Mono Supes suspend biz license for June Lake Vacation Reservations
June Lake Vacation Reservations, LLC has until July 7 to pay $37,657 in back Transient Occupancy Tax, TOT, or risk losing its business license for good.
Mono County Supervisors suspended the business license held by the LLC primary, Lynda Thompson, at its regular meeting on June 16 after years of her wrangling with the Mono County Tax Collector’s Office. The tax man canceled her TOT license in February. Regardless, she has still been operating and taking reservations illegally.
Thompson said she didn’t want to make excuses for not paying the taxes collected from guests for overnight accommodations. She then continued by saying her bookkeeper got Alzheimer’s, a credit card machine that’s unreliable, stacked on top of a bad couple snow years, “But I’d like another chance … I can pay it back.” She even brought a check with her, a good faith amount, not enough to cover what she owes.
The supervisors discussed letting the matter ride until July 7 and have another public hearing on the matter, giving Thompson time to get organized and try and come up with the money. Supervisor Stacy Corless said that Thompson is operating outside county code and therefore Corless could not condone the illegal activity.
Alpers said that he’s known Thompson for more than 30 years, but this case has become a real “burr under the saddle” and the time for a payment plan was over. If the TOT money isn’t paid in three weeks, Alps said he’d personally vote to revoke her license.
The supervisors said it wanted to send a message to Thomson and the rest of the county to the severity of not paying taxes that belong to the residents of the county.
“TOT is an add on,” Supervisor Fred Stump said to Thompson. “The money was never intended to be part of of your revenue stream, but you’ve been using the money to keep your business running.” He added that county staff had “gone out their way” to contact her, “and it appears to me that you’ve ignored them.”
Alpers said county staff has bent over backwards trying to accommodate her, but to no avail.
Johnston said, no one wants to put anybody out of business, “but it’s time to pay up and stop messing with us. There’s got to be an end point.” He called the LLC a burden on taxpayers.
“This must be totally embarrassing,” Johnston said to Thompson.
There was a detailed list included in the agenda of all contact made between the Tax Collector’s Office from 2012 to the present. Neither County Counsel nor the Code Compliance office representatives at the meeting could say how much money and resources Thompson has cost the county.
The Tax Collector’s Office stated in the agenda that Thompson has, since 2012, “monopolized the tax collector’s time with monthly late payments, returned checks, and avoidance of all messages and phone calls until the intent to cancel TOT notices are sent.”
Supervisor Larry Johnston haggled with the other supervisors as to whether revoking Thompson’s license was the best idea; if she does not have a business license, she can not make money to pay back what she owes. Supervisor Stacy Corless said that being a reservation agent is her business and without her TOT license she cannot legally operate as an agent. In fact the reservations she has made so far are technically not legal. This went on for about a half-hour until Johnston and Corless agreed to disagree and the motion to suspend was passed. Johnston voted no.
The decision was difficult and apparent on the sullen faces of the supervisors, Alpers and Johnston both admitted to being friends with Thompson for years. Corless said if the board did nothing or continued the matter for another date, it would be sending a message that, “because we’re all friends, we can look the other way.”
Thompson can have the suspension reversed if she pays back the money. She offered to make payments, but Alpers said, in that case she would constantly be in the red.
Don Morton of June Lake Accommodations, undoubtedly sensing opportunity, said he would happily take over Thompson’s reservation orders with at no extra cost to the customers. He said he wanted to “protect the tourists.”
“Legitimate and well run businesses are doing fine right now,” said Morton, a resident of June Lake since 1999 and owner of the Accommodations since 2013. “And we started when the mountain (June Lake Ski Resort) closed.”
