By AP

Nevada County prosecutors have filed manslaughter charges against a Truckee-based contractor whose negligence they say produced the carbon monoxide that killed two men at a home north of Lake Tahoe last fall.

Assistant District Attorney Anna Ferguson said 41-year-old Kurt Schoemig was charged Monday with two counts of involuntary manslaughter.

She said in a statement he “played a substantial factor” in causing the deaths of 69-year-old Albert Senzatimore of San Jose and 57-year-old Gary Trovinger of Los Gatos at Trovinger’s home in Tahoe Donner in October.

Ferguson said Schoemig, president of Cedar Ridge Builders, didn’t have the necessary permit for work done last year.

Police say an employee cut a furnace exhaust pipe, but the project wasn’t completed, leaving the pipe to vent into the home when the heater started.

Carrie Underwood has sold more than 15 million albums, has 18 No. 1 singles, six Grammys, and countless other accolades.

The country music powerhouse will be at Harveys Outdoor Concert Series on July 18 at 8pm.

Tickets range in price from $89.50 to $175.50. They go on sale March 22 through Ticketmaster.

By Henry Grabar, Salon

If you were driving on an American highway earlier this month, you probably passed one. They came from Nashville, New York and New Orleans, from Boston and Seattle and Chicago and Los Angeles, and from four dozen other countries entirely: 2,000 musical acts, in vans brimming with equipment and ambition and hope, rolling toward Austin, Texas, for South by Southwest like filings drawn to a magnet.

It’s a big week for these aspiring musicians. Like preseason football hopefuls, many will do two-a-days, playing to land a label or a spot at a big summer festival. But it’s also a big week for Austin. Like a polished party host, the city doesn’t flaunt its own hospitality. But after nearly three decades, the festival’s brand of forward-thinking, creative cool seems perfectly aligned with Austin’s own.

This symbiotic relationship has turned heads in municipalities across the country. Cities have historically competed for visitors by building cavernous convention centers and taxpayer-funded stadiums, and though economic wisdom frowns on these expenditures, they still build them. But festivals represent an alternative growing in popularity. Industry conferences and major sporting events, like your average American family, do not visit the same city year after year. Festivals, by contrast, are a municipal golden goose. And they don’t just stick around: They can float a cultural aura that helps affirm a city’s identity year-round. For Austin, that’s live music. For Miami Beach, it’s art. Nearly everyone agrees it’s a concept worth imitating — so why do so few American cities have world-class festivals?

Read the whole story

• The Fabulous Thunderbirds will be at MontBleu in Stateline on April 12 at 9pm. Tickets are $20 – 888.829.7630.

• Here is the El Dorado-Tahoe road work schedule for the week from Caltrans.

• Again, the Rubicon Trail is closed until further notice.

• Colleen Manzer with RE/MAX Realty Today receive an award with being a member of the 100 percent club for top performing Realtors within the RE/MAX organization.

• A floating skate ramp in Lake Tahoe? Yes. Check this out:

To the community,

Meyers has a rich history behind what you see today. But in some ways it really hasn’t changed much.

Jim Wilson, land developer, began developing Meyers – then called Tahoe Paradise – in the 1950s. He traveled the world in search for the right recreational ideas for this new development. Wilson called Tahoe Paradise the Gateway to the South Shore. Wilson’s concept of a recreational location for sharing the magic of the outdoors around Tahoe Paradise wasn’t much different than the “vision” of Meyers’ folks today.

Long gone are the days when I worked at Fay and Lee Anderson’s Shell Gas Station putting on chains in winter and pumping gas, working as a car mechanic at Meyers Automotive, and playing real estate at Comstock Properties, Mountain Harbor Realty and Yank’s Realty. Somewhere back then I bought my first powerful stereo set from Joe Tveten.

Two years ago the Meyers community met in search of a “community vision”. It was apparent most Meyers, Tahoe Paradise, and Christmas Valley locals were not against carefully thought-out and responsible development in Meyers.

Meyers needs a combination of tasteful architectural development, parks and bike paths, and local job and revenue producing businesses. This should happen gradually.

The Meyers community has a new challenge. It appears we have outside corporate consultants-developers teamed up with TRPA and sustainability entities making their own plans for our community. These so called “sustainability entities” are largely comprised of TRPA staff, county planning agencies and corporate development consulting firms.

TRPA’s new agenda is to “sustain themselves” by joining forces with corporate developers/consultants for large scale commercial development within the basin.

This newly conceived partnership will produce revenue and development fees that will offset TRPA’s huge administration staffing and overhead.

The California Tahoe Conservancy has followed TRPA’s role change with a complete reversal of their original intent to protect Tahoe with their new revenue generating “Asset Land Sales Program”.

Agency incentivized large scale commercial development is devastating to Lake Tahoe’s air and water quality, and Tahoe residents’ quality of living.

If TRPA and CTC’s original intended missions are accomplished they should downsize or shut down.

Our local El Dorado County Supervisor Norma Santiago apologized for her involvement with One Globe Corporation and the “Catalyst Program” concept plan.

This misrepresentation of interest to her constituency did not set well with locals.

Some of us believe Supervisor Santiago may have a conflict of interest when she sits on multiple boards including the TRPA, the Tahoe Conservancy, the Sustainability Collaborative, and the county supervisors board.

These agencies and sustainability entities (TRPA, CTC, TMPO, LTSCP ) are additionally and separately funded with grant funds from the California Strategic Growth Council with our tax dollars. This additional grant funding seems to serve these agencies to work against us.

This SGC program’s original intent was to improve air and water quality, and promote a variety of other programs for the benefit of communities.

Our local fed, state and county agencies and the sustainable entities appear to be mainly focusing on only one of the SGC program aspects  — commercial development — for self-sustainment and profits.

They have recently reapplied to the SGC for additional grant funding in the approximate amount of $995,000 stating, “The community of Meyers in El Dorado County in the South Shore of Lake Tahoe is the first community that is ready to use its Area Plan, funded by SGC.”

This Meyers Plan is not ready to use. We’re not done.

Making matters worse is our MCAC or Meyers Community Advisory Council representation has been very poor at best.

Most Meyers residents had never even heard of this council until recently when some of us brought this new Meyers Area Plan draft to their attention last month.

This Meyers Community Advisory Council literally hid in opposite corners of the room in the recent TRPA facilitated MCAC-community meeting on Feb. 26.

The MCAC did not make a single effort to speak or represent their community at their own meeting.

The Meyers community needs to take charge of its own planning.

Our primary focus should be on these four points in the draft plan:

(1) Height restrictions of new commercial buildings

(2) Density of commercial development units per acre

(3) Land use and zoning – partially to protect businesses we already have

(4) Limited corporate development — approved by a “legitimate” local committee

(5) Incentive giveaway of CFA floor space

Meyers community, you must voice your opinions now.

The next community meeting is again at the California Conservation Corps. building, 1949 Apache Ave, March 19, 6-8pm.

We can do this together as the Meyers community.

Respectfully yours,

John Adamski, Meyers resident

By Conor Shine, Las Vegas Sun

Ever look around at the signs of recovery here — the construction and rebound in travel and tourism — and wonder why it doesn’t feel like the recession has ended for you?

There’s a reason: It hasn’t in terms of wages in Nevada.

But the slow increase in most people’s pay has meant that thin family budgets are stretched even further, constricting consumer spending, a crucial cog in the region’s overall economic recovery. With unemployment still at almost 9 percent in December, a return to normal wage growth likely will take several years, economists say.

With high unemployment and an excess of willing workers, there’s little pressure for companies to increase salaries. That likely won’t change until the unemployment rate drops to 5 or 6 percent.

As tourism stalled and consumer spending dipped, employees in service-related jobs also took a hit. Wages of hairdressers, fitness trainers, car technicians and others dropped as the public scrimped and saved by forgoing nonessentials.

Read the whole story

For decades scientists have studied the health and clarity of the deep waters of Lake Tahoe, but now the research boats are coming closer to shore.

Alan Heyvaert of the Desert Research Institute will present research findings and recommendations that address Lake Tahoe’s aquatic nears hore environment. This public lecture is April 3 at 6pm, hosted by the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center.

Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences is at 291 Country Club Drive, Incline Village.

Cost is $5.

Four people, including two South Lake Tahoe residents, were arrested this weekend in an operation targeting people buying alcohol for minors.

Dubbed Shoulder Tap Decoy Operation, the March 15 event had more than 100 law enforcement agencies in the state involved.

Arrested in South Lake Tahoe were: Stevie Smith, 23, from Pasadena; Harvey Hampton, 58, from South Lake Tahoe; Charles Kerr, 72, from South Lake Tahoe; and Hamza Salmi, 32, from San Francisco.

In total, the operation resulted in 522 arrests. Most people were cited for furnishing alcoholic beverages to minors, and others have been arrested for crimes such as drunken driving, illegal drugs, false identification, open containers in public, public drunkenness, parole violations and outstanding warrants.

The program uses a minor under the direct supervision of a peace officer to stand outside a liquor or convenience store and ask patrons to buy them alcohol. The minor indicates in some way he or she is underage and cannot purchase the alcohol. If the adults agree to purchase alcohol for the minor, officers then arrest and cite the person for furnishing alcohol to the minor.

The penalty for furnishing alcohol to a minor is a minimum $1,000 fine and 24 hours of community service.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By Martha Rosenberg,AlterNet

Americans have become huge. Between the 1960s and the 2000s, Americans grew, on the average, an inch taller and 24 pounds heavier.

The average American man today weights 194 pounds and the average woman 165 pounds. The growing girth has led to the creation of special-sized ambulances, operating tables and coffins as well as bigger seats on planes and trains.

Almost a third of American children and teens are overweight, but 84 percent of parents believe their children are at a healthy weight in one study. Why? The adults are probably overweight too.

Still there are scientific reasons why Americans are blimping up and they aren’t limited to eating too much and exercising too little.

Read the whole story

By Kathryn Reed

Improving the circulation of traffic and pedestrians are major goals of a proposed project at the Tallac Historic Site on the South Shore.

The U.S. Forest Service wants to get rid of the access point at Heritage Way that is across from Fallen Leaf Lake Road and the one at the Valhalla gate. A new entrance point would be created near the Camp Richardson corral.

Within the recreation area a loop road would be constructed to connect to Taylor Creek Visitors Center.

The U.S. Forest Service wants to improve circulation at the Tallac Historic Site. Photo/LTN file

Improvements would also be made to the trail system. Routes would be created to accommodate walkers and cyclists. They would interconnect so people would not have to return to the main trail along the highway. This does not mean cyclists will necessarily be able ride through the historic site. Currently, bikes must be walked.

These would be Class 1 trails that are 10-feet wide.

“The big picture is we are looking after resource protection by providing for better, more sustainable visitor recreation patterns,” Daniel Cressy, landscape architect with the USFS, told Lake Tahoe News.

Two action alternatives are included in the environmental assessment that is out for public comment. The second alternative does not include the loop inside connecting the recreation sites.

Included in the proposal are additional parking spaces. The idea is to get vehicles off Highway 89 where they are parked on the dirt. When Caltrans comes through with its water quality project those spaces will be eliminated.

Part of the U.S. Forest Service project is also to improve water quality. Components include infiltration basins, drip line trenches for structures, slope stabilization along the shoreline, and construction of a fence between the Kiva Point beach area and the Taylor Creek Marsh.

Another improvement at Kiva will be restrooms. At times there have been portable toilets at the beach. Cressy said human waste can be an issue out there.

Informational signs are planned for Kiva Point, along with a path from the parking lot to the beach to comply with Americans with Disabilities Act requirements. Some user created trails will be decommissioned.

Cressy said a price tag for the project has not been calculated. Funding for the project would be sought once an alternative is chosen and approved.

——

Notes:

• Comments will be accepted until April 6.

• The environmental analysis is online.

• For more info, contact Ashley Sommer at 530.543.2615 or asommer@fs.fed.us.