Transcript: Part 4: Emg re Covid-19 Council meeting March 25, South Lake Tahoe: the rest of the meeting

The Covid-19 Transcripts, Watch video of meeting here:

Part One Public Comments is here
Part Two is transcribed here  
Part Three is transcribed here

Mayor Collin:  Let's move onto number two moratorium on commercial evictions.

Stroud: This was requested last Friday, Newsom's executive order from March 16 - moratorium through March 31st.  residential and commercial don’t have to be treated same, residential seem more critical, to prevent homelessness, if people lose home, they can't shelter at home, that could make worse spread of the Covid-19 disease.  Commercial evictions not same immediate public health impact. Small business loans are available- landlords can't find another tenant during this time.  If you do move forward, let's bring back at next council meeting or ask Mr. Kilger to issue emergency.  [expecting more from Newsom which did come March 27]

Middlebrook:  What about when the eviction order goes away, what are some long term guarantees or protections, for after May 30th?

Stroud:  Good question.  The governor only orders through May 31st and only temporary relief, that rent still needs to be paid after emergency is over.  The residential we drafted goes beyond May 31, we can do something similar with commercial.  If we make time period too long, it puts landlords in difficult position as well, they have their own bills and payroll.  We can put an extended time in there.

Bass: I definitely want to support some type of restriction on commercial evictions, but be cautious, this is completely different area, the lease is so much different than a residential lease and I don't want the city to be party to every unlawful detainer that comes through the pipe.  We need to protect our businesses but we need to move carefully, I don't see the need for a rush, we have time to do this carefully, follow guidance of other cities. Commercial evictions is a way different thing, it's a contract not with landlord-tenant rights like with residential people.  I don't see getting this by my landlord, but I do think we have to take action for sure.

Laine: Is there a way to make it clear this is for rent coming up in April and May, not for a business that's already behind on rent.  Other question, how does this affect a landlord who already is in the process of an eviction that is costly and takes quite a bit of time. Anyone who's in that process that has nothing to do with Covid-19 is there a way of protecting them?

Stroud:  Yes the first question yes.  We did for the residential moratorium is only in effect from the date it was announced, which was March nineteenth, through May 31st, so it would only cover rent payments through that period of time that are documented to be due to coronavirus. For commercial evictions, should council move forward, we would absolutely do the same thing. Second question, how would this affect evictions already in process, it does not affect those started before March 19th.

Laine: What if a tenant uses this opportunity to delay payment of rent and the landlord declines their request?

Stroud:  It would depend on how the regulation is drafted, but there has to be a documented request to landlord and reasons why, it could be playing out in court in eviction proceedings.

Middlebrook: what happens to landlords paying mortgages on commercial property.

Stroud: There has been mortgage relief granted at federal level and it seems like it's fairly broad, protection from foreclosures. 

Mayor Collin: Same with residential mortgages, there's efforts on all fronts. 

Tamara Wallace: Would this put us in the middle of contracts and could we be opening ourselves up to litigation?

Stroud: Good question, personally as your city atty I'm hoping the governor does a statewide action for that reason. [He did on March 27].  This is an unprecedented event and it's happened so fast, many government including City of Lake Tahoe are taking actions that a month ago if you had told me we would be doing this, I would have thought you were all crazy.  So it is somewhat special times, but yes there is a risk of litigation getting between contracts. [DISCUSSION on procedure if governor does not take action]

Bass: As we did with lodging guidance, we could give some to commercial property owners, telling them how and why to not stay open.  Doing that allows us to- essential businesses will be able to pay their rent- we need to get messaging around but wait for governor and not act as a city.

Laine: I disagree. This is a time where we have to take bold leadership, not wait for other people to do it for us, this is our community our businesses we're trying to protect.  And the notion we might open ourselves to liability that's true with every move and decision we make.  Not a way I encourage people to think at this time.  I'm still willing to support this, then fall in line with state at that time but this is not time to sit on our hands.

Mayor Collin:  My one concern is most commercial property owners will do right thing, they're in same boat their businesses being hurt, we'll see it on residential side as well. I think we should grant some relief but limit our exposure and do it right.  This is not forgiveness, it's temporary relief.  Right?

Stroud: Yes

Mayor Collin:  Make sure language is that it's temporary relief. 

Kilger: I agree in most circumstances but we have asked for weekly check in meetings and by the time we draft this, it could take several days.  In this instance, if we're going to reconvene next Wednesday we'll know what the state is going to do.

Mayor Collin:  Good point.  We should work on this and bring it back to next council meeting? [DISCUSSION on procedure]

Bass:  My opinion is if the governor doesn't do anything, we can act next week. [more discussion on procedure]

Stroud:  your direction is to bring something back to next council meeting if governor doesn't take action. [he did March 27]

Mayor Collin: Now onto next item, prohibition on short term lodging on non essential travel.

Stroud:  As you know, Newsom's "stay at home order" issued March 19, as well as El Dorado County, both limit non essential travel.  Issued last night clarification that staying less than 30 days in lodging for recreation or tourism is not permitted.  Short term lodging can continue for four reasons: to help homeless individuals, for Covid-19 containment, housing workers performing critical functions, and fourth to provide housing for SRO tenants who find different housing.  I would say the city does not need to adopt its own orders because of these state order. [Details of orders]  I am available for questions.

Laine:  Are the state and county orders similar?

Stroud: The state's order is bare bones and kind of broad but harder to interpret but they're issuing further guidance.  The County's is very detailed and helpful to any enforcement efforts we'd want to take on short term lodging. [Procedural Discussion ]

Stroud: Yes there is software that aids us in enforcement of short term rental operating without permit.  We capture screen shots of ads for vacation rentals, so we could identify ones advertising availability earlier, but a lot have kept their ads up from before the virus and also are taking reservations for six months out when hopefully this is over.

Police Ltn Shannon Laney:  Most of them are probably still up there.  Advertising is not criminal.  Ability to go out there it has to be complaint based and a lot of rentals are by persons for their own houses. 

Laine:  I hope the software is sophisticated enough that we can drill down- people who are advertising for summer now is fine, but now through May 31st, we want to make sure those calendars are not available, because we know for a fact that it still is happening, not on a large scale, but we want to shut it down.

Mayor Collin:  I don't know how labor intensive it would be though, you'd have to go into each property to see availability in calendar.

Kilger:  I don't know if any of our housing or development directors are on the call who can tell us what information they have access to?  Doesn't sound like it, we will have to take a look at that.

Middlebrook:  Is there any need for us to pass our own ordinance just to get the point across to people that you're not supposed to be renting.  That would be a question, then what are plans for enforcement, how do you tell if it's the person who owns the home or a renter.  I think we need to discourage people coming up here to live in their second homes, we can't ban people from using homes they own, but really strongly discourage it.

Kilger:  We have been notifying through concept of shelter in place, even Caltrans is taking the position that people need to not travel. Depending on what resources we have we will do whatever we can to spread that message. 

Stroud:  The ban on non essential travel and now on non essential lodging has been in effect since March 19th.  Should we adopt our own ban, I advise against that, because when there are overlapping jurisdictions, there can be conflict and preemption or confusion.  We should comply with the rules already in place and the state's order.  It could be difficult and intrusive and resource intensive but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.  So we should adopt a fining process to ramp up enforcement and we'd have criminal enforcement available as well.

Mayor Collin:  If they're advertising- and there's no law against advertising- but if they are actually booking, would that be breaking law.

Stroud:  I would say advertising and booking are not breaking the law, but they are evidence of breaking law, breaking the law would be actually having persons staying in the property for non essential purposes.

Mayor Collin:  Questions?

Wallace: I have a few questions.  Can you clarify difference between criminal violation and admin violation? 

Laney:  The difference for us on enforcement side is first we have to verify the purpose of the person being there. Make sure it's not the owner, make sure there's a reason. Are they going to be here after March 20th which is when the travel restriction kicked in, there's a number of questions to ask.  So it's easier for us to have it.

Wallace:  An owner was on news last night talking about people who are here and can't get out because they're from out of the country and those type of things, so we're not going to be fining those people, because they can't leave, because they have nowhere to go.

Stroud: I would suggest as always that our police department and I think they do use their judgment and discretion so in this case we'd want to be making sure that the eye is to the public health and we would not want to exacerbate that by making somebody travel when they're not supposed to travel so in a case like that, I don't see enforcement.

Wallace:  And this is also for hotel motel properties, I'm being told there are some that are still advertising and open for business currently and they should not be either.  And have we- I know that we- when we talked about this originally we were going to send them a letter similar to the VHR owners.  Has that gone out?

Stroud:  Yes an email went out yesterday to all VHR permit holders and hotels and motels requesting that they not make bookings through April 23rd and now county is based on state order doesn't have an end date.  So we are treating them in the same manner.

Wallace:  Mr. Kilger, once we identify a property is out of compliance, what will be our policy?

Kilger:  I understand proactive versus reactive enforcement is always an issue, under these circumstances waiting to hear from council today.  Up to now we've been doing warnings, Lieutenant Laney can elaborate. We're finding out there are always some bad players but we're getting quite a bit of cooperation, even though it shows they're taking bookings, they are telling people they're not until after termination of orders.  So depending in approach we take, a citation, a warning, follow up with a citation, it's different if dealing with someone in the unit, we'd have to give them time to leave, we've not gotten to that situation yet.

Laney: Yes we had one this weekend that we contacted and they voluntarily left.  Others weren’t VHRs once we confirmed the address.  Hopefully we can give a warning first, enforcement is always important for a community, if the council decides that- we're in uncharted territory here.

Wallace:  Community alliance put out notice they're encouraging VHR companies to close their properties.  We all know there are some bad actors, but there are responsible owners that are doing it.  If there are bad actors, we have to enforce to the fullest, in my opinion.  We need to deal with this.  I believe that's all of my questions, thank you.

Mayor Collin: Mr. Bass?

Bass:  I pretty much support everything that's been said up to this, as to the administrative fine that we can approve, which I think we should do, is that to the renter or the person who owns the VHR or both?

Stroud: I would suggest the ability to issue fines to either owner or occupant depending on circumstance, in almost every case fining the owner and then depending on the circumstances the occupant, that's how a lot of our VHR enforcement authority already is handled.

Bass:  Great.  I was thinking it was a way to add an administrative fine for violating the ordinance, if there was a way to fine the occupant.  That's something I think we definitely should do, my direction is to be really heavy handed with the enforcement, I believe the order is out, in case of a violation I think we need to go at an unprecedented level of enforcement from where we've been in the past, and I think we're hearing that far and loud from the community.  It's not a joking matter at this point and we should definitely stand up and protect our community in the best possible way.

Middlebrook:  Ms. Stroud, what is our ability, how much flexibility do we have and can we increase that from a thousand? To say twenty five hundred or five thousand?

Stroud: No our fining authority for administrative fines is set out in the government code and capped at one thousand dollars per violation, if multiples by one owner would add up, but it's per violation. If there were multiple violations, then criminal action might be used to people compliant.  [OVERLAPPING CONVERSATION]

Mayor Collin:  Property owners and rentals are a critical part of our community economy, this is a critical act for us as a city and county as well, these decisions do not come easily.  It's important the public knows we are doing everything we can to be informed then act in best interest of community at large. The health impact is the biggest piece first.  We're in response mode now, have to think about recovering and plan for that. 

Another thing in documents from the state and county, for state homeowner there is no date on the order.  I think we should give ourselves a date as a leeway, important for the businesses as well, to get people back up here will be critical for all the businesses in Tahoe.  The governor's order is both a health and safety order, serving- prioritizing those at highest risk.  We may need to partner with the county on this since they are our public health department.  Where we've seen this in California so far it's counties or cities that don’t have health departments of their own.

With so many visitors now, do we have increased capacity for some investigation or do checks on these homes, virtually or in person?

Laney: Yeah we have five full time still healthy and working, we've reduced staff to reduce contact, but we drive by VHRs and view occupancy.  We are looking for them and trying to identify them.

Mayor Collin:  If we can do things virtually see people aren’t advertising, we sent out notice to hotel motels- I don't want to get into constitutional rights, with a stay at home order and people who've been there since before order went into place, as long as people are doing the right thing.  I would like to see us do is wait on it, it's had a lot of impact in press, we're already seeing less visitors, people are taking it more seriously probably in people's hometowns as well.  Glad to see our law enforcement just tackling it and paying attention to what's going on and then addressing those issues directly.  Any more comments or questions? 

Laine:  I have concerns about not having a date because I think that's confusing, people can book for May and then we're not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel,  have to cancel and refunds.  It's much clearer to put a date in there.  May thirty first is the date that everyone is using.  We can lift provision, but without a date it's going to be confusing.

Mayor Collin:  When you say everybody is using May thirty first, who are you referring to? 

Laine:  I'm referring to that's a date commonly used for example for example the residential evictions.  Putting some date on it so people can plan, to have it open ended is a problem.

Bass:  I have some concerns too because I don't know- I don't recommend it personally because how are we going to clarify May thirty first is the day and it could in fact be sooner than that.  If we say May thirty first, the reality is a lot of- it's a lot to put that on people, I think that would be more hysteria with that.

Kilger: My sense is nobody knows when this is going to end, it could be shorter it could be, in my feeling, much longer. I have just in terms of ability of staff to manage it, it's better to have some date, I would ask the city attorney opinion on that, could we stop it at an earlier date?

Stroud:  The county's clarification of the state order is in effect until the state is lifted and the state order does not have an end date, it basically is indefinite.  The city could do one more strict than the state order but not less strict than the state order.  So the difficulty is time. The advertising is not necessarily a violation, booking is not a violation, it's the travel.  That's not helpful to our lodging property owners but I don't have a good answer for what date we would use.

Middlebrook:  Could it be everyone will want to travel after being holed up in their homes for weeks.  If they want to book for June, knowing maybe it's going to have to get canceled, I understand your point- it's going to be critical for our recovery.

Laine: Yes, that's a fair way of restating it.  Could we change this order should things get better and reverse side and also extend it if we have to, the answer is we could do either. Helpful to have something for people to move toward.

Mayor Collin:  I think May 31st the way it's run its course around the country, we should be coming out of it by then.  To not allow bookings until then could hurt business community even if it's a week.  Let the operators and owners know that if we extend the date, those people are not going to be allowed to stay here. Give them the ability to say if they want to book and refund, that's their business decision.  We're going to need to jump start our economy as soon as possible.

Bass:  I think that's why you keep it indefinite, as much as we're committed to get them open as soon as possible so best to not put a date and follow the example of the state, then when it's time we'll be ready to go.

Stroud: The message to properties yesterday asked they not accept travel through April 23rd, a request not a mandate.  We could change messaging when the date gets closer instead of an order with a hard date.

Mayor Collin:  April 23rd is better for a hard date. [SEVERAL VOICE AGREEMENT]

Stroud:  I'm hearing from council is there isn’t a desire at this time to do our own regulation above and beyond the state and county.  There is interest in setting up a procedure for enforcement and fines, to be decided at next week's meeting.

Laine: How does April 23rd date factor into that.

Stroud: I would suggest that date for communication but not as an order, based on what happens with the virus and with the state and county.  The county's is a directive, the state's is an order. [Discussion on procedure]

Kilger: If the occupant does not leave, we have the authority to also cite the occupant.

Middlebrook:  Can we arrest them and force them out if they don’t leave?

Laney: We can't force our way into a residence and go after them but what I would suggest is that we fine them and it goes against their permit renewal.  And then if the visitor doesn't leave we can do administrative citations to them so if they stay, it's a thousand dollars day one a thousand dollars day two and so on and so forth, like we do for some VHR violations, would be my recommendation.  [discussion on procedure]

Stroud: Yes each day would be a separate violation and incur a separate fine.

Jason Collin: So we want to increase enforcement and encourage officers to go forward with administrative fines. 

Sroud:  We would need to establish a code amendment. [DISCUSSION ON PROCEDURE ]

Blaine:  I move that we direct the director of emergency services to adopt an administrative citation for up to a thousand dollars for violation of the state order.

Jason Collin:  We have motion and two seconds. Vote:

Carried Unanimously.

Jason Collin: Okay now back to public comments,

Blankenship:  We've already closed public comments, any additional I'll put into public record. [Discussion on procedure]

Kilger: In future we'll plan on Wednesday at one for meeting except for next week (?)

Bass:  Again this is an unprecedented time for everyone in the world, the city has done a great job adapting to what's changing around us, we've all got to adapt as we move forward and I believe that's what we're doing, hats off to all the staff, we're doing all we can.  I hope that next week we can continue to see solutions.  I'll see you guys next Wednesday.

Laine: I commend city leadership staff council and mayor for continued diligence, love that we're meeting every week so we can respond quickly as things change.  I hear from a lot of the community that they appreciate it.  I want clarity on public notice [discussion on procedure and thank you's] 

*
Meeting again next Wednesday, hour to be decided. 
*
Video of City Council meeting https://slt.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=6&clip_id=1086
*
NOTE:  The clips I transcribe for this project contain information that I don't think is available in print anywhere else. Please show your appreciation by clicking some cash into my PayPal account through button at top of left hand column.)
*
Posted by Kay Ebeling
Producer, City of Angels Blog
the city of angels is everywhere