Officers on March 12 look for a fugitive near the businesses at Timber Cove Pier in South Lake Tahoe. Photo/Denise Haerr

South Lake Tahoe police officers and El Dorado County sheriff’s deputies have been looking for an at-large parolee since early Thursday evening.

Reports are that the fugitive fled out a window at the Beverly Lodge in South Lake Tahoe on March 12 shortly after 5pm and then went to the parking lot as Lakeland Village.

Officers have also been scouring the Timber Cove Pier area.

The man is described as white, buzz haircut, round face, with cheek piercings and tattoos. He was last seen wearing jeans and no shirt.

It is not known why officers are trying to track him down. No South Lake Tahoe police officers were available for comment.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By Eduardo Porter, New York Times

Why do the best-educated girls do worse at math than top-educated boys?

Concern about this deficit exploded into public consciousness 35 years ago, when researchers in the department of psychology at Johns Hopkins University published an article suggesting the gap might be caused by a “superior male mathematical ability.”

The debate that ensued was furious. It was so hot that a quarter of a century later, a similar controversy contributed to the ouster of Lawrence Summers from his post as the president of Harvard.

Was there anything “natural” about the performance gap? Or was it the product of gender bias working its way through schools? As the debate raged, ending the underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering and math became a critical policy priority.

Amid the din over top girls’ mathematical abilities, something important was forgotten: What is happening that so many boys are falling behind in pretty much everything else?

Last week the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — a collective think tank of the world’s industrialized nations — published a report about gender inequality in education, based on the latest edition of its PISA standardized tests taken by 15-year-olds around the world.

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Jennifer Montgomery

• Placer County Supervisor Jennifer Montgomery is one of 24 women elected officials nationwide in the inaugural class of a Women in Government Leadership Program created by the Governing Institute to focus on improving the performance of state and local governments and strengthening public-sector innovation, leadership and citizen engagement. She is one of two elected officials from California and one of three county supervisors from throughout the U.S.

• Reno Earth Day is being celebrated April 26 at Idlewild Park from 10am-6pm.

• Tahoe Paradise Resort Improvement District board is meeting March 13 at 10am at Lake Valley Fire Protection District. Here is the agenda.

• Truckee police officers will present the annual crime report to the Town Council on March 26 at 6pm at council chambers.

• The High Fives Foundation gave Tahoe City’s Eric Zerrenner $2,390 for personal training, acupuncture, massage and private bar effect classes. On Jan. 8 he was skiing at Alpine Meadows, went to jump off of a roller, which dropped down to a flat landing, fell and burst fractured his L1 vertebrae causing paralysis from his waist down.

On March 30, Squaw Valley’s KT-22 chairlift will host the Mothership Classic.

People are invited to join in a monthlong fund-raising campaign culminating in an on-snow phenomenon of skiers, snowboarders and retro mountain adventurers lapping the chairlift as many times as they can from 9am-4pm. Participants will obtain per-lap sponsorships. Throwback gear, vintage equipment and costumes are part of the program as a to tribute the lively history of Squaw Valley and Lake Tahoe’s mountain lifestyle.

There is no fee for entry into the event and donations raised will benefit the local nonprofit High Fives Foundation.

Interested participants should sign up using the online pledge platform.

By Sandra Chereb, Las Vegas Review-Journal

CARSON CITY — County assessors would no longer be required to publish annual property tax rolls in the local newspaper under a proposal that would save taxpayers statewide hundreds of thousands of dollars at the expense of newspapers.

Senate Bill 95 sponsored by Sen. David Parks, D-Las Vegas, would give counties the option to instead publish the list on their Internet websites. Counties with populations fewer than 100,000 residents — currently all but Clark and Washoe — would have to make at least 10 copies available to the public free of charge.

In testimony Tuesday before the Senate Committee on Revenue and Economic Development, Parks said the existing requirement to publish tax rolls in the newspaper is an “antiquated system” that wastes precious taxpayer dollars.

According to the Nevada Assessor’s Association, the legal requirement cost Nevada counties nearly $811,000 last year.

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By Ana Ley, Las Vegas Sun

Nevada lawmakers are pushing a bill that would require uniformed law enforcement officers to wear body cameras, mirroring the nation’s intensifying efforts to improve relationships between police and the communities they serve.

Introduced Monday by Assemblyman Harvey Munford, D-Las Vegas, Assembly Bill 162 is one of 87 pieces of body camera legislation being considered in 29 states, according to the Denver-based National Conference of State Legislatures.

Even supporters of AB 162 say the feasibility of the unfunded mandate is questionable, and it will likely be watered down significantly by a series of amendments proposed by law enforcement groups and civil rights advocates. At most, the bill will likely end up requiring police agencies to consider the new technology (which many are already doing).

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Liberty Utilities is offering academic scholarships to eligible high school and college students within its service territory. The seven schools participating in the third annual scholarship program are South Tahoe High School, Loyalton High School, Douglas High School (students residing in Alpine County only), Coleville High School, North Tahoe High School and Portola High School, and Lake Tahoe Community College.

The six high school scholarships are $500 each. High school seniors must have a minimum unweighted gpa of 2.5 and be accepted to an accredited four-year or two-year university or college or an accredited vocational school. They also must have some community service experience in the community which they reside.

The Lake Tahoe Community College scholarship is $750. Those students are eligible for the scholarship if they have a 2.5 gpa or higher, and have completed at least 18 quarter units at LTCC. They must be enrolled in LTCC’s upcoming fall quarter, and have demonstrated leadership through school and/or community service experiences within the community they reside.

Interested students should contact their school’s financial aid office or counselor to find out more about the scholarship and to obtain an application. The individual schools have different deadlines, but all scholarships will be awarded starting mid-May.

By Tess Stynes, Wall Street Journal

Vail Resorts Inc. said its earnings rose 95 percent on stronger revenue thanks to growth in season-pass sales and spending for other items such as meals and dining during the quarter ended January.

However, for the year ending in July, Vail lowered the upper end of its forecast for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization by $10 million and now expects Ebitda between $340 million and $350 million. The updated guidance includes a roughly $37 million shortfall in revenue at its Tahoe resorts, compared with earlier estimates.

For the current season through March 8, Vail Resorts reported total skier visits edged down 0.3 percent. However, total lift revenue — including impacts of growing season pass revenue — increased 8 percent and spending for ski classes, dining and other ancillary sales all grew.

Chief Executive Rob Katz results in February and early March continued trends the company saw in the latest quarter, with strength in Colorado offset by shortfalls to expectations in Tahoe.

Read the whole story

Don Marrandino no longer has anything to do with Lake Tahoe Hard Rock. Photo/LTN file

Don Marrandino’s latest stint in Lake Tahoe was short-lived.

“As of March 9, Don Marrandino, senior vice president of operations for Warner Hospitality, is no longer with Warner Hospitality,” Jody Lake, COO for Warner Hospitality, told Lake Tahoe News. But why he is ousted from the entire company is not being disclosed. Warner is responsible for running Lake Tahoe Hard Rock.

In July during the splashy unveiling of the former Horizon hotel-casino in Stateline becoming a Hard Rock, Marrandino was touted as the man who was going to run the property even though he would be headquartered out of Las Vegas.

He was known as Big D when he oversaw

Harrah’s Lake Tahoe and Harveys from 2003-05.

Jim Ward, vice president of operations for Warner Hospitality, is the interim general manager of the local Hard Rock. Warner Hospitality is looking to hire a permanent GM.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By Kathryn Reed

A shared resource or a subsidy? Being able to answer that question is what the financial disagreement over ambulance service on the South Shore is coming down to.

The Cal-Tahoe JPA, which has two board members from the South Lake Tahoe City Council and two from the Lake Valley Fire Protection District board, has a little more than one year left in a five-year contract with El Dorado County to run the ambulance service in their jurisdictions. There is then the possibility to renew the contract for five years in one-year increments. The county pays the JPA $2.06 million a year to do so. That money comes from a parcel tax assessed to property owners ($500,000) and fees paid by patients or their insurance companies (the remainder).

The contract deals with response time and says there will be five available ambulances, with access to a sixth.

Who pays for the cost of ambulance service is being debated. Photo/LTN file

The problem is the fire departments believe three ambulances are needed at all times to meet the response times. But the amount paid by the county never covered that level of coverage. The city and Lake Valley at the time agreed to share that expense.

This contract also calls for a flat fee for taking patients to out of area hospitals, which is often a loss for the JPA.

The city is also absorbing dispatch expenses that went from $65,000 to $95,000 to $150,000 per year. The city calls this a subsidy to the JPA and wants reimbursement from the county.

But the contract says otherwise. The county pays a flat fee for X amount of service whether that is medical care or dispatch.

On the flip side, the county only has to pay for ambulance service – not when a fire truck rolls with the medic unit. That is where the shared resource aspect comes into play.

Most of this was brought up at the monthly JPA board meeting on March 11. The four board members spent the bulk of the meeting in closed session to discuss how to respond to a Feb. 12 letter from Don Ashton, director of the county’s Health and Human Services Department. There was no reportable action.

Board attorney Dave Hale claimed the way to go into closed session was to call it potential litigation. The board agreed this was logical and not a violation of the Brown Act.

The departments are going to look at what all the real expenses are to run the ambulance service. This means looking at what it costs to store ambulances at the fire stations, the use of phones and other office related expenses. Those numbers will then be presented to the county.

Per the contract it’s possible to revisit issues. This first was talked about last summer, with the initial formal meeting between the JPA and county in October. JPA Executive Director Ryan Wagoner and Ashton with the county met Wednesday after the JPA meeting.

In the past it was disclosed that not all residences are paying the ambulance fee, but Wagoner said that is not true. He told Lake Tahoe News condos and mobile homes are in a different category, but still contribute to the cause.

El Dorado County was a bit put off by last month’s presentation by South Lake Tahoe Fire Chief Jeff Meston to the City Council regarding ambulance service.  Ashton said as much in his to letter Wagoner last month.

Wagoner insists discussions are going the way the contract states that they can, everyone is playing nice and that talks are progressing. But he underlined how the county and the West Slope ambulance agency have been negotiating for 1½ years, so these things take time.

The next JPA meeting is April 13 at 9am at Lake Tahoe Airport.