The Tahoe Daily Tribune published an article last week about the possibility that two unincorporated communities on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe - Incline Village and Crystal Bay - might pursue cityhood. The local situation there is just like it is here in California: local taxpayers must depend on people who do not live in their community to make decisions for the local community:

Further, analysis of tax data has shown that Incline Village pays a disproportionate share of taxes into Washoe County, with a reduced return on investment. This is precisely the kind of analysis that needs to happen for the urbanized, unincorporated communities in California. It would be helpful for all concerned to know how much tax money is paid for municipal services vs areawide services. Counties typically hide the ball by burying tax data into a budget black holes known as County Departments. For example, the Sheriff's Department budget will not tell you how many deputies are "on the beat" in a specific unincorporated community, or what, exactly, the deputies did to deal with crime in a specific community. Nor does a typical Sheriff's budget provide nexus information - how many tax dollars were paid in from a specific community vs the disposition of those dollars for public safety. Instead, the Sheriff's budget shows how much money the deputies spent across the entire county. If you are lucky, your county is one where the Sheriff's jail and court duties are reported separately from everything else the Sheriff's Office does. Of course, that's not the same as transparency about the costs of law enforcement in a specific unincorporated community or the return on investments therefrom.

The unincorporated areas of North Lake Tahoe participate with our California (un)Incorporated coalition. So what happens next door to them - despite "nextdoor" being in another state -  certainly matters to us. We believe local control of municipal affairs is as important on the California side of The Lake as it seems to be on the Nevada side.

But there is another reason why Incline Village venturing into cityhood matters to us. You see, the state of Nevada has a different process for municipal incorporations than the state of California does. In Nevada, the process is initiated by a large number of signatures in a short time - that's neither easy nor inexpensive. Then the County and the state BOTH do a fiscal analysis, but only to "inform" the public, because the signatures collected seem to be enough to get a measure on the ballot. Nevada doesn't burden its proposed new cities with expensive CEQA analyses or make them pay long-term alimony. Nevada's process doesn't let non-involved elected officials (like our LAFCOs) play God. Their process appears to be primarily driven by negotiations between the county and the proposed new city over who will provide which services. The Nevada incorporation process is daunting, though it is perhaps less cumbersome and expensive as California's process. Can our Legislators could learn a thing or two from our neighboring state?

The Incline Village incorporation proposal was discussed at some length this evening by the Incline Village/Crystal Bay Citizen Advisory Board (CAB). In a nutshell, the cityhood proposal is moving along without major problems, but has been temporarily paused due to a diffeerent petition being circulated around the community, one the cityhood people did not want interfering with their petition. The cityhood proponents' presentation at that meeting can be found by going to the CAB website and clicking on 2024-07-22-Incline-Village-CAB.pptx.