Publisher’s note: This letter was sent to the South Lake Tahoe City Council and is reprinted with permission.

To the community,

Landscaping and signs are to a community what icing is to a cake. It’s the pretty stuff on top, the colorful thing that makes it inviting. You can have the most delicious chocolate cake, but if you frost it with ugly, nobody’s gonna want to eat it.

I just learned that a sign permit went from $235 to $878 – darn near a 400 percent increase. This degree of increase should require a little notice, maybe a warning or grace period, don’t you think? Seriously, there are only four sign shops in town, you could have sent a note.

Whether you know it or not, I, along with our other local sign professionals, spend a tremendous amount of time explaining the ins and outs of your sign ordinance. I patiently and repeatedly let business and property owners know the importance of maintaining the beauty and consistency of signs – because signs are the icing on our cake. I back you guys up every single day. I don’t really enjoy it or get paid for it, but treat it as though it is part of my job, however, I will not steal for you.

The $878 for a sign permit is wrong, really wrong, so is waiting six to eight weeks for a permit that should be stamped, initialed and completed over the counter, on the same day. No one is going to get permits for their signs now, not when, for example, a $200 sign will end up costing over a thousand dollars.

Increasing this permit fee by 400 percent simply makes it impossible to get people to comply with the ordinance, not to mention they will start throwing up ugly signs again.  This is a “get rich quick” consultant idea, one that would never have come from a qualified business person, and it will backfire, just like it did years ago.

Perhaps you don’t remember? We were selling signs, getting our permits, the city was making money from permit fees, businesses were cooperating and you guys had photos and records of all signs, thereby enforcing your own sign ordinance. Then, just like now, the city brings in an outside consultant, increases the cost of sign permits to $600, nobody got permits, the city got plastered with illegal signs, our town looked awful and the city could not control the sign clutter.

It’s taken years to correct this problem and now you’re doing it again. Need I remind this council that the city had to reduce the sign permit fee back to its original cost in order to get control again?

Mass quantities of ugly signs make a community look cheap and blighted. Drive through any impoverished area and it will be smothered with signs. Paper “$15 Rooms” signs, reader boards, A-frames and tattered old banners everywhere, all things that are prohibited under our current sign ordinance. Right now, this town, this City Council, has spent gazillions of hours and dollars on beautifying the scenic corridor, organizing and funding lots of wonderful projects, only to turn around and throw away the power to protect what you’ve invested in.

Please reconsider this permit fee. It is out of line and ultimately not good for the community.

Angela Olson, Angie’s Signs

By Anya Kamenetz, NPR

Why do you do what you do? What is the engine that keeps you up late at night or gets you going in the morning? Where is your happy place? What stands between you and your ultimate dream?

Heavy questions. One researcher believes that writing down the answers can be decisive for students.

He co-authored a paper that demonstrates a startling effect: nearly erasing the gender and ethnic minority achievement gap for 700 students over the course of two years with a short written exercise in setting goals.

Jordan Peterson teaches in the department of psychology at the University of Toronto. For decades, he has been fascinated by the effects of writing on organizing thoughts and emotions.

Read the whole story

To the community,

Alan Plaugher, Kirkwood Mountain Resort’s ski patrol manager, had a great time helping the Bread & Broth volunteers feed 104 dinner guests at B&B’s evening meal served at St. Theresa Church Grace Hall on July 5.

“We all are glad to help out with this community food feed. I was very impressed with the variety and nutritional balance on this night. The deal is first rate,” he said.

Joining Plaugher were fellow Kirkwood Mountain Resort management team members Dave Myers, mountain operations director; Frank Dixon, finance; and Mike Niccoli, snow surfaces manager; along with his son, Sloane Niccoli. They were a hard working crew and were willing to handle any task that they were given.

Thanks to their help and Vail’s EpicPromise grant, which donated the $250 for Kirkwood’s sponsorship, another successful meal was served to help make a lot of folk’s day a little better and provide food for meals throughout the remainder of the week.  Due to our many generous donors, B&B is able to purchase fruits, vegetables, butter, milk and eggs to supplement the wonderful food donations that are given to B&B by local business and stores.

So in addition to the meal served, the Kirkwood volunteers helped with packing “giveaway” bags filled with food to give to the dinner guests. B&B is blessed to have businesses like Kirkwood and their employees who care about helping others.

Carol Gerard, Bread & Broth

·       On Aug. 15, Howie Nave, South Shore comedian and radio dude, will be inducted into the Nevada Broadcasters Association’s Hall of Fame.

·       Andy Wirth with Squaw Valley Holdings has been appointed to the Reno-Tahoe Airport Authority board.

·      Residents of the North Tahoe Public Utility District reduced residential water consumption by 24.9 percent compared to June 2013 usage. NTPUD June 2013 usage was 176.3 residential gallons per capita per day, 181.9 residential gallons per capital per day in 2014 and 132.4 residential gallons per capita per day in 2015.

·      Cowboys & Cornbread is an event at the El Dorado County Fairgrounds on July 19 from 11am-4pm. For more info, go online.

By Kathryn Reed

A police officer with 10 years of experience who joined the South Lake Tahoe department in January is responsible for the killing of an unarmed suspect in June.

Officer Josh Klinge, 35, remains on paid administrative leave.

Josh Klinge

Officers were called to the Tahoe Hacienda Motel on Lake Tahoe Boulevard at 2:40am June 15 because of reports of a woman who was screaming and crying.

A single bullet fired by Klinge killed Kris Jackson, 22, of Sacramento.

Jackson was on criminal probation at the time of the shooting. On June 1, he had been arrested by South Lake Tahoe police officers for allegedly possessing several baggies of cocaine, scales and packaging materials. On May 21, he had been arrested by local officers on a Sacramento failure to appear warrant related to a drug possession charge.

The deceased’s family has hired attorney Alan Laskin. The attorney questions whether proper commands where given to Jackson to stop as he was climbing out a hotel bathroom.

Shortly after the shooting the police department issued a statement saying, ““The involved officer’s statement explains he perceived a deadly threat from Kris Jackson. After interviews and a search of the crime scene, no firearm or other weapon was located.”

The El Dorado County District Attorney’s Office is conducting the criminal investigation to determine if Klinge was justified in the shooting.

District Attorney Vern Pierson told Lake Tahoe News he hopes the investigation will be wrapped up in 30 days, but is making no promises.

“We need forensic items to be completed,” he said.

Per protocol, SLTPD will be conducting a separate internal investigation to determine if Klinge followed department policies. This was the first officer involved shooting in South Lake Tahoe in more than 10 years.

Before starting with SLTPD, Klinge was an officer with Ceres Police Department from May 2007 to January this year. Prior to that he was a deputy with the Merced County Sheriff’s Department from December 2004-May 2007.He attended the Fresno City College police academy in 2003. At Ceres, Klinge was a K-9 officer.

Bass Camp Festival III at Hard Rock Lake Tahoe on July 25 will feature Zeds Dead and Kill the Noise as part of the BaseJam Summer 2015 Outdoor Concert Series.

With firm roots planted in the underground electronic music scene, Zeds Dead saw a meteoric rise to international superstardom following their 2010 live debut at a seedy dive-bar in Toronto. Headlining with Zeds Dead at this year’s festival is American “brostep” disc jockey Kill the Noise. Known off-stage as Jake Stanczak, Kill the Noise has performed on EDM’s biggest stages including Coachella, Electronic Daisy Carnival (EDC) Las Vegas, and Lollapalooza.

There will be more than 30 industry veterans and rising rookies like Savoy, UZ, Tommie Sunshine and Liquid Todd.

The daylong festival begins at 11am. Tickets for Bass Camp Festival III are available online and start at $60.

The second of three summer events to raise money for repairs at Vikingsholm is July 30.

Conversation with History is an opportunity to tour part of the castle at Emerald Bay State Park that is usually off limits and to talk with Helen Smith. Smith resided at the castle during the summers when she was a child.

Tickets are $60, which also includes wine and appetizers. Go online to purchase tickets and get more information.

All of the funds raised go to the Sierra State Parks Foundation and are then earmarked for Vikingsholm.

The same event will be repeated Aug. 27.

The Food Bank of El Dorado County will be in South Lake Tahoe to host a free farmers market and mobile good pantry on July 22 from 10-11am at the American Legion Hall, 2748 Lake Tahoe Blvd.

The Food Bank will provide one allocation per household. Income guidelines are online.

For more information on how to give or get help, call 530.621.9950 or email info@foodbankedc.org.

By Sophie Mattson, San Jose Mercury News

Laura Jaramillo woke up one morning in the summer of 2005 and sensed something was horribly wrong. After going to the hospital, she fell into a coma and spent six weeks fighting for her life — waking up to find her right side paralyzed.

Doctors were baffled until they discovered the culprit — the West Nile virus.

“I had to learn how to eat, walk and talk all over again,” said Jaramillo, 69, of Oakley. “But I was just glad to be alive.”

Thirty-one Californians last year weren’t as fortunate. They succumbed to West Nile infection in one of the worst outbreaks the Golden State has seen in years. More than 800 state residents were infected.

Read the whole story

By John Wildermuth, San Francisco Chronicle

With more and more California voters casting ballots by mail, the neighborhood polling place is becoming one of the loneliest spots in town on election day, forcing local and state officials to puzzle out what to do about it.

In the June 2014 statewide primary, 69 percent of the turnout was by mail ballots, triple the 23 percent in 2000. In November’s general election, fewer than 40 percent of the ballots were cast in person at the polls.

The break between the two types of voting is even more stark in typically low-turnout special elections.

It’s a situation that’s frustrating for the poll workers, who have to sit with nothing to do from before the polls open at 7am until after they close at 8pm. It’s also expensive for the counties, which not only have to train and pay the poll workers, but also must find and secure potential polling places and shoulder the costs of transporting and storing the voting machines and other equipment.

While tiny rural Alpine and Sierra counties already are all-mail, all the time, don’t expect California to go that route anytime soon. As Secretary of State Alex Padilla noted soon after being elected in November, “Many people still prefer to vote at the polls. Including my mother.”

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