By Sean Whaley, Las Vegas Review-Journal

CARSON CITY — A state panel last week approved a $300,000 settlement with an insurance provider that had not paid a claim on behalf of Nevada to settle allegations of patient dumping with the city of San Francisco.

The settlement with the Insurance Company of the State of Pennsylvania, an American International Group subsidiary, was approved by the Nevada Board of Examiners. The company admitted no wrongdoing.

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Sierra Nevada College 2012 grad Jason Paladino has been named alumni of the year for 2016, while trustee Ben Solomon received the Lane Murray Distinguished Alumni Award.

Paladino is a Truckee native and reporter at UC Berkley’s Investigative Reporting Program at the Graduate School of Journalism. This year he earned the Society of Professional Journalists – NorCal 2016 James Madison Freedom of Information Student Award for his investigation into the Navy’s Sea Dragon program. Paladino was also a Livingston Award Finalist and Sigma Delta Chi Awards winner for his work on the project.

Paladino’s investigative work, which he began as a Berkeley graduate student, resulted in an NBC Nightly News story entitled “Sea Dragon Down, The Human Cost of the Navy’s Most Crash-prone Chopper.” Beginning with Navy data, Paladino found that the Navy used the Cold War-era Sea Dragon helicopter for years without proper maintenance and access to replacement parts. Records showed the Sea Dragon was frequently involved in crashes and fires, costing sailors their lives.

While at SNC he was the news editor and then managing editor for the Eagle’s Eye, the campus newspaper.

Solomon’s history with SNC goes back to its foundation in 1969, when he started as a volunteer professor. He served as the CEO of the college for 25 years, including administrative director (1970-80), president (1980-93 and 2003-05), and chancellor (1993-94). During his tenure, SNC grew from 23 full-time students and three converted buildings to several hundred students and an energy-efficient campus with five buildings.

By Peter Hecht, Sacramento Bee

The evening’s first customer emerged sleepy-eyed from the doorway of his apartment near Sacramento State for his marijuana concentrates: 3 grams each of strawberry, banana and pear flavors. He had few words for the delivery driver who handed him a white bag containing the order. Their transaction lasted mere seconds.

The pot-delivery business is booming in California. Using cars instead of dispensary counters, small marijuana startups have proliferated in recent years, serving a diverse customer base that includes homebound medical patients as well as people in communities where dispensaries are banned or few in number.

The estimated hundreds of mobile services for medical marijuana are operating in a largely unregulated sector of the cannabis economy, and state lawmakers and officials in cities such as Sacramento are scrambling to draft rules for the businesses or seeking ways to close them down.

Two leading online pot-consumer sites, Weed Maps and Wheres Weed?, each list 110 marijuana delivery services in Sacramento and nearby communities, including in Yolo, El Dorado and Placer counties.

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·       Find out more about the South Lake Tahoe City Council candidates via these video interviews put together by TRYP.

·       The deadline to register to vote for the Nov. 8 election is Oct. 18 in Nevada and Oct. 24 in California.  (deadline October 24) NV:  (deadline October 18)

·       On Nov. 3-5 the Carson Mall (1313 South Carson St., Carson City) will be hosting the inaugural Fine Arts Faire, which will include the work of more than 25 artists primarily from Northern Nevada, but as far away as Kalispell, Mont.

·       The loop road environmental documents could be released later this month.

·       Here are the El Dorado-Tahoe and Sierra roadwork schedules for the week from Caltrans.

The pilot of a Cessna flying from Idaho to Sacramento has not been heard from since Saturday.

“The last known position of the aircraft is in a rugged area of the Sierra Nevada mountains southwest of Lake Tahoe,” El Dorado County sheriff’s Sgt. Tasha Thompson said in a press release. “Due to inclement weather ground and aircraft searches were called off.”

Crews hope to resume the search Oct. 17.

The pilot is the only person on board, according to Thompson.

The Sierra and much of California has been hit with nasty weather for several days, the remnants of Typhoon Songda. Snow was falling on the passes Sunday, with rain a constant at lake level. The wind has been ferocious.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

This is one of several hazardous trees in the Emerald Fire burn area. Photo/CalFire

Most evacuation orders in the Emerald Fire have been lifted.

Cascade Properties and Cascade Lake are open only to residents.

The 176-acre fire that started in the predawn hours of Oct. 14 on the South Shore remains at 90 percent contained on Sunday afternoon.

Liberty Utilities has restored power to Cascade Properties, Cascade Lake, Camp Shelly, Camp Concord, Cathedral side of Fallen Leaf Lake, and Taylor Creek Visitors Center.

Highway 89 is still closed around Emerald Bay as crews clear the roadway of hazardous trees.

The National Weather Service in Reno had also issued a flash flood warning this afternoon for the burn area, as it has been raining steadily all day.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report 

By Lizzy Ratner, The Nation

This Monday afternoon, as the sun hits its peak over Mandan, N.D., the award-winning journalist, and host of Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman will walk into the Morton County–Mandan Combined Law Enforcement and Corrections Center and turn herself in to the local authorities. Her crime: good, unflinching journalism.

Goodman had the audacity to commit this journalism on Sept. 3, when she was in North Dakota covering what she calls “the standoff at Standing Rock”: the months-long protests by thousands of Native Americans against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Goodman’s arrival at the main protest site, the Sacred Stone Spirit Camp, was significant. At the time, not a single one of the major broadcast networks had sent a reporter to cover the Standing Rock mobilization; none had even bothered to mention it on the air.

Yet, on Sept. 8, Goodman received the news that Morton County, N.D., had issued a warrant for her arrest. The charge: riot, a misdemeanor punishable by jail time and a fine. (It should be noted that the original charge leveled against Goodman was not riot but criminal trespass, also a misdemeanor. However, just days days before Goodman was set to appear in court, the prosecutor, Ladd Erickson, switched up the charges because, he admitted in an email to Goodman’s lawyer, Tom Dickson, there were “legal issues with proving the notice of trespassing requirements in the statute.”)

By Kathryn Reed

Even though millions of federal dollars are headed to California to remove dead trees in national forests, if they had arrived sooner it would not have made a difference for the Emerald Fire.

None of the $11 million allocated last week by the U.S. Department of Agriculture is coming to Lake Tahoe. That isn’t to say forest projects aren’t happening, it’s just this latest round of funding bypassed the basin.

On the first day of the Emerald Fire by Cascade Lake it was Lake Valley Fire Chief Tim Alameda who told Lake Tahoe News one of the issues the firefighters were dealing with was all the dead trees. They just add fuel to the fire.

The new money will help complete 10 dead tree removal projects on 12,000 acres of California’s national forests. Eldorado, Sierra, Stanislaus and Sequoia national forests are the beneficiaries.

But clearly there is not enough money or manpower to take care of all the forests.

Flames from the Emerald Fire are visible on Oct. 14 as fire rips though 200 acres of dry forest. Photo/Taylor Flynn/Tahoe Mountain News

“More federal investment will be needed to remove the dead trees most likely to fuel destructive wildfires, but these funds are a down payment to begin to address this crisis and reduce the risk to public safety. Trees that pose a threat to people and property will be removed—there will not be clear cutting,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said in a statement.

She has been a strong advocate to get funding for these projects.

Fire season in the West is now a year-round phenomenon and not relegated to the dry months. This is obvious with the 200-plus acre fire on the South Shore that as of today is 90 percent contained, but also with the Little Valley Fire burning in Washoe Valley. Both started while it was raining. As of Oct.16 the amount of land burned in the Nevada fire is holding at 3,400 acres, with 20 percent containment. But 22 residences and 17 out buildings were destroyed.

The cause of these fires is still under investigation. While no lightning was reported when they both started about 1:30am Oct. 14, winds were howling. Power lines don’t need to drop to start a blaze; wires touching each other are enough to spark a fire.

As of the first week in September, in California there had been 5,354 fires this year that had burned 496,126 acres, resulting in seven fatalities and the destruction of more than 1,270 homes and other structures.

“Five years of punishing drought and resulting pest infestations have resulted in 66 million dead trees in California’s forests. According to firefighting officials, about 5.5 million of these trees pose a particularly high risk to people and property,” Feinstein said. “They are most likely to contribute to increasingly destructive and unpredictable fires near population centers and fall on roads, power lines and homes.”

By Kathryn Reed

STATELINE — Zephyr Cove Elementary School isn’t just focused on academics. Student behavior is also a large component of the school day.

“We don’t like calling it bullying. We call it anti-disrespect,” Principal Nancy Cauley told the Douglas County School Board last week.

Positive Behavioral Intervention Support started last year and is growing. General disrespect or defiance are the main problems. Cauley said typically it’s disobedience that is the main issue.

While those misbehaving get a lesson in how to behave better, the students who don’t need to be disciplined are rewarded on a monthly basis with things like extra recess.

For teachers, the program is about how they manage their classrooms.

Every day the Nevada K-6 school starts with a pledge that is delivered over the loud speaker: “Learn with a positive attitude, respect myself and others, always be safe.”

Sixth-grader Jan Harrison on Oct. 11 told the board, “In my opinion PBIS is a fabulous thing. It absolutely benefits everyone.”

Cauley in her presentation also talked about the ongoing place-based education which focuses on all things Lake Tahoe. This is an opportunity for youngsters to have hands-on experiences outdoors. The last session was Wonders of Water, which Lake Tahoe Unified students participated in, too.

In the classroom, the school is following the state’s Ready by Grade 3 initiative to have all students reading proficiently by third grade.

Letters just went out to parents of nine of the 33 kindergartners who are falling behind. A literacy team is in place to give specialized attention to these students. However, parent consent is required for the intervention.

By Lake Tahoe News

Four parcels in South Lake Tahoe owned by the California Tahoe Conservancy are about to be sold.

The asset lands policy for the state agency now is called land transfers. The change was made at the board’s meeting this fall.

Language was changed so the land doesn’t just go to anyone for anything – like large vacation home rentals as has been the case with some CTC land. Now the Conservancy can ensure the land is developed in a manner that is consistent with area plans, the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency’s Regional Plan, and fits into what the city and or counties are doing with regards to town centers.

The guidelines were clarified to include:

·      Government to government transfers, which are generally intended to facilitate more efficient management of public lands;

·      Transfers to non-government entities, which provide significant environmental and public benefits;

·      Sales of designated asset land to help revitalize town centers and to help achieve statewide, regional and area plan goals and other Conservancy objectives.

While 331 CTC parcels were identified in 2012 as sellable, the list was narrowed in 2014 to 17 sites near the Y in South Lake Tahoe, Meyers and Kings Beach.

The board in September approved the presale authorization for these South Lake Tahoe properties:

·      833 Emerald Bay Road

·      981 Tata Lane

·      1860 Lake Tahoe Blvd.

·      1029 Tata Lane.

Presale activities include appraisals; working with the city and Tahoe Regional Planning Agency on permits and CEQA reviews; surveys, environmental and land use analysis; and project management.

Sensitive areas of this parcels have not been mapped.

The hope is the sale of the above parcels would help South Lake Tahoe achieve its goals with the Tahoe Valley Area Plan in terms of the green belt, bikeway and water quality.