County meeting with vacation home owners to create "Good Neighbor Program"

It's 11 p.m. on a Saturday night in the middle of summer and you've just turned out the lights to go to bed. But, you're finding this an impossible task because of the blaring music coming from the vacation rental next door.

It's midnight on Friday night in January. You're catching the end of a good movie in front of the fire but are finding it hard to hear the TV in your own home. The loud talking and screaming from the young adults in the hottub next door is louder that it should be.

These two stories are just a glimpse into what people living in South Lake Tahoe face almost weekly, and sometimes nightly, when they find themselves living in a vacation home rental neighborhood. They are exposed to bachelor and bachelorette parties, fraternities, sororities and other types of large group parties. They come with more cars that allowed for the home and with a weekend of loud part plans.

The vacation permit program for the El Dorado County portion of the South Shore is getting a new look and enforcement plan that will be unveiled during a meeting in South Lake Tahoe on Thursday. The meeting is open to county vacation home owners and the property management companies that serve them.

The Good Neighbor Program is going to take an approach much different than what was previously enforced. C.L. Raffety, the County Tax Collector, wants vacation homes to be a good neighbor instead of creating a situation that causes Sheriff's deputies to be called out for excessive noise. A presentation of the program was given to the El Dorado County Supervisors and Raffety says it was well received.

Raffety has modeled the program after similar programs in other vacation towns. The new program comes with a brochure that is given to renters with their contracts, outlining how to be a good neighbor. There is a nice tone about the literature instead of appearing as a negative piece.

This meeting is getting the home owners and agencies together. It will follow with outreach to the neighborhors of the homes so they'll know who to call on each house. Raffety wants them to reach out to the homeowners first in case of issues and noise, and if that doesn't work then they'll call law enforcement.

The current enforcement program isn't working because there is confusion on who is responsible for each duty involved. Raffety says law enforcement needs to understand the tax collector's role in the vacation home enforcement process. As it is now, a deputy called out to a house will issue a warning or a violation notice, but those don't carry the weight a citation will carry. Raffety said that all vacation rental issues need to stand up in a court of law, and citations are the only thing that can do that.

A citation issued to a vacation home renter breaking the rules outlined in the contract creates a report and gives immediate evidence to the Tax Collector (the agency charged with handling the vacation home rental program).

Currently, the first violation on a home in a 12 month period is a warning, the second is a fine of $250, the third is a fine of $1,000 and the fourth violation results in the home owner losing their right to rent the home. They don't see many violations in the tax collectors's office but if anyone reads the El Dorado County Sheriff's log they'll see that calls out to vacation rentals are a weekly occurrence at the least.

Raffety wants to see citations issued as the preferred paper trail has been created which makes them much easier to enforce.

The meeting will take place at the South Lake Tahoe Library at 11 a.m. Thursday, October 23.