By James Rufus Koren, Los Angeles Times

California’s largest public pension fund made a return of less than 1 percent in its most recent fiscal year, the fund’s worst performance since 2009.

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System said Monday that its rate of return for the year ended June 30 was just 0.61 percent. What’s more, Ted Eliopoulos, the pension fund’s chief investment officer, said the poor year has pushed CalPERS’ long-term returns below expected levels.

CalPERS assumes that, in the long-term, it will earn investment returns averaging 7.5 percent a year. If the fund fails to meet that goal, the state’s taxpayers could be forced to make up any shortfall in pension funding.

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Lake Valley Fire Protection District is offering free wood chipping to assist homeowners with their efforts to reduce flammable vegetation and create defensible space.

This service is offered to resident serviced by Lake Valley and people living at Fallen Leaf Lake.

LVFPD is continuing to work with South Tahoe Refuse to offer two methods of slash disposal. The chipping program is no longer setting restrictions on pile sizes, however slash that can be easily wrapped in twine should be disposed of on regular trash days.

When the pile is ready, call 530.577.2447. Chipping is scheduled by zones, so it may take several weeks.

·       Tahoe Youth & Family Services Color Blast Run is Aug. 15 in Gardnerville. For more info, go online.

·       2003 South Tahoe High grad Tiffany “TJ” Carter has released an album called “Bold and Beautiful”.

·       Heather LeMaster, the 2013 women’s world long drive champion, smashed a 336-yards drive to establish a women’s world record at elevation on July 19 as part of the American Century Championship celebrity golf tournament at Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course.

·       The Douglas County Public Library will present stories at Mormon Station State Historic Park in Genoa on July 28 at 10:30am for children of all ages.

·       The South Lake Tahoe Library will host Tony Borders Magical Ventriloquist on July 22. The free outdoor show starts at 2pm at 1000 Rufus Allen Blvd.

To the community,

Tahoe Coalition for the Homeless would like to thank the many volunteers who participated in our litter pick up day around the 981 Silver Dollar neighborhood on July 9. We also appreciate Clean Tahoe for contributing supplies.

Participants included Chara Fugii, Norine Hegy, Jenn Lay and Jill Parmele. We appreciate their help in being good neighbors and keeping the area free of trash.

Tahoe Coalition for the Homeless is seeking space for the 2016-17 winter season.  Minimum requirements include 2,000-square-feet of space, restrooms, parking, and storage areas.  We are also looking for businesses to run supply drives in the fall and for volunteers for the 2016-17 winter season.  We can be contacted at tahoewarmroom@gmail.com or 775.573.0822.

Sincerely,

Marissa R. Muscat, executive director

By Marc Benjamin, Fresno Bee

Trees are dying in the Sierra at modern-day unprecedented rates, posing elevated fire danger and creating health, water and air quality concerns, but a possible solution to rid the forest of dead and dying trees is getting short shrift, officials say.

California’s biomass industry is set up regionally to turn agricultural waste into electricity while eliminating open burning. But many local biomass plants have closed or are closing soon because it costs less to produce electricity with solar and wind, which get subsidies that are not available to biomass.

There are plans to build smaller biomass plants in the Sierra to address tree mortality, but critics say they won’t accommodate dead tree disposal needs.

Environmentalists say biomass plants pollute the air.

Electricity generated by biomass is costlier than other options such as solar and wind, a concern to state and public utilities commission officials who are responsible to ratepayers, said Julee Malinowski Ball, executive director of the California Biomass Energy Alliance.

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By Mark Robison, Reno Gazette-Journal

Nevada’s capital is Las Vegas?

That’s what Nevada GOP chairman Michael McDonald said during today’s roll call at the Republican National Convention where each state tells how many delegates it gives to the candidates.

He probably meant to say “the entertainment capital Las Vegas.” Instead, he said, “From the great shores of Lake Tahoe to the most entertaining capital city, Las Vegas, Nevada, this time what’s said in Las Vegas will not stay in Las Vegas.”

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By Kathryn Reed

Preserving the new field is more important to South Lake Tahoe officials than a long-term contract with the promoter of SnowGlobe.

The five City Council members agreed to extend the three-day music festival contract through 2018. The prior deal went through this year. (The event is Dec. 29-31.) The promoter wanted a 10-year deal.

SnowGlobe promoter Chad Donnelly did not get everything he wanted from South Lake Tahoe. Photo/LTN

The electeds are worried what the impact will be of 15,000 people on the field for three consecutive days. The city is in the process of constructing a new ball field near the community field off Al Tahoe Boulevard. Grass will be planted next spring. So, for this year all that will be impacted is dirt.

Even though there has always been a clause in the contract about the need for Chad Donnelly – the promoter of SnowGlobe – to repair any damage, in the past the festival has been on artificial turf.

Donnelly also wanted the council to pony up more money to keep the festival in town. Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority already gives $50,000 annually to SnowGlobe.

Donnelly spewed numbers at the council without any supporting evidence. He said it costs upward of $4 million to stage the event, that gross revenues from ticket sales is about $3.5 million, that he has invested at least $14 million in the last four years, and the economic impact to the South Shore has been between $17 million and $22 million.

While he said he plans to have an independent economic analysis done, no time line was presented to do so.

He wanted more money from the city – cash – and for the city to help more with the cost of transportation and garbage pick up. On a 3-2 vote (Councilmembers JoAnn Conner and Hal Cole were in the minority), the council agreed to give Donnelly $30,000 in cash in 2017, $35,000 in 2018 and to split the garbage-transportation expenses as long as the city does not spend more than $50,000 total.

Donnelly said he will be back at a future date to discuss bringing more events to the ball field, saying they might not all be music.

By Kathryn Reed

The feds, state, a sovereign nation and a private business will meet again today in an attempt to find a resolution that would allow the Meeks Bay Marina to reopen.

It has been closed all season – and might not open in 2017 – because of stormwater violations.

Lahontan Regional Water Control Board in 2014 and 2015 issued citations to the U.S. Forest Service – the landowner; to the Washoe Tribe – which has a 20-year contract that expires in three years to run all of the operations; and to Action Water Sports owner Bob Hassett, as marina operator.

The four entities are engaged in confidential settlement negotiations that could take the rest of the year to resolve. Talks started about six weeks ago.

Eric Taxer, an engineer with the water board who did the inspections, said two years ago the parking lot was unpaved and remained so last year when he revisited the West Shore property. The feds and tribe knew long before Taxer showed up that a dirt lot was a major no-no.

“The response to the inspection and notice of violation was they did install some BMPs to temporarily control erosion. And they were going to submit a plan on how to address the entire site. That was going to be a multiyear plan,” Taxer told Lake Tahoe News.

But that plan never came to fruition.

Meeks Bay has 120 slips, but no one can launch this season. Photo/LTN file

One of the fixes was to essentially dig a trench across the boat ramp. While it helps with BMPs, it makes it difficult for a boat to be launched.

“Around Memorial Day we came to the conclusion between the tribe and ourselves that there weren’t any quick fixes economically to keep us out of jeopardy with Lahontan,” Mike LeFevre, planning staff officer with Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, told Lake Tahoe News. “We didn’t want to invest a lot of money and have it fail, so the tribe with Forest Service support decided to close the resort this season.”

The lodging and dining facilities at Meeks Bay are open; only the marina is off-limits.

No one from the tribe responded to inquiries from Lake Tahoe News.

“We certainly don’t believe BMPs in the parking lot are our responsibility,” Hassett told Lake Tahoe News.

Even so, his company as operator of the marina has been cited by Lahontan.

Lahontan spent 2014 and 2015 inspecting all of the marinas on the California side of the basin. (As a California agency it has no jurisdiction in Nevada.) This was in preparation for the marina permit that was issued in June, which brought all of the operators onto the same level playing field. The annual permit fee charged by Lahontan is $1,282 per marina. Each marina has a Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plan.

The goal is to keep as much sediment as possible from reaching Lake Tahoe in order to preserve the clarity of the water. Various best management practices can help accomplish this goal. Marina operators are also supposed to test the water multiple times each year and keep detailed records.

Lahontan said it found nitrogen, phosphorus, turbidity and iron at levels higher in the lake than are allowed per the permit regulations. Meeks Bay was failing on multiple levels, according to Lahontan.

Taxer stressed that the state agency did not want to shut down the business, but had the main objective of keeping pollutants from the lake.

“It’s not a highly polluted situation, but there is runoff … clarity issues,” LeFevre with the Forest Service said. He said Highway 89 and Caltrans’ lack of treatment for water on its road complicates matters at the resort.

The goal of the negotiations is to determine what course of action will be taken to remedy the violations, determine who is responsible for the work and what penalties might be assessed to whom. The water board has the authority to impose an administrative civil liability of up to $10,000 for each day in which each violation of the Marina General Permit occurs.

Depending when and what the resolution is will dictate if the marina opens next summer.

By Marjorie “Slim” Woodruff, High Country News

In 1972, Grand Canyon National Park outlawed campfires in the backcountry. Backpackers like me considered this an outrage. After all, the only people who carried those fancy little stoves back then were people incapable of building a fire. I bring this up because we are living through another explosive fire season in the West.

Of course, popular campsites back then looked a lot like parking lots. No downed wood, no dead (or live) grasses, no bushes, no bark on the trees as far up as you could reach. When a dozen people a night are building campfires, anything burnable vanishes pretty quickly.

Note: Fires denude the camping area.

I had a stove. I remember setting up my tiny SVEA, putting the pot on to boil, and turning to organize my sleeping place, because when cooking on a wood fire, it takes forever for the pot to boil.

But my pot boileth over, more quickly than I expected.

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 By Kathryn Reed

South Lake Tahoe City Council members on Tuesday made it official – there will be two tax issues and a question about the loop road on the Nov. 8 ballot.

Money collected from raising the hotel tax by 2 percentage points would be dedicated toward recreation upgrades.

The one-quarter sales tax hike would go to the General Fund. However, a secondary advisory question gives voters the opportunity to state their preference for where the money should go – to roads, housing or city facilities.

Councilwoman JoAnn Conner unsuccessfully lobbied for the choices to have a little more substance to them so voters would have a better understanding of what their choices mean. Councilman Austin Sass said the information in the voter pamphlet could provide the detail.

No matter what the voters pick, the council can do what it wants.

The other matter decided July 19 was to put the ballot measure regarding the loop road on the ballot. It was either that or adopt the petitioners’ language as an ordinance. It was too late in the process to conduct a feasibility study; the third option per state law.

While some people at the meeting wanted to talk about the lawsuit filed last week by local resident Jason Collin to stop the loop road ballot measure, they were shutdown because it was not on the agenda and therefore could not legally be discussed.

Loop road opponents want voters to decide whether the council should be able to take action on the project without constituents first voting on a preferred alignment. Collin believes the measure is not valid as written and that it prevents the council from being able to do its job.

“I think the court will agree that the loop road ballot initiative should be stopped in its tracks because it is unconstitutionally vague, it potentially strips the council of its legal authority, and if allowed to stand, it steals attention, time and money away from the critical issues confronting our community,” Collin told Lake Tahoe News. “For the sake of the future of our community, I hope the court will act swiftly to eliminate this calculated move to deceive the voters. I felt compelled to step forward and challenge what I believe is an intentionally misleading and fundamentally flawed political effort that is trying to trick voters into believing something that simply isn’t true.”

Collin owns rental property on Pioneer Trail at Shepherds Drive. He said the only impact the loop road might bring to his holdings is the potential for more traffic.

“I have no financial interest in the outcome of this suit,” Collin told LTN.