The Eldorado and Tahoe national forests are trying to get rid of surplus vehicles.

The online auction is March 23-27. Sixteen vehicles and two flat bed trailers will be sold to the highest bidder. To find this auction, enter the sale number 91QSCI-15-014 on the web page.

Potential bidders may inspect the vehicles starting March 23 at 9am.

Twelve vehicles and two flat bed trailers are located at the Eldorado National Forest facility at 2350 Carson Road, Camino. Two vehicles are located on the Inyo National Forest facility at 798 North Main St., Bishop, and two vehicles are located at the Tahoe National Forest facility at 12019 Charles Drive, Grass Valley.

By Kyle Roerink, Las Vegas Sun

Talk of tax season is ripe in the Nevada Legislature, but the chatter has nothing to do with April 15.

Gov. Brian Sandoval will lobby for his business license fee on Wednesday in the Senate’s revenue committee. The fee, an existing tax the Sandoval administration has reconfigured, would levy the key fiscal component of his $1.1 billion tax plan aiming to bolster the state’s public education system.

Sandoval is breaking with traditional conservative ideologies in the name of offering $438 million to boost new programs and opportunities for the state’s students, teachers and parents in the next two years. He is one of at least 10 Republican governors calling for tax hikes across the country and says he is determined to cement the 2015 session as the foundation for revamping Nevada’s bottom-rung education system.

Sandoval’s education-driven gusto has politicians and special interests singing his praises and willing to write checks.

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By Jonathan Berr, MoneyWatch

It’s called “March Madness” for a reason. About 70 million people will likely try their hands at picking the winner of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, wagering more than $2 billion. That’s roughly twice what was bet on the Super Bowl, according to data from the American Gaming Association, a trade group that’s pushing to legalize sports betting.

Unfortunately, many wannabe soothsayers will try their hands at prognostication at work, which creates problems for businesses. Challenger, Grey & Christmas, a provider of executive outplacement search services, pegs the productivity loss at $1.9 billion.

“That figure may be on the conservative side, considering this year could garner a lot more interest from even casual basketball fans eager to see if Kentucky can continue its undefeated season through the tournament,” said John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

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• Friends of the Library in South Lake Tahoe are having a book sale March 28 at 10am at the library – 1000 Rufus Allen Blvd.

• North Tahoe Public Utility District’s annual Snow Fest Pancake Breakfast raised $1,500 for the nonprofit Dog Day in the Park and the future Tahoe Unleashed Dog Park planned in the North Tahoe Regional Park. Dog Day in the Park also raised an additional $300 from merchandise sales during the breakfast.

• Sugar Pine Foundation is looking for people to help plant seedlings in April. For more info, go online.

• There will be a book reading of “The Happiest Tree in the Forest” at the Incline Village Library on March 25 at 4pm. Illustrator Ana Valdez and author Michelle McLean will be there. Signed copies of the book are $15.

• South Lake Tahoe is putting on meeting about the vacation home rental code on March 24 at 5:30pm at Lake Tahoe Airport.

By Martin Griffith, AP

The historic Nevada newspaper where Mark Twain cut his journalistic teeth is back in publication for the first time in three decades, and its owners plan to uphold tradition by offering more than just real news.

The Territorial Enterprise was revived as an online and monthly print publication this week by Capitol Publishing Group, the parent company of a weekly newspaper in Jefferson City, Mo., that focuses on politics and government.

Samuel Clemens, Twain’s real name, assumed his pen name and developed his penchant for western tall tales when he was a reporter from 1862 to 1864 at the feisty newspaper in Virginia City, about 20 miles southeast of Reno.

The Territorial Enterprise, based by its new owners in nearby Carson City, plans to feature yarns in keeping with Twain’s spirit, and cover politics, government, business and culture across the state.

“For the most part, the news content will be professional, solid reporting,” editor Elizabeth Thompson said. “Sprinkled in and among that we intend to have fun with fictional and partly fictional stories from time to time.”

Ron James, former Nevada state historic preservation officer and author of four books on Virginia City, welcomed the newspaper’s return to publication.

“Anytime you resurrect an institution like that it’s a positive thing and we have to be pleased with that,” he said.

James said the Territorial Enterprise was one of the most prestigious newspapers in the West in the 1860s and 1870s because of its serious coverage of mining in one of the richest mineral troves ever: the Comstock Lode.

Twain was among a group of talented journalists at the newspaper who perfected the art of the western tall tale with articles that became legendary for their wit, he added.

“I’ve always said Samuel Clemens was born in Missouri and Mark Twain was born in Nevada, and without his western sojourn there’s no way he would have been a nationally renowned author,” James said. “He and the other reporters didn’t spend all their time lying to the public, just a portion of their time.”

Still, the newspaper was regarded as good journalism, James said.

The Territorial Enterprise, the first newspaper printed in Nevada, was founded in 1858 and ceased publication in 1893. It has sputtered to life from time to time since then but has not achieved its former prominence except for a decade in the mid-20th century when it was under the ownership of writers Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg. It was last published in the 1980s.

Thompson referred questions about the newspaper’s new owners to Scott Faughn, publisher of both the Territorial Enterprise and T=the Missouri Times. He did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Faughn, a former mayor of Poplar Bluff, Mo., was a campaign manager for Rod Jetton, a Republican who served as Missouri House speaker from 2005 to 2009 and now co-owns the Jefferson City, Mo., newspaper.

Faughn told the Associated Press in 2013 that both are committed to providing unbiased news coverage.

Both have had legal problems in the past. Jetton was charged with felony assault of a woman at her home in 2009 and was sentenced to probation after pleading guilty to a reduced misdemeanor charge in 2011.

Faughn was convicted in 2007 on three felony counts after he was accused of forging checks on an account for a highway expansion in southeast Missouri. He was fined $1,500.

Thompson is a former publisher of the Nevada News Bureau, an online news service run by a leading Nevada conservative anti-tax activist. It shut down in 2012.

She points with pride to her inaugural edition of the Territorial Enterprise, which included a Twain-like fictional piece titled “The True Story of the Comstock Lode Discovery,” along with an interview with Gov. Brian Sandoval, profiles of freshman Nevada lawmakers and a story on a request by Nevada cities for a rate increase for releasing public records.

The newspaper will start out by being published monthly with the help of one reporter and freelancers, Thompson said.

“I’m absolutely thrilled to, in some small way, be carrying on the tradition and spirit of Mark Twain and bringing something new to the publication as well,” she said.

By Kathryn Reed

Keep the airfield as it is while providing flexibility for other uses at the airport was the consensus Monday night of the nearly 60 people who attended a meeting about the Lake Tahoe Airport master plan.

This was the third and final meeting before preferred alternatives are defined. Those will then be studied in environmental documents. Comments on all alternatives will be solicited for another month.

It’s possible the whole process could be completed in summer 2016.

It has been about 23 years since the city did a master plan for the airport. The goal is to define what it will look like for the next 20 years.

Last year the City Council said the airport will be a general aviation facility and commercial air service will be a thing of the past. However, it’s possible those priorities could change in the future. And the City Council at its last meeting approved an economic study be done for the airport. This will be incorporated into the business plan for the facility.

Lake Tahoe Airport’s future is being decided by the public and South Lake Tahoe officials. Photo/LTN file

Michael Hotaling, the consultant preparing the master plan, on March 16 said the FAA – which is picking up 90 percent of the costs to prepare the plan – focuses on safety, security, sustainability and capacity. The city may have other priorities, but the feds’ desires by virtue of being the banker, so to speak, carry more weight.

With this being Lake Tahoe, environmental factors also play a role. So, while it might be a good idea to cut down trees for safety reasons, the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency gets to weigh in if they should be removed or some other mitigation done.

Air quality, compatible land use and stream environmental zones are potential constraints for any future development at the airport.

Some of the 14 people who spoke Monday night brought up:

• How the airport has virtually no services; that it requires flying somewhere else to get the bugs off the plane because they cannot be washed at this airport.

• The need to lower the rent on hangars.

• The desire for new instrument approaches.

• The idea to create an airport district like what Truckee has.

• The savings of giving up the FAA certificate that allows commercial service. (The 139 certificate is on today’s City Council agenda.)

The city’s subsidy to operate the airport has dropped 43 percent from 2010-11 to 2013-14, with the cost at $352,000. That could drop about another $120,000 by giving up the 139 certificate. Most of the certificate’s expenses are related to training firefighters to deal with a commercial airliner crash.

At this week’s meeting everyone had the opportunity to vote on the plans they liked best. Most want to keep the runway, tarmac and apron as they are.

Hotaling brought up reasons the city might want to consider lengthening or widening the runway – mostly to keep up with changing airplanes and specifications. But it was also noted that even though the Gulfstream V and planes like it are likely to be more common in coming years, pilots could land and take off at their own discretion.

The current 8,541-foot runway is not optimal for a Gulfstream in the heat of summer. Optimal conditions are for an 11,000-foot runway.

But no one has come forward advocating to lengthen the runway, nor do they want to shorten it.

Based on the alternatives being voted on Monday people are behind improving other amenities like adding a self-fueling station – which could lower the price per gallon of jet fuel, creating hangars to accommodate larger aircraft, and designating a swath of land east of the airport as non-aeronautical (this would allow for a potential concert venue).

More information about the master plan may be found online.

Publisher’s note: The following letter was sent to the El Dorado County Board of Supervisors on March 16, 2015.

Dear El Dorado County Board of Supervisors,

We are a concerned group of local Meyers srea residents and stakeholders in need of assistance. The letter below was submitted to our elected supervisor, Sue Novasel, earlier this year. Unfortunately, before we could meet with her to discuss our concerns, the county’s legal counsel determined she cannot participate in the Meyers Area Plan process, and we were directed by her assistant to coordinate with the same county staff we have been dealing with for over a year. Not only does this create concerns regarding the same process issues which have thus far, failed to support a true, transparent community or area plan update process, but it also leaves our community without an elected representative who will work on our behalf, first and foremost, regarding planning for the future of the Meyers area.

We therefore request you add an agenda item to the next possible Board of Supervisors meeting to discuss how our community can be adequately represented by an elected official. Further, we request the Meyers Area Plan update process — which notably will guide the future of our community for the next twenty years — be delayed until we have elected representation for our community.

Sincerely,

Joe Cardinale, Angie Olson, Jennifer Quashnick, Moya Sanders, Rebecca Schwartz and Diane Verwoest

By Matt Weiser, Sacramento Bee

Millions of Californians soon may be forced to adjust their lives around a crucial timekeeping device in their homes. Not their alarm clocks, but their irrigation timers.

The State Water Resources Control Board on Tuesday is poised to get even tougher on water conservation as California now seems assured of a fourth year of drought. The main focus of the proposal set for a board vote is landscape watering, responsible for about 70 percent of all urban water consumption in California.

The board is expected to order every urban water agency in California to limit outdoor watering to specific days of the week – for both residential and business customers. In many cases, this would mean only two days per week.

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The Avoid the 6 El Dorado County DUI Task Force will be deploying roving DUI patrols on St. Patrick’s Day in several communities throughout the area, looking to stop and arrest drivers who are impaired by alcohol or drugs. These DUI patrols are, in addition to regularly scheduled patrol officers, all looking for the tell-tale signs of an impaired driver behind the wheel.

In 2013, there were 31 people killed in drunken driving crashes on St. Patrick’s Day. During the St. Paddy’s Day period from 2009 to 2013, there have been 276 drunken driving fatalities. March 17 has become a deadly day in the United States, with a dramatic spike in drunken driving fatalities.

The El Dorado District Attorney’s Office offers this advice to partygoers: “Get ahead of the decision this year. If you know you’re going to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with alcohol, then figure out a plan ahead of time for how you’ll get home. Don’t wait until you’re too buzzed to decide, and don’t let your friends drive drunk.”

By Jackie Valley, Las Vegas Sun

Humans have been using geothermal energy for more than 10,000 years, since American Paleo-Indians used hot springs for cooking, bathing and cleaning. But it wasn’t until 1904 that the first geothermal electric power plant was invented to generate electricity, when Italian scientist Piero Ginori Conti figured out how to turn steam into power.

The amount of heat in the top 33,000 feet of the Earth’s surface contains 50,000 times more energy than all of the oil and natural gas resources in the world.

Worldwide, geothermal power plants produced more than 11,700 megawatts of electricity, enough to meet the annual needs of more than 6 million typical U.S. households. The first geothermal plant in the United States debuted in 1992, and now, two decades later, 69 geothermal plants operate nationally. Several are in Nevada, and more are coming.

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