LUCERNE, Calif. — A group of concerned Lucerne residents braved the cold on Thursday night to meet outside the Lucerne Hotel as part of a regularly scheduled meeting of the Lucerne Area Town Hall.

The town hall had been set to meet on Thursday night at the hotel, its regular meeting place, to discuss a secretive plan revealed by Lake County News this week in which the Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians plans to purchase the building with a state grant and turn it into homeless housing.

The building’s current owner, Andrew Beath, who bought it from the county of Lake in 2019 in a sales process that was completed over the objections of the community, decided to oust the group after he found out the sale and its potential condemnation by resolution was on the agenda.

District 3 Supervisor Eddie Crandell followed up on Wednesday night by attempting to quash the meeting altogether, sending out a letter on county letterhead saying it was canceled due to lack of a location.

That’s despite the town hall bylaws which give him no such authority to call meetings or set times or locations.

Crandell told community members in his letter that the town hall would not meet again until January, when it’s expected escrow already will have closed.

Crandell has refused to engage with community members or respond to questions from the press about concerns about Scotts Valley’s plans for the building.

While Crandell didn’t succeed in stopping people from showing up, the group couldn’t conduct a formal meeting because it did not have a quorum.

Chair Kurt McKelvey and Vice Chair Jason Mohan were the only town hall members there. Kevin Waycik, Rebecca Schwenger and Melanie Lim were absent.

However, about 20 other people gathered on the building’s front steps on Hotel Road in hopes of hearing more about the situation.

“When you do it on the down-low, you know it’s not on the up and up,” one woman in the crowd said about the tribe’s secretive plan.

The woman next to her said the county of Lake does everything on the down low.

After waiting about 10 minutes after the 6 p.m. start time, and with no third board member arriving, McKelvey, holding an American flag, said he did not cancel the meeting.

“Other people in the community have created confusion about the cancellation of this meeting in order to infringe upon the people’s ability to freely speak on this, the First Amendment right to speak on these matters in a timely and actionable manner, and it’s also, I believe, an attempt to obstruct the the due process of this advisory council,” McKelvey said

Because there was no quorum, McKelvey said the meeting wouldn’t go forward.

McKelvey said he doesn’t plan to wait until January but will hold an emergency meeting before then.

He said he’ll issue an agenda in the coming days announcing that meeting’s time, date and location.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.