To the community,

Bread & Broth would like to thank Jim and Linda Mueller, owners of Adventure Mountain Lake Tahoe, for their sponsorship of an Adopt A Day of Nourishment on Oct. 27.

The Monday evening Italian dinner prepared by B&B’s versatile cooks was enjoyed by 125 dinner guests who raved about the roasted chicken and garlic pasta meal which was financed by the Mueller’s Adventure Mountain sledding, tubing, and snow play resort.

“We feel privileged to be able to give back to the South Lake Tahoe community,” said Linda Mueller.

Joining the Muellers in assisting the B&B volunteer crew were their son, Luke, and Adventure Mountain employees Randy Cronin and Wes Snyder.

“This is a great way to help out,” commented Cronin, who was busy helping serve the thankful and hungry folks who frequently find this meal to be one of their few hot meals during the week.

Through the generosity of the Lake Tahoe South Shore community, B&B is able to provide hot, nutritious meals twice a week to the hungry and those in need. B&B’s meals served at St. Theresa Grace Hall and Lake Tahoe Community Presbyterian Church are made possible by our generous financial donors, the donation of time by our many dedicated B&B volunteers and sponsor crew members and the support B&B receives from our many store/business partners.

Thank you to Adventure Mountain Lake Tahoe for “giving back” to our community’s less fortunate.

For more B&B information, go online or find us on Facebook.

Carol Gerard, Bread & Broth

Incorporate OV Foundation has received nonprofit status from the Internal Revenue Service.

Incorporate Olympic Valley was formed by Squaw Valley residents concerned about maintaining their mountain culture and gaining local control and jurisdiction over land use decisions, locally generated tax revenues, and key services prioritized by locals, such as snow removal and road maintenance.

This came about after the ski resort proposed a large scale development project in and around the village area.

The startup IOV organization recently reorganized into two entities: The Incorporate OV Foundation was restructured as a 501(c)(3) and Incorporate OV restructured as a 501(c)(4). The 501(c)(3) is focused on managing the legal process of incorporation, while the 501(c)(4) is focused on the incorporation process as well as the campaign for community dialogue and support.

The Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team will host an open house Nov. 12 to explain and answer questions about how agencies plan and implement prescribed fire in the Lake Tahoe Basin.

The event is from 5 to 6:30pm at the USFS office, 35 College Drive, South Lake Tahoe.

Participating agencies include the Forest Service, CalFire, Nevada Division of Environmental Protection, and Tahoe Douglas and Lake Valley fire protection districts.

The open house will provides an opportunity for the public to meet basin fire managers and find out how these agencies make decisions about when and where prescribed fire operations will take place. Fire weather forecasting, smoke dispersal and fire behavior modeling, and how moisture in vegetation is tested before burning will be explained.

Attendees can also see prescribed fire before and after photos, maps of upcoming project locations and sign up for prescribed fire notifications.

By Ed Fletcher, Sacramento Bee

A spacious foothills ranch house north of Placerville was L.A. north on Monday as transplant filmmaker Deon Taylor continued work on his new movie “Meet the Blacks.”

The courtyard between the home and the garage – overlooking the rolling El Dorado County landscape – was the backlot as young actors and experienced comics took turns posing for pictures with comedy veteran Paul Mooney. Taylor, who is from Chicago but now calls Sacramento home, said he likes to shoot close to home and build the Sacramento film scene.

“While I’m independent and I can choose where to make it, I choose to do it where I can sleep in my own bed at night,” said Taylor, whose previous credits include “Chain Letter” and “Supremacy” with Danny Glover set to be released Jan. 30. “Meet the Blacks” stars comedian Mike Epps, but also features comedians Lil Duval, former boxer Mike Tyson, Mooney and others.

Films set in Northern California have been relatively rare in recent years in part because California’s film tax incentives were no longer competitive with other markets that give major rebates for movies being shot there, said Kathleen Dodge, executive director of the El Dorado/Lake Tahoe film and media office.

Read the whole story

By Michael B. Marois, Bloomberg

California farmers who grow a third of the world’s processing tomatoes, the kind used for pasta sauce and soups, nurtured a record crop this year even as the state’s drought damped production of other vegetables.

An estimated 14 million tons of processing tomatoes were harvested in California this year, the most ever and up 16 percent from last year, according to the California Tomato Growers Association, a trade group for the $1 billion-a-year industry. Canneries such as Campbell Soup Co. paid $83 a ton, also the most ever.

“The price was at a point where guys felt they could take the water risk and put their limited water supplies on tomatoes instead of other crops,” said farmer Aaron Barcellos, whose family grows tomatoes and other crops on 7,000 acres about 110 miles  south of Sacramento. “Processors needed to pay a price that would get the acreage in the ground.”

With 82 percent of California suffering from extreme drought after three years with record low rain and snow, the water distribution system is rationing supplies to the nation’s most productive agricultural region. Growers have been forced to drill wells, sapping already depleted groundwater. The dry spell is likely to boost food prices nationwide as farmers leave some land unplanted because they can’t irrigate, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department.

Read the whole story

There will be a South Lake Tahoe recreation complex renovation workshop Nov. 18 at the center.

The Parks Trails and Recreation Master Plan has identified this site for future renovation. The community is being asked to share ideas.

The complex is located at 1180 Rufus Allen Blvd.

The workshop starts at 7pm.

Two North Shore-Truckee area school bonds on the Nov. 4 ballot had different outcomes.

Voters in the Tahoe-Truckee Unified School District said no to a $114 million school bond. Measure U  would have raised money to improve facilities on the district.

A 55 percent yes vote was needed for approval. The measure received 52.27 percent favorable votes.

Measure E was a $62 million bond that would improve lake area schools. Voters in Placer and El Dorado counties said yes to it with a 58.62 percent approving it.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

Proper defensible space spared this house in the Angora burn area. Photo/Lake Valley Fire

By Kathryn Reed

Lake Valley Fire Protection District’s desire to tax property owners for fire prevention went up in flames Nov. 4.

Voters overwhelming said no. Nearly twice as many people voted no (66.48 percent, 1,323 votes) compared to those who said yes (33.52 percent, 667 votes.)

“Basically people don’t want a tax increase,” Dave Huber, chair of Lake Valley’s board of directors, told Lake Tahoe News. “We are going to regroup and see where we go from here.”

The next board meeting is Nov. 13.

Measure H would have replaced Measure M with a $120 fee tied to the consumer price index. Projections were that it would bring in $1 million a year. It would not sunset.

Measure M, which has existed since 1986, remains in effect. Property owners pay $20 year, it is not tied to the CPI, and it has no expiration date. The $150,000 raised each year goes to the general fund.

While the bulk of Measure H would have gone to fuels reduction projects, allocations also called for upgrades to facilities and equipment.

“The district still has a difficult future ahead of it financially,” fire Lt. Martin Goldberg told Lake Tahoe News.

He believes the measure didn’t pass because of the CPI, no expiration date and people paying the CalFire tax that they see no benefit from.

Goldberg believes residents care about wildland fire prevention, but they don’t want to pay for it.

Private property owners are not doing their part to be fire safe, he said.

“You are only as safe as your closest neighbor. If there is fuel to burn on their property, then yours is likely to catch fire as well,” Goldberg said.

But residents have said they don’t want to pay for their neighbors’, that it should be that person’s burden and should not be shared.

California has defensible space laws on the books that allow local fire departments to take punitive action against property owners who aren’t in compliance. Until now, Lake Valley has gone the passive route – namely through education. It would be up to the board if fines were to ever be issued.

Also, likely to go by the wayside is the chipping program. People could limb trees and take out small ones, then have the matter chipped. That could then be used as mulch.

The fire district is applying for a grant from CalFire that could extend the chipping program another year. The $10 million the state is offering is from the fee that has been collected. Lake Valley is in the running for $25,000.

A yearlong investigation culminated in the arrest of Reno resident Ricardo Antonio Vasquez on sex crime charges.

Ricardo Vasquez

In November 2013, the Truckee Police Department conducted a joint investigation with Placer County Sheriff’s Office regarding a case involving an adult male engaged in lewd and lascivious acts with a minor.

Officers attempted to locate the 28-year-old Vasquez only to discover he had fled the United States to El Salvador. In September, officers learned Vaszquez was back in Reno. In October,  a warrant for Vasquez was issued with a bail set of $100,000.

Vasquez is being held at the Washoe County Sheriff Correctional Facility awaiting extradition to California.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

Learn about what the healthcare law means for you, your family and your small business.

The Nov. 20 meeting will include a detailed look at the state and federal rules and an overview of the new Covered California coverage options.

Register or call 775.588.1728.

The free talk is from 4-5:30pm in the board room at Lake Tahoe Community College.