Barton Foundation’s 21st annual Tiki Tee Off Golf Tournament and Luau is May 22.

All proceeds support the Community Health Endowment.

It is at Lake Tahoe Golf Course in Meyers. Check-in and buffet brunch will start at noon. The shot gun scramble will tee off at 1:30pm.

Golfers play the scramble game in teams. Registration includes golf, buffet lunch, entertainment, games, and Luau dinner and dessert. Prizes will be awarded for cart decorating, team spirit, and the tournament winners.

Non-golfers and children may join the golfers for the family-friendly Hawaiian luau and awards ceremony at 6pm. New this year, outdoors games and kid-friendly activities will be available. Children can also indulge in their own buffet.

Sign up by April 15 for the early bird price of $155. After that, the registration fee will go up to $175. Luau only tickets are $65 for adults and $15 for children. Buy tickets online.

Survivors and rescue workers from the 1978 tram car accident at Squaw Valley are going to relive that experience on April 12.

They are going to share their experiences of the accident that generated one of the most heroic rescues in ski industry history.

The 5-7pm talk will be at the PlumpJack Conference Center at Squaw.

The cost is $10/person at the door, free to Squaw Valley Property Owners Association members.

The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency in coordination with the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension and Nevada Tahoe Conservation District are offering workshops for Lake Tahoe contractors, best management practices installers, and do-it-yourselfers to learn how to design and install BMPs for homes and small businesses.

Workshop topics will include how to use TRPA’s online resources, TRPA’s electronic approval process for small BMP retrofit designs, and commercial and multi-family residential BMP permits and maintenance. Due to limited grant funding, this is the last year the BMP workshops will be offered, and they are the last chance for businesses to qualify for the BMP Installation Service Providers List by having at least one supervisor per business attend.

A basic contractors BMP workshop is scheduled for April 24 from 8am-4:50pm at the Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences on the campus of Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village. Registration is $25 before April 8 and $45 after. The walk-in price is $55.

A half-day refresher BMP workshop is scheduled for April 29 from 8am-noon  at the TRPA offices in Stateline. To attend, you must have successfully completed the basic workshop or a refresher workshop within the past two years. Registration is $18 before April 8 and $35 after. The walk-in price is $45.

Tahoe Douglas Fire Protection District and the U.S. Forest Service may continue prescribed fire operations beginning April 6, weather permitting.

Operations may take place in Blackwood Canyon between Tahoe City and Tahoma, on the south side of Meeks Bay, on Gardner Mountain near South Tahoe High School and off Gardner Street, in the Tahoe Keys, on Luther Pass near Grass Lake, at Ski Run Boulevard near Heavenly, on upper Kingsbury Grade and on the East Shore near Logan Creek Drive. Operations may last through the next several weeks as conditions allow.

Each operation follows a prescribed fire burn plan, which considers temperature, humidity, wind, moisture of the vegetation, and conditions for the dispersal of smoke.

Smoke from prescribed fire operations is normal and may continue for several days after an ignition depending on the project size.

Before conducting prescribed fire operations, agencies may post road signs around affected areas and make email or phone notifications. The Forest Service updates the local fire information line at 530.543.2600, ext. 6.

By Richard Chang, Sacramento Bee

Despite drought conditions that have elevated wildfire risks this year, Placer County officials are considering whether to shutter one rural fire station and eliminate several positions to save money as it faces higher state firefighting costs.

Placer County contracts with the CalFire to staff its engines and stations in a vast fire protection area that spans from the Sacramento County line to Emigrant Gap in the Sierra Nevada. Other parts of the county are governed separately by independent fire districts and municipal agencies.

The 66 CalFire firefighters that serve Placer County are projected to cost $8.89 million in the current fiscal year. CalFire has raised its rate by 21 percent to $10.74 million for the fiscal year that starts July 1, a hike Placer officials have criticized as “unsustainable.”

Read the whole story

By Kathryn Reed

El Dorado County has an image problem. And it keeps throwing money at people to try to improve it.

The county spokesperson used to be someone in the chief administrative office. That went by the wayside even before Mike Applegarth went out on leave – and eventually took a job in Utah.

Then CAO Terri Daly hired Stephanie McCorkle on May 13, 2014, to do public relations work. The one-year contract was not to exceed $25,000. McCorkle had operated McCorkle & Driscoll Communications for two months before working for the county. Prior to that she worked in communications for 17 years for California Independent System Operator.

She left before half the year’s term was up, but billed for nearly the entire amount of the contract.

The county doesn’t have one person to be the point person for the media, to send out press releases, to be a spokesperson. That is why consultants are hired to do so. And this is why it can be hard to get information from the county.

Steve Pederrti, head of the Community Development Agency for the county, thought a major upcoming project needed more help than staff could provide.

However, on Sept. 30, the Board of Supervisors removed Flint Strategies as a public relations consultant in what at the time was going to be a bigger, approximately $600,000 contract with another firm to provide more than just email blasts. That was on a 3-2 vote with Supervisors Ron Mikulaco and Shiva Frantzen in the minority.

At that meeting Auditor-Controller Joe Harn told the board the pubic relations aspect of the contract could be done by people on the payroll.

“I certainly think the county staff can send out emails. I don’t think we need a consultant to do it,” Harn told Lake Tahoe News.

But that decision did not last long.

The entire board on Dec. 16 voted for a $516,995 three-year contract with Kittelson and Associates to provide public outreach for a five-year capital improvement program and traffic impact mitigation fee program updates. In the contract is a $44,720 contract with Flint to be a subcontractor of Kittleson’s.

To date Flint has sent out an email about a meeting that affects the West Slope. It was neither better written nor had more details than what has previously come from staff.

George Runner, state Board of Equalization vice chair and former state senator, along with state Board of Equalization staff will put on a seminar in May for small businesses in South Lake Tahoe.

The May 21 event is from 9am-2: 30pm at Lake Tahoe Airport. Check in is at 8:30am. The talk is free.

The workshop entitled Free South Lake Tahoe Small Business Tax Seminar is designed to help small business owners be successful. Topics include: common sales and use tax problems, employee or independent contractor, forms of ownership, and record keeping.

South Tahoe Chamber of Commerce invited Runner to town.

Register online or call 888.847.9652

By Marcella Corona, Reno Gazette-Journal

It’s been 10 years since 28-year-old preschool teacher Kyla Annan was found strangled to death at her home in Reno.

“It’s a pretty hard time,” Kyla’s father, Steven Annan, said Friday afternoon. “In 10 years you can bury a lot.”

Annan and his wife, Cheryl, of South Lake Tahoe, sat unmoving at a press conference Friday, with their hands clasped on their laps and solemn expressions on their faces in a corner of a briefing room at the Reno Police Department.

They had recently learned police arrested the man believed to have slain their daughter.

Read the whole story

By Brian Uhler

Last month, the city manager and City Council hosted a strategic planning session with all city departments to ensure we are coordinated and pulling together to address key community issues. Community wellness is one such focus area.

On a daily basis, South Lake Tahoe police officers respond to calls for service involving people who are in a mental health crisis. All too often, the services available to such people are limited, especially when those calls occur in the middle of the night. Sometimes these people also commit crime and are arrested, then put into the jail for the crimes they commit.

Brian Uhler

In March, Barton Memorial Hospital and the Lake Tahoe Unified School District hosted a mental health forum which included over 80 people who are community leaders or work in the mental health arena. This effort is well under way with plans to bolster community awareness, improve organizational responsiveness, and ultimately get people who need support the help they need.

Also in March, El Dorado County Superior Court Judge Suzanne Kingsbury, and officials from SLTPD, El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department, El Dorado County Health Department, and others met to coordinate an effort to obtain a grant to help provide more local support for those with mental health issues. If the grant acquisition effort is successful, more resources will be focused on helping those people who commit crime and also have mental illness.

In South Lake Tahoe we experience a suicide rate which is much too high. Health experts also recognize that many with mental health issues also self-medicate with illegal drugs. Consider the following statistics for the City of South Lake Tahoe:

Year       Suicides     Fatal Overdoes

2012       2                 4
2013       3                 6
2014       4                 11

Obviously, this trend is alarming. In the coming months, mental health authorities are supporting the police department with special crisis intervention training. It is hoped that we can help with turning this around in the coming year by providing better services earlier in the cycle of need.

Now that I have given you some information about things under way, you might ask, “what can I do to help?” In South Lake Tahoe, we are lucky to have many great nonprofits which specialize in supporting those with mental illness. One idea might be to seek out such an organization and offer help. If this doesn’t appeal to you, there may be other opportunities. In the U.S., May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Stay tuned to this topic and I am sure you will learn more specific ways to help.

Lastly, it might be helpful to review this link just in case you have friends or family members you are worried about.

Come January 2016, I will be asking staff to compile these stats again. Let’s work tirelessly to make sure our friends or family members will not be a sad statistic in the future.

Brian Uhler is chief of police in South Lake Tahoe.

Top experts will converge at Lake Tahoe in September for the annual meeting of the Western Regional Panel on Aquatic Nuisance Species.

Tahoe Regional Planning Agency is hosting the Sept. 2-4 annual meeting. There will be lectures and discussions to foster coordination of aquatic invasive species management among Western states. This event is open to the public.

Panel members hail from state, federal, tribal agencies as well as many academic and nonprofit entities.

For additional information, contact Devin Middlebrook at 775.589.5230 or dmiddlebrook@trpa.org.