congested two-lane roads are ill-equipped to handle a mass evacuation. Worse, Washoe county admitted last year that its out-of-date emergency management plan never included tens of thousands of visitors – let alone construction teams and new inhabitants. Heightening the problem today, budget cuts have left federal disaster aid uncertain for states and local jurisdictions that rely on federal grants.

The dramatic proposed code changes that will forever alter north Tahoe’s rural landscape originated from Lake Tahoe’s overlord: the bi-state Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA), headquartered in Stateline, NV. The agency in recent years has become quite chummy with developers, resort operators and investors with significant business before the TRPA. These include Edgewood Companies, Vail Resorts, Palisades Tahoe, and Homewood Mountain Resort controlled by the private equity firm JMA. 

TRPA’s governing board includes Washoe county Chair Alexis Hill whose donors include developer, construction, and realtors groups. While a commissioner Hill has directed tax money to the Tahoe Prosperity Center (where she serves as Board Chair) and the Tahoe Fund (which boasts a who’s who board) to fund studies and playbooks that benefit tourism and development projects and initiatives, often vigorously opposed by Tahoe communities. Hill also sits on the Reno Sparks  Convention and Visitor’s Authority (RSCVA), which derives tens of millions of dollars in tourism revenue from transient occupancy tax and Lake Tahoe promotion.

Hill is the closest thing to a mayor for the nearly 9,000 person Washoe Tahoe community members who reside in district 1, which also includes portions of the northwest and southwest Truckee Meadows. Lake Tahoe is 22 miles long, north to south, and 12 miles wide, with 72 miles of shoreline. Unincorporated Tahoe communities rely on counties for most of their services. Some 15 rural villages and one city encircle Lake Tahoe, which spans Nevada and California. 

None of Washoe county’s five commissioners live within the Tahoe basin. 

Concern about Lake Tahoe’s environmental and wildfire challenges has been an ongoing theme.  For the past several years, Tahoe residents have shown up in force at TRPA, Nevada legislative and county meetings pleading for an updated cumulative environmental review, carrying capacity, and a comprehensive basin-wide wildfire evacuation plan ahead of any new development allowances. At a pivotal TRPA governing board meeting in December 2023 an overflowing room of residents, some forced to wait outside in a snow-filled frigid parking lot, came to express valid concerns about urbanizing a rural region with limited infrastructure. There were more than 600 pages of public comment about the egregious lack of environmental review and wildfire evacuation planning.

One resident even wrote that she was updating her will to ask her descendants to sue TRPA should she die in a wildfire.

In the past year each of Tahoe’s counties had to choose to adopt TRPA’s code changes or opt out. Hill now has to sell the package to Washoe County’s four other commissioners. Yesterday’s presentation was nothing short of a Kabuki dance between the Washoe planner Eric Young and Hill who made quite a show of pretending to care about resident’s legitimate concerns, but not so much that they’d fight TRPA on behalf of residents. 

In what’s become deja-vu all over again, Richard Miner, former head of the Incline Village and Crystal Bay Historical Society, didn’t mince words: “the county’s elected representatives must not continue to subvert the will of the citizens to the go-along-to-get-along attitude. The evidence is incontrovertible that increasing the density of the population of the Lake Tahoe Basin is the roadmap to disaster—no, ‘if, ands, or buts’ about it. It is this county’s last chance to stand up for sanity.”

He added, “Commissioner Hill, you need to show some guts and vote no on the Area Plan as now written. The protection and preservation of the Lake Tahoe Basin is now in your hands.”

Kristina Hill (no relation to the commissioner), a former TRPA planner, Washoe County Board of Adjustment Chair, and Lake Tahoe Environmental Planning Consultant for 41 years, on July 15 stated “the proposed amendments are a sham allowing more development disguised as ‘workforce housing’ which will result in more market rate residential condos and housing units.”

District 2 Commissioner Mike Clark concurred with that opinion and emphasized the chaos that accompanied the Los Angeles wildfire evacuations. He said his mantra was “do no harm” and “we shouldn’t be a part of adding more congestion up there.” He encouraged much more discussion before any action is taken.  

District 5 Commissioner Jeanne Herman added, “I agree that the concerns that people have are serious and I feel for them…I’m so concerned about what this could do.” In 2021 Herman was the lone dissenting vote against zoning changes that enabled residential homes in unincorporated district 1, many of which housed local workers holding long-term leases, to be converted into transient housing for tourists.

Commissioner Hill, who claims to be a champion for local workers, led the motion in 2021 to allow unlimited short-term rentals in Washoe Tahoe, which played no small part in the displacement of community members whose long-term rentals were not renewed.

Not recognizing the irony, she advanced the latest development code changes that will add to roadway congestion, further strain infrastructure, and heighten evacuation challenges saying: “I don’t want someone to say why did we bring this [development code] forward to the commission and the commission did nothing.”

The more likely question – when a natural disaster befalls Washoe Tahoe – will be: Why did resident concerns about evacuation get raised repeatedly and the commission (and TRPA) did nothing?

The second reading of the Washoe Tahoe Area Plan code changes will be August 26, 2025.