There may be a push in the near future to dissolve the Vacation Home Rental Advisory Board.

Douglas County Commission Chairwoman Sharla Hales took to public comment on Wednesday to give the committee a heads up.

“I’m here to thank you very much for the service you’ve rendered and explain a development potentially in the works,” she said.

She said that the issue came up during discussion on revising some elements of the county’s VHR ordinance.

“In that bigger conversation we discussed (whether) it’s time to recommend to county commissioners that the advisory board be dissolved.”

One of the issues, she said, is that commissioners continue to suggest changes to the ordinance.

“Our board of commissioners can’t keep from being hands-on on the VHR ordinance,” she said. “If this board were to tinker with the restrictions or provisions in that ordinance, I predict the county commission would just do whatever they wanted to do anyway.

I don’t want to ask an advisory board to invest a lot of work and time into figuring out some refinement.”

Lake Tahoe residents have been renting out their properties for decades, but it has been 20 years since the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency required jurisdictions around Lake Tahoe to have a vacation home rental ordinance.

The advisory board was created in 2021 as part of the county’s effort to regulate vacation home rentals.

It hears appeals of fines levied by Douglas County Code Enforcement. On Wednesday it upheld hearings on three appeals of fines for rentals.

However, most of those decisions are appealed to the Board of County Commissioners.