Coming on the heels of losing the El Dorado County recorder-clerk race in June, political consultant Dan Dellinger has now lost his case in the Third District Court of Appeal.

The jurists upheld a 2016 ruling by the Sacramento County Superior Court that awarded more than $30,000 in attorney’s fees to El Dorado County in the matter of Dellinger v. Joe Harn, El Dorado County and the Pioneer Fire Protection District.

Dellinger’s 2015 superior court lawsuit alleged that county Auditor-Controller Harn, the county and the fire district were guilty of breach of contract, bad faith prosecution, violating Dellinger’s civil rights and other transgressions. The court threw out Dellinger’s lawsuit in February 2016 and, four months later, ordered him to pay the county’s attorney’s fees. Later that year, he appealed the order. His appeal was rejected in June.

“On every level, Dellinger’s lawsuit was ridiculous,” Harn told Lake Tahoe News. “I did not have a contract with him, so how could I commit breach of contract? I never sued or prosecuted him, so how could I be guilty of bad faith prosecution?

“Most disturbing to me is that Dellinger spent $27,000 of his own money on his recent political campaign. He could have paid the money he owes to the taxpayers of El Dorado County, but he chose to spend money on himself for political gain, and he failed.”

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

·      Incline Village Parks & Recreation Department will be hosting an interactive meeting, titled Beaches 101, to allow members of the public to learn more about the ordinance that governs the operations of the beaches, IVGID beaches history and operations. It will be July 11, 6-8pm at the Chateau, 955 Fairway Blvd., Incline Village.

·      Liberty Utilities gave scholarships to David Holmes of South Tahoe High, Ryland Lubin of North Tahoe High, Megan Burrill of Truckee High, and Justin Pease of Lake Tahoe Community College.

·      South Lake Tahoe Mayor Wendy David’s next “conversation” will be July 18, 9am at the senior center with representatives from both chambers of commerce.

·      Island Reggae Explosion featuring Katchafire (New Zealand), E.N. Young, Sons of Zion and DJ Treez will be at Blu Nightclub July 13 in Stateline. Advance tickets are $20. Doors open at 9pm.

·      Here are the El Dorado-Tahoe and Sierraroadwork schedules for next week from Caltrans.

The League to Save Lake Tahoe is teaming with Chariot to launch microtransit in South Tahoe’s most traffic-congested tourist area. The pilot program starts July 9.

Chariot will operate frequent shuttles along a route connecting the Stateline casino corridor to Lakeview Commons in South Lake Tahoe. Each air-conditioned shuttle seats 14.

To ride the microtransit shuttles, people can download the app. Riders book a seat using the app and then show their mobile device to the driver.

From its July 9-16, all rides will be completely free. For the remainder of the 90-day program, shuttle seats will cost $3 per trip.

In addition to central destinations in the busiest tourist hubs, stops on the route were chosen to provide links to local bike trails and the Tahoe Transportation District’s public transit routes. South Tahoe’s bike share service—which the League partnered with LimeBike to launch in 2017—will enable Chariot riders to extend their trip onto the system’s dockless rental bicycles and electric scooters.

The League and Chariot will also be partnering with the Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority during the American Century Championship.

The League is collaborating with local business leaders to ensure microtransit succeeds, with significant support from the Beach Retreat & Lodge and Round Hill Pines Resort. Local planners with the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency and the city of South Lake Tahoe have contributed their expertise to ensure that the transit routes are well-planned. Under the terms of the pilot, Chariot will also collect data from its vehicles’ on-board GPS systems and share it with the League, Tahoe’s local jurisdictions, TRPA and the Tahoe Transportation District. 

The Nevada Division of Environmental Protection’s Bureau of Water Quality Planning has approximately $1 million in federal funding available to provide grant assistance for projects that prevent or control nonpoint source water pollution, the leading cause of water quality impairment in Nevada. 

Nonpoint source water pollution occurs when rain, snowmelt and irrigation water flows over developed or disturbed land, carrying with it contaminants including oil, sediment, pesticides, bacteria and nutrients. This contaminated water makes its way into Nevada’s waterways either directly or through storm drains.

All proposals must follow the guidelines on the application that is online. State, local and tribal governments, nonprofit organizations and educational institutions are eligible to apply. A non-federal match (cash and/or in-kind) of at least 50 percent of the total project cost is required.

Proposals will be accepted between July 9 and Aug. 24, 2018.            

To the community,

Hosting their first Adopt A Day of Nourishment sponsorship, Lake Tahoe Hard Rock sponsored B&B’s Monday meal on June 25.  

It was really great having the newest hotel and casino on Tahoe’s South Shore hosting a community dinner for the needy in the community. Hard Rock’s partnering with B&B demonstrates their commitment to being involved with the community and being a part of the solution to improving the quality of life for our community’s at risk population.

“Bread & Broth demonstrates Hard Rock’s motto of ‘love all, serve all’ through the great service it does for the local South Shore community,” commented Brandie Warr, Hard Rock’s director of resort marketing. “Hard Rock Hotel & Casino was proud to serve alongside B&B’s many volunteers during on Monday meal adopt a day.”  

Joining Brandie from Hard Rock were fellow team members Susan McDonough, Cheryle Scarborough, Kimberly Templeton and Beatrice Vattima. 

Thanks to their $300 donation, Hard Rock and its congenial and enthusiastic crew served 106 dinner guests a hot, nutritious meal of hearty meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and a veggie medley. Sponsoring a dinner not only helps alleviate hunger, it provides a sense comfort and caring, bringing hope to the most vulnerable. Bread & Broth thanks Hard Rock Hotel & Casino and looks forward to their continued support of our program’s goal of easing hunger in our community.

Carol Gerard, Bread & Broth

Motorists should anticipate overnight lane closures on Highway 28 from July 15 through July 19 as roadway shoulders and drainage systems are cleaned.

Single lane closures and travel delays of up to 30 minutes should be anticipated on are expected on those dated from between 6pm and 4:30am daily. The mobile road improvement operation is scheduled to begin in the Crystal Bay area on July 15, and move eastward over the following nights.

Roadside drainage, shoulders and slopes will be cleared of debris for a safer roadway and improved area water quality.

By Kathryn Reed

Going to more than a dozen national parks in less than a week would normally be an exhausting undertaking. Not how I did it this summer.

“Permanent Vacation, Volume 2” (Bona Fide Books, 2018) is a compilation of 18 essays written by people who have lived or worked in a national park.

This version comes seven years after the first volume was released. In that book the essays were from West Coast parks.

The latest book is much broader, covering parks from Hawaii to Florida and points in between.

This is the first book released by the Meyers-based publishing house under current owner Maeko Bradshaw. The familiarity of format and style makes it read like a sequel under the same leadership.

Of the 18, one writer is from South Lake Tahoe (Joseph Flower) and another from Truckee (Joseph Flannery). Combined, all of their stories paint a picture of the National Parks that the average visitor is never going to experience. Some tales are about how the experience changed the worker/writer.

An overriding theme in this volume seemed to be the solitude of the work, the remoteness of the location. This is hard to imagine for someone living in California near one of the busiest parks – Yosemite.

Some of the locales written about were places I hadn’t heard of – like Isle Royale, Apostle Islands and Kenai Fjords. I enjoyed getting a glimpse into these areas, and learning something new about places I’ve been – like Sequoia and Kings Canyon, Grand Canyon and Everglades.

As with any collection of essays, some are more interesting than others. Fortunately, most are sure to captivate you. This is definitely a book you will want to put on your summer reading list.

—–

Note:

·      It may be purchased online through Bona Fide Books for $15.

By Joe Mathews

If you love California and don’t know where to go for summer vacation, here’s a suggestion: Go north!

Start in Redding. Sure, the city of 92,000 at the northern end of the Sacramento Valley might not be on your list of preferred destinations, but its region, the North State, is crucial to understanding California.

Joe Mathews

And as a vacation spot, it has practical advantages—cheaper and less crowded than the coast, and cooler than the deserts.

Is there really anything to do in Redding? You bet. For starters, you can visit California’s greatest 21st-century structure, the Sundial Bridge.

Sure, the Golden Gate Bridge is more beautiful, but the Sundial, which opened in 2004, combines a stunning look with technological magic.  Part of the 710-foot-long span’s appeal lies in the “goose-in-flight” design by the world’s leading architect of bridges, the Spaniard Santiago Calatrava. The glass-decked bridge has a 217-foot-tall pylon that, via cables, holds up the structure while also casting a shadow that make it a sundial.

Another dimension of its power comes from its setting: It spans California’s grandest and most important river, the Sacramento, at a spot 300 miles upriver from where its waters reach San Pablo Bay. Tight-fisted locals still grumble over the $24 million price tag. But the span is already an icon, connecting Redding’s robust network of trails and providing another amenity for Turtle Bay, Redding’s 300-acre, education-oriented park.

The bridge has another virtue: proximity, via a short drive or longer bike ride along the Sacramento River Trail, to California’s most beautiful waterwork.

The Shasta Dam makes news for the controversy over whether to raise it to store even more water in California’s largest reservoir. But the dam itself is also a place of unsurpassed beauty, especially at sunset.  People gather on top of the dam to walk, bike, or just admire the magisterial view of the valley.

One recent evening, I was greeted by the graduating class of U-Prep, or University Preparatory School, a top Redding charter school. They were flirting, reminiscing, and saying their goodbyes before beginning their adult lives. The dam, holding the water upon which the state relies, feels like a door, the front gate where California really begins.

Since Redding is very hot in summer, it’s best to head from the dam into the mountains (provided there are no fires in your path) and visit the state’s most mystical peak, Mount Shasta. This 14,180-foot volcano is a true California emblem—volatile, stunning, rising so dramatically that it doesn’t quite seem to fit the landscape, or the earth.

“When I first caught sight of it (Mount Shasta) over the braided folds of the Sacramento Valley,” John Muir famously wrote in 1874, “I was fifty miles away and afoot, alone and weary. Yet all my blood turned to wine, and I have not been weary since.”

While it’s possible to put crampons on your hiking boots to visit Shasta’s glaciers or—if you have money —take a helicopter flight around it, I prefer to commune with the mountain from Lake Siskiyou. You can even rent chalets there from the Mount Shasta Resort, a decidedly unpretentious place. Its developer, John Fryer, is also an inventor. He introduced me to a new alternative form of golf he dreamed up—Whing Golf, where instead of having to use a set of golf clubs, you can throw all your shots using a patented club, inspired by a jai-alai cesta. A round of Whing Golf at the resort is $16, cart included.

“The power of the mountain is you can see it from everywhere,” Fryer told me as we admired Mt. Shasta on the course. “It’s spiritual.”

From there, head north into Yreka, population 7,600, the unofficial capital of the quixotic decades-long effort to turn this part of California into its own state, to be called Jefferson.

In Yreka’s downtown, you’ll understand the nod to separation. State cars and trucks are common here. Many people I met work for state agencies, and thus know better than city slickers our state government’s many failings. Familiarity breeds contempt.

But the region is effectively subsidized by the rest of the state, so breaking away would be fiscally disastrous.

Still, if you folks in the North State really want to secede, I’m OK with it, on three conditions. First, that you don’t take all our water with you. Second, that you agree to link your statehood bid with Puerto Rico’s own campaign for statehood, to give the disaster-decimated island more power and to preserve political balance (given Jefferson’s Republican proclivities and the island’s Democratic nature).

Third, and most important, that you don’t put up any barriers to prevent Californians from visiting as often as we like.

Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square.

By John Affleck, The Conversation

Widespread, legalized sports gambling could change the way you watch your favorite sport.

It could also soon change how the media cover sports.

Since the Supreme Court in May gave states the option to allow sports betting, it seemed like a vast, untapped well of revenue had been opened. Until then, illegal sports wagering had been an industry worth about $150 billion a year.

Since the May ruling, Delaware and New Jersey have each implemented sports gambling, with Rhode Island, West Virginia and Mississippi not far behind. All of these states will be able to tax betting. Their casinos will be able to open sports books to lure customers. And leagues are lobbying for a cut of each wager, though that hasn’t yet come to pass.

Lost in all this has been the question of how the sports media will respond.

When I was a reporter and editor for the Associated Press, I saw first-hand how traditional media outlets were slow to adapt to the internet, much to their detriment. Now, with sports gambling, editors and reporters will ideally adjust appropriately, attracting more readers and subscribers by providing information that’s useful to bettors. A potentially disastrous outcome would be if already cash-strapped media outlets are reluctant to change, and are slow to meet readers’ needs.

A new lens of analysis

“To not acknowledge sports betting would be to do a disservice to your audience,” Barry Bedlan, director of sports products for the AP said in an interview for this piece.

Bedlan had spoken hours earlier at a panel on sports betting at the annual convention of the Associated Press Sports Editors, the body of the nation’s print and digital sports editors.

Bedlan predicted that in a few years major papers and websites in states with legalized betting will have a position in the sports department in which a reporter writes exclusively from a bettor’s perspective. Reporters on a team’s beat, meanwhile, may start to inject gambling into routine coverage – noting the impact of a star player’s injury on the betting line, for instance, or saying whether a winning team covered the point spread in a game recap.

The Associated Press highly values its credibility and strict adherence to journalistic ethics. The news agency has long provided point spreads – the number of points teams are expected to win or lose by – to its clients. But expect its offerings to expand.

“Straight predictions and picks should gain renewed importance – Team A will beat Team B, and here, quickly, is why, according to our experts,” Jeff Rosen, assistant managing editor for sports of the Kansas City Star, wrote to me in an email.

Even weather reports could become more important: For example, if snow is expected on a Sunday in Philadelphia during an Eagles home game, it will likely reduce the points that are scored. This bit of information would certainly interest gamblers wagering on the over/under, a bet on the total points scored in a game.

How much of an appetite is out there?

The big question many in sports media face now is how deeply – and how soon – to cover betting.

Some of that, of course, depends on whether sports betting is legal in the state where the outlet is located. But out there for all to see is the success of the Vegas Stats & Information Network, a multiplatform gambling news outlet that launched in 2017 and enticed renowned broadcaster Brent Musberger away from ESPN to be its face.

It has a Sirius channel, podcasts, live streams and a growing following that some media executives have surely noticed.

That doesn’t mean everyone is pouring their resources into sports gambling. Some are taking a wait-and-see approach.

Kevin Manahan, sports director at NJ Advance Media, told me that a key question is whether bettors who have been making illegal bets will want more information now that the activity has been legalized, or whether they’ve already been getting what they need.

“We just don’t know what the audience is going to be,” Manahan said. NJ.com closely tracks what works with readers, so if there’s an appetite for gambling analysis, it will respond appropriately.

Bill King, who covers the gambling issue for the Sports Business Journal, agrees that the big question is how much the gambling market will grow.

“What we’re really talking about is taking an illegal business and making it legal,” he said.

Does that mean new people will bet? There could be a huge swath of people who think it would be fun to lay down a $10 sports bet on a weekend, but had been turned off by the sketchiness of signing up for an illegal offshore account.

King also notes that the media in regions where betting has been legalized could benefit from advertising buys from bookmakers. Opening a betting account is more complicated than, say, signing up for a social media account. Many people will likely only have one or two betting accounts, which could lead to intense competition among bookmakers.

The Las Vegas model portends a new era

Bill Bradley, an editor at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, believes sports gambling can be a big draw for newspapers and their websites.

When he became assistant managing editor for sports in 2015, Bradley took a reporter who was covering sports betting part time and made that his full-time job.

The results were dramatic. The betting stories and videos were consistently among the sports section’s top draws, and betting now has its own section on the paper’s website. Even simple stories, like Sunday’s NFL lines and injury reports, have become more popular when reported and analyzed with the bettor’s perspective in mind.

“Basically, it’s found money,” Bradley said.

In fact, the work of the reporter on the betting beat was so well-received that he wound up getting hired away – by the Vegas Sports Information Network.

Certainly, in terms of journalistic ethics, offering reporting and analysis for betting demands some new rules in the newsroom, editors said. For reporters, that includes not betting on the team you cover or even the sport you cover.

And Mark Conrad, an associate professor at Fordham University and author of the popular textbook “The Business of Sports: Off the Field, in the Office, on the News,” cautioned that, amid the novelty of legal sports betting, the media also need to cover issues such as gambling addiction.

But a cultural change is afoot.

Bradley and Bedlan noted that many editors at the APSE meeting had, in the past, never bothered to learn even basic sports gambling terms such as “parlay” or “bad beat” because betting was illegal and perhaps not true to the spirit of sports.

Now they’re studying up.

Sports fans might want to do the same.

John Affleck is Knight chair in sports journalism and society, Pennsylvania State University.

Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care will be having a meet and greet on July 12 for the community to find out about and see the progress being made on the new rehab center.

The event will be at the site of the new facility at 1551 Al Tahoe Blvd. It is between Pioneer Village and Pioneer Trail.

It will be from 4-7pm. 

LTWC volunteers and board members will be on hand to talk about each cage.