To the community,

Tahoe Douglas Rotary wishes to thank the Red Hut Cafe for once again hosting our popular Burger Night fundraiser. This year, with the generous support of the Ski Run Red Hut Café, Rick and Kelly Gardner as well as their friendly staff, we were able to raise enough money for two additional vocational scholarships and one additional academic scholarship for our students this year at Whittell and South Tahoe high schools.

We’d also like to thank the few hundred South Lake Tahoe community members who attended Burger Night.

Burger Night was a fun and successful event, and our long standing partnership with the Red Hut Café continues to encourage community participation in our schools and is greatly appreciated.

John McDougall, scholarship chair Tahoe Douglas Rotary

The fence in front of the Chateau project is gone. Photo/Provided

While the Chateau project has been inching above the fence line, finally there is less obstruction. The fence along Highway 50 near the state line on the South Shore came down May 12.

Still, who the retail tenants will be has not been released. The only known business is McP’s Pub. The bar will be moving from its current location on the west side of the project area into the far end on the corner of the highway and Stateline Avenue. This was the plan from the get-go. The bi-level building has one story below ground, one above ground. Outdoor seating, fire pits and a kitchen that would be capable of producing real meals are part of the nightclub-bar-restaurant.

Owner Pete Joseph was ready to move seven years ago, and is ready to do so this year. The nightclub-restaurant is 8,988 square feet.

The retail is 18,800 square feet on one level. A definitive opening date for shops has not been set.

It remains to be seen what the rest of the 11.4-acre site will become. Originally it was to have two hotels and a convention center. That was before bankruptcy and ownership changes.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

Fire crews May 12 extinguish a blaze near residences on the South Shore. Photo/Les Wright

A fire of about 1 acre in size burned near Cold Creek Trail on the South Shore on May 12.

The fire was reported about 3pm Monday.

The U.S. Forest Service was the lead agency, but no one was available for comment.

There were two burn areas above Alice Lake Road about 50 yards apart. The cause of the fire is under investigation.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

• South Tahoe Public Utility District is having a workshop regarding sewer and water rates on May 15 from 6-8pm at the district office on Meadow Crest Drive.

• Zach Hymanson has been appointed associate director to UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center. He replaces John Reuter, who served in this position since the inception of TERC in 2004.

• The Old Alpaca Pete’s across from Lira’s and next to the Chevron is Meyers is going to become a CrossFit.

• Truckee is having a budget workshop May 19 at 2pm at the airport.

• Tahoe City Public Utility District meets May 15 at 8:30am at the district office on Fairway Drive. One item is how the rafting season is expected to be short and therefore TCPUD staff is likely going to have to clean up the river area that commercial operators usually do. Another item involves replacing the Kilner Park tennis courts.

By Rob Hotakainen, McClatchy Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Josephine Drum says her daughter was “cheated out of life” when she was killed while driving to work in downtown Seattle in 2012, hit by a man in a Jeep whose blood tested positive for marijuana.

“I feel if you smoke marijuana and you have to smoke it, that you should not be able to drive under the influence,” said Drum of Stockton. “I’m 84 years old. To have lost my daughter is something hard for me to accept.”

With the push to legalize marijuana surging in popularity, states want to assure the public that roads will be safe. But they face a perplexing question: How stoned is too stoned to drive?

With no conclusive research, states are all over the map as they try to assess intoxication by measuring blood levels of THC, the main ingredient in marijuana.

There’s no easy way to do it, with marijuana stored in fat cells and detectable in blood long after it’s smoked or consumed, for days or weeks, depending on individual tolerance and level of use.

Read the whole story

Trax, Truckee Police Department’s narcotics detection canine, made his first unannounced search last week at Truckee High.

Nothing was found.

“I am very happy that nothing was found. Our goal is not to catch kids, but to help our students make smart and healthy choices,” TTUSD Superintendent Robert Leri said in a statement.

Thursday’s unannounced visit at Truckee High was part of ongoing collaboration between law enforcement, school and district administration to ensure students are in compliance. TTUSD has been doing these types of searches for years at North Tahoe High School in cooperation with Placer County Sherriff’s Office. North Tahoe High School searches this year have also turned up nothing.

Trax, a 2-year-old black Lab, joined the force last November, working with Officer Andrew Holbrook.

Trax is trained to detect heroin, cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine and ecstasy. On his first night on patrol in Truckee last November, Trax detected a suspect with methamphetamine in his car. Trax and Holbrook have assisted in 15 drug arrests resulting in the seizure of 220 pounds of marijuana, 9 pounds of methamphetamine, 500 prescription pills, four firearms, and nearly $75,000 in drug money.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

A May 29 meeting about the Lake Tahoe Airport Master Plan will include an update on the process, additional details on specific aspects of the plan, and will address questions from attendees.

The meeting is at 5:30pm at the airport in South Lake Tahoe.

The plan is being prepared by C&S Companies.

For more info, call 619.819.2264.

The Kings Beach Housing Now is one of four California affordable housing developments to earn the 2014 HUD Secretary’s Housing and Community Design Award.

The other projects selected by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the American Institute of Architects are the 28th Street Apartments in South Los Angeles; Kelly Cullen Community in San Francisco; and Sierra Bonita Apartments in West Hollywood.

“California continues to demonstrate that it is an incubator for innovation, energy efficiency and livability,” Regional Administrator Ophelia Basgal said in a statement. “The four design award winners are examples of the best and reflect the value of community and re-use of historic sites. These four recipients proudly show that affordable housing is a great place for award-winning architectural design.”

For Community-Informed Design – This award recognizes design that supports physical communities as they rebuild social structures and relationships that may have been weakened by outmigration, disinvestment, and the isolation of inner-city areas.

Kings Beach Housing Now (owned by Domus Development) is an affordable sustainable workforce housing project consisting of nine building on five sites in Lake Tahoe. The development provides low-income workers and families who previously lived in substandard converted motel rooms, cabins, and trailers with safe, energy-efficient places to live. The sites replace dilapidated, inefficient housing with new, LEED certified silver apartments that reduce negative impacts on the environment while reusing infill land and preserving Tahoe’s beautiful open space. The project offers 77 apartments at five sites in Kings Beach (Brook, Chipmunk, Deer, Fox, and Trout) consisting of a mix of apartments sizes.

The Kings Beach Housing Now development team formed partnerships with community advocates and nonprofit groups to sponsor the first housing needs assessment in Kings Beach. A total of 335 surveys (conducted in English and Spanish) were collected at community events and at local social service organizations during September 2007. The results of the assessment are now available to all organizations seeking to plan new affordable housing and services for the Kings Beach community. The development team listened closely to the community in its effort to create sustainable housing and strengthen the community as a whole. During the planning and design phases, the development team had more than 30 bilingual community meetings to receive feedback on strategies and insight into the needs of the workforce and business owners.

This state-of-the-art LEED certified silver housing places people near jobs and amenities, drastically reducing dependence on cars in a region of heightened environment sensitivity. Additionally, an advanced biofiltration system filters 100 percent of onsite storm water, preventing sediments and pollutants from impacting the health and clarity of the world-renowned water of Lake Tahoe.

By Chris Strohm, Bloomberg

The top U.S. law-enforcement agency wants to give investigators greater leeway to secretly access suspected criminals’ computers in bunches, not simply one at a time.

The Justice Department says the proposal, made public last week, is an attempt to keep up with technology that lets people hide identities online. Privacy advocates contend the more aggressive hacking powers may violate rights of the innocent.

The proposal arrives at a precipitous time for a government still managing backlash to electronic-spying practices by the National Security Agency that were exposed last year by former contractor Edward Snowden.

“I don’t think many Americans would be comfortable with the government sending code onto their computers without their knowledge or consent,” Nathan Freed Wessler, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a telephone interview. “The power they’re seeking is certainly a broad one.”

A committee of judges that sets national policy governing criminal investigations will have to sort it out, taking rules written for searching property and modernizing them for the Internet age.

Read the whole story

By Steve Pajak, Sacramento Bee

Most golfers covet local knowledge and a member’s bounce.

Matt Corsaut is the opposite of most golfers. The less he knows about a course, the more he likes it. It’s best if he knows nothing.

“I’d rather play a course that I haven’t played before and it wasn’t great than one I’ve played before that was,” he said.

Corsaut is on an odyssey that suits him to a tee – to play every course in Northern California, all 415 by his calculation. Great and goat track. Public and private. Eighteen-hole and nine-hole.

Corsaut’s off-the-beaten-path favorites include Twain Harte (“Maybe the best course for the money – $12 – that I’ve played), Fall River, Baywood and The Ranch. His duds include Benbow (“The worst golf value of any course I’ve played”), Tahoe Bijou, French Camp and Gator Creek at Dingus McGee’s.

Read the whole story