Some residents in the Sierra Tract neighborhood of South Lake Tahoe are currently experiencing a power outage.

Liberty Utility expects to correct the problem by noon June 18.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

The end of the 2015 Tahoe Bike Challenge will be celebrated June 20 from noon-4pm at Heavenly Village.

There will be a variety of bicycle-themed activities for the whole family: bike swap, kid zone (bike rodeo, turtle race, bike jeopardy), mini-yoga sessions, bike parade, photo booth, flat tire changing contest, raffle prizes, and bike tune-up booth.

The Cycle Celebration will highlight winners of the 2015 Tahoe Bike Challenge, as well as feature the presentation of the 2014 Lake Tahoe Bicycle Coalition Achievement Awards. This year’s winners are:

• Karen and Peter Fink for their personal and professional commitment to improving bicycling in Tahoe;
• Truckee for the passing Measure R: Local Funding for Trails and Bikeways.

By Constance Sommer, Los Angeles Times

Christiane Carman believed she had good posture. Then one day she woke up with a crick in her neck, a nagging little pain on the left side that didn’t go away. Soon it was shooting down her left arm. By the time she landed at UCLA’s Spine Clinic, the pain had become her everyday companion. Your problem, a physical therapist at the clinic, Keri Pegram, told her, is the way you sit at work. In other words, Carman had poor posture.

Posture can seem the sort of problem that is easily corrected. But when poor posture becomes a habit, experts say, it can lead to a host of problems, including back pain, ancillary injuries in the shoulders and knees, and struggles with balance and endurance.

“The more the muscles have to work,” said Alan Hilibrand, an orthopaedic spine surgeon and professor at Philadelphia’s Jefferson Medical College, “the more they get stressed and fatigued.”

Read the whole story

By Kathryn Reed

The El Dorado County Grand Jury raked Auditor-Controller Joe Harn and Supervisor Ron Mikulaco over the coals in separate reports that were released this week.

Neither of the elected officials believes there is much truth to the reports, with Mikulaco saying it is politically motivated.

Harn said it’s hard to defend accusations when no examples of wrongdoing were presented.

Mikulaco, who is in his first term, represents the first district on the western edge of the county. He said he was never interviewed by the grand jury regarding the allegations made against him, which is a Penal Code violation.

“I’m not a good ol’ boy. There is a cost to not towing the line,” Mikulaco told Lake Tahoe News.

In the future he believes there needs to be better screening of the grand jury members so no one with blatant political connections and therefore perceived biases serves.

Brian Veerkamp, chair of the board, did not return a call. His secretary told LTN, “I doubt he will be able to comment, but I will give him your message.”

In addition to the reports on the two elected officials, the grand jury also believes the El Dorado County Charter should be repealed and county government structured as a general law county.

This civil grand jury claims Harn cost the county more than $1 million because he allegedly did not send a complete cost allocation plan to the state.

“The bottom line is they don’t understand the cost allocation plan. It didn’t cost us anything,” Harn told Lake Tahoe News.

In a prepared statement he further stated, “The state controller found no fault with the plan prepared by my office. The state controller found that the IT billings prepared by IT were not supported. IT didn’t maintain the records needed to substantiate the billings. My office is not responsible for the IT billings. The IT billings were done correctly for a decade prior to the former CAO’s reorganization of the management of IT.”

Since that time CAO Terri Daly was shown the door and the person who had always done IT’s billings for the cost allocation plan left the county.

Joe Harn

The findings against Harn include:

·       Report: Harn delayed or refused to make payments for reasons of personal and political motivation.

Harn’s response: He has to pay the bills, so this isn’t possible

·       Report: The Board of Supervisors has not ensured the independence of the outside audit of the county’s financial statements.

Harn’s response: An outside audit is done every year. It’s likely a new auditor will be hired this year because the same CPA firm has been used for the last seven years. He welcomes the board to have an audit committee.

·       Report: He is not complying with two ordinances – sections 3.16.130 and 3.16.140.

Harn’s response: The 1958 ordinance saying the Board of Supervisors approves bills for payment has been replaced by a 1978 resolution saying this is the auditor-controller’s responsibility. (There is likely to be an agenda item June 23 repealing the 1958 ordinance so there is no confusion.)

·       Report: He allows personal relationships to interfere with his management of his staff.

Harn’s response: “I like and respect my staff, and they like and respect me.”

·       Report: The auditor-controller is guilty of harassment and disrespectful conduct toward employees of both the county and other entities.

Harn’s response: “If they brought up specific examples, I might be able to say I should have been nicer. Earlier they say I’m a bully, but don’t say who I bullied.”

Ron Mikulaco

As for Mikulaco, the report says, “District One Supervisor Ron Mikulaco lacks comprehensive awareness of his position as a county supervisor and fails to follow basic and generally accepted principles of good governance. Equally alarming, he is abrasive, combative and insulting to others, and refuses to follow the protocols and processes expected of any elected official, especially an El Dorado County supervisor.”

The supervisor told Lake Tahoe News, “It was pretty brutal. I was a little caught off guard. They never talked to me about any of the items in there. They never interviewed me.”

The report accuses him of using taxpayer money for a satellite office in El Dorado Hills that the jury says is not necessary. (The district five supe has an office in South Lake Tahoe and Placerville.) Mikulaco said he furnished the office and pays for it out of the allowance he is given each year.

Each supervisor has $250,000 to spend – this includes the salary for their assistant and then other items related to their job. Mikulaco said he has given money back to the county because he has not spent it all.

He said the training he received that the jury took issue with is no different than what others are offered.

As for his personality, Mikulaco said, “I agree I can be abrasive when people lie to me.”

By Joe Mathews

What’s the fastest way from Berkeley to Bakersfield?

Flip to the second disc of the album.

Joe Mathews

California’s disparate regions are nearly impossible to connect. But over the past two years, two bands — with overlapping members — have pulled off the trick, issuing three albums that explore today’s state from its coast to its inland deserts, from north to south. By examining the state’s divides so thoroughly, those two bands — Cracker and Camper van Beethoven —s how what really connects California: the wrong turns and struggles of regular Californians, not the handful of sun-splashed Silicon Valley successes.

Camper van Beethoven’s two albums—2013’s “La Costa Perdida” about Northern California and 2014’s “El Camino Real” about Southern California — show how dream seeking remains alive and well on both ends of our state, even if the dreams seem smaller. Cracker’s new double album, “From Berkeley to Bakersfield”, offers one side of Bay Area folk rock, and a second side of old-school country. Despite the stylistic differences, both sides of the album depict Californians as they really are — poorer and living in grittier places, but still carving out their own little kingdoms amidst squalor.

“Between the two bands,” David Lowery, founder and frontman for Cracker and Camper van Beethoven, told me recently, “we took the entire state apart and reassembled it.”

California, for all its dynamism, is still defined by dreamier music from previous generations — Tupac and Dre’s “California Love,” the Beach Boys, that Eagles hotel. But there has been some smart musical grappling with today’s California — from DJ Quik’s Compton rap slap at exurban sprawl —

“You couldn’t keep up with the city/ So you moved out to the desert/

And you want to blame your drama on me.

— to Becky G’s teenaged laments about foreclosure. And you can almost smell the marijuana on the title track of the latest album from the popular duo Best Coast, “California Nights”:

“I stay high all the time/Just to get by…

California nights make me feel so happy I could die.

But none of California’s classic titles compare to Cracker’s and Camper van Beethoven’s recent songs when it comes to being grounded in details of place. Both bands are established and more than 20 years old — with roots in Santa Cruz and in Redlands, in San Bernardino County. But Lowery says their deep musical dive into the state was inspired a few years back when a show at the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur got canceled, and the musicians found themselves with an unexpected week off.

The songs they produced span the state, from “Northern California Girls” to “Camp Pendleton.” In “La Costa Perdida”, Camper Van Beethoven sings of a fruit picker from near Brawley — a killer who got his heart broken “in the oil fields of San Ardo” (in Monterey County), buried his beloved in Parkfield, and sold her car in Fresno.

The albums celebrate gritty places and people across regions. Cracker tells a Berkeley girl she’s beautiful and suggests they attend “an anarchists’ rally at People’s Park.” The main character of “King of Bakersfield” sings,

“I got a double wide in my own Merlot vineyard.

I got plenty of space to park my dually trucks.”

If there’s one song that binds all the work together, it’s “Almond Grove,” sung from the point of view of a guy from Maricopa in Kern County who goes to Oakland to work at the port, and gets involved in drugs. The song sounds like a triumphant return:

“I’m going home to the cotton fields/ To the almond groves,

to the old homestead/See my Ma and Pa, mighty brother Jack/

He went to Kandahar, but he never come back.”

By the song’s end, it’s clear that he’ll see his relatives because they’re dead — and so is he. His ashes are going back to the almond grove.

The songs aren’t angry — except about Silicon Valley. Cracker’s “March of the Billionaires” thunders:

“Give up your rights, your most private thoughts, don’t make us label you some kind of Luddites. It’s better for us, therefore it’s better for you.”

The song “El Cerrito,” about the Contra Costa County town, blasts at “pink-moustached taxi cabs” and offers the unforgettable chorus line, “I don’t give a shit about your IPO/I live in El Cerrito.”

While much of this music was made in California, Lowery doesn’t live here. For family reasons, he splits his time between Georgia and Virginia, but he plans to come back. “I would live somewhere in the High Desert. Or maybe up in the northwest corner of the state, Arcata or Crescent City.”

Or perhaps, he says, in both.

It’s all the same place, after all.

Joe Mathews is California and innovation editor for Zócalo Public Square, for which he writes the Connecting California column.

By Eleanor Goldberg, Huffington Post

Telling a homeless person to “hit the road” could soon be a good thing in Hawaii.

Group 70 International, a Honolulu-based architecture company, is working on retrofitting five retired city buses into a fleet of mobile shelters that could provide homeless people with everything from a place to sleep to an equipped space to wash up, Hawaii News Now reported.

The buses run smoothly, but are being stored only because they have racked up too many miles, KITV reported.

Group 70 told KITV that it drew its inspiration from Lava Mae, a nonprofit in San Francisco that converted two city buses into shower facilities for homeless people, the Associated Press reported. The vehicles boast hot showers, clean toilets, free towels, soap and shampoo.

Read the whole story

The Food Bank of El Dorado County will be in South Lake Tahoe with its Mobile Food Pantry along with a free farmers market on June 24 from 10am to 11am at the American Legion Hall located at 2748 Lake Tahoe Blvd.

This is for people who are struggling to make ends meet, live in El Dorado County and meet the California Health and Social Services Agency Emergency Food Assistance Program income guidelines. Income guidelines may be found online.  The Food Bank will provide one allocation of groceries per family.

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

By Luke Runyun, NPR

The marijuana industry has a pesticide problem. Many commercial cannabis growers use chemicals to control bugs and mold. But the plant’s legal status is unresolved.

The grow room at Medical MJ Supply in Fort Collins, Colo., has all the trappings of a modern marijuana cultivation facility: glowing yellow lights, plastic irrigation tubes, and rows of knee-high cannabis plants.

“We’re seeing a crop that’s probably in it third or fourth week,” says Nick Dice, the owner.

The plants are vibrantly green, happy and healthy. And Dice says that’s because the company’s taken a hard line on cleanliness.

Read the whole story

By Amy Kraft, CBS News

Good news for people who are trying to lower their risk of cardiovascular disease: a new study suggests you don’t have to cut chocolate out of your diet.

Chocolate may be good for the heart. Photo/John Loo

In fact, new research published in the BMJ journal Heart says that it may actually be good for your heart.

The researchers looked at long-term health data on nearly 21,000 adults in England. They found that participants who consumed the most chocolate (up to 100 grams a day, the equivalent of almost two and a half Hershey bars) were 11 percent less likely than those who ate no chocolate to have a heart attack or stroke, and 25 percent less likely to die from cardiovascular disease. Results remained the same after researchers adjusted for a number of dietary variables including smoking, age, alcohol consumption and physical activity level.

Read the whole story

·  Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Granite Bay, is having a town hall meeting June 30 at 6pm at the El Dorado County Board of Supervisors chambers, 330 Fair Lane, Placerville.

·  There will be a fundraiser for the Tahoe Rim Trail Association on June 19 from 5-8pm at New Moon Natural Foods in Truckee. A suggested donation of $10 will be collected at the door and all proceeds raised will go directly to the TRTA. Must be 21 and over to participate in the tastings.

·  On June 30 from 5:30-7pm is a Lake Tahoe Airport master plan meeting at the airport.

·  North Tahoe Public Utility District customers cut residential water consumption by 35 percent in May compared to 2013. May 2013 usage was 149 gallons residential gallons per capita per day, 143 residential gallons per capital per day in 2014 and 96 residential gallons per capita per day in 2015.