By David McGrath Schwartz, Las Vegas Sun

Republican Brian Sandoval was leading Democrat Rory Reid in Nevada’s race for governor, on the verge of adding to his impressive resume in public office and continuing his rise in Nevada politics.

Sandoval was winning with 52 percent of the vote over Reid, the Clark County commissioner, with 44 percent of the vote. Sandoval, from Reno, beat Reid in Clark County early voting by 5,000 votes, a bad sign for the Democrat.

Brian Sandoval

Sandoval, 47, had a cagey, if cynical, campaign strategy regarding the state’s budget crisis: He promised no new taxes, not to extend $1 billion in taxes set to sunset in June, and to veto any budget the Legislature passed with tax increases. But he refused to say what he’d cut. The state faces a budget deficit estimated as high as $3 billion.

He pivoted to his resume — assemblyman, gaming control board member, attorney general and federal judge — and a message of hope, with a campaign slogan “A Reason to Believe Again” and telling voters in his closing ads “I’m optimistic.”

Read the whole story

Per the Nevada Secretary of State:

There may be a delay in reporting early returns in all statewide Nevada races due to a power outage at a Clark County polling location. All voters in line at that site as of 7pm will be allowed to cast their votes. No results of any statewide races can be reported in any county until all polls across the state are closed. There is no estimate at this time of how long any delay might be.

By Kathryn Reed

South Lake Tahoe officials and the City Council were given a written reprimand by the judge overseeing the Lakeview Commons contract dispute.

El Dorado County Superior Court Judge Steve Bailey issued his written opinion of the case Nov. 1. Though the outcome does not alter the decision rendered in court last month, the 30-page document explains why he sided with plaintiffs Clark & Sullivan.

The construction firm sued to have work at Lakeview Commons stopped under the belief the bid was unfairly awarded to Reeve-Knight Construction.

No one is smiling about Lakeview Commons today like ex-City Manager Dave Jinkens, center, and Councilmembers Bruce Grego and Kathay Lovell were in August. Photo/Kathryn Reed

The court document is a blow-by-blow recount of how city staff practically held Reeve-Knight’s hand to get the documents in proper order. That isn’t allowed. Despite much of this coming out during two summer City Council meetings, all but Councilman Jerry Birdwell agreed to go forward with awarding RKC the bid.

The judge’s decision says, “The city acted arbitrarily and capriciously and abused its discretion by accepting a bid that was non-responsive on its face and that material and substantially deviated from the invitation for bids and bid documents. The city further abused its discretion by allowing RKC to revise its bid after the bids were opened; by assisting RKC in correcting the bid irregularity; by providing an opportunity for RKC to withdraw its bid without penalty; by designating specialty items after bid opening; and, by waiving a material element of the bid and awarding the contract to RKC.”

The court points out how allowing the contractor to change its bid violates Public Contract Code.

Now the city is essentially at square one, with the fall building season having been wasted. The original plan was for the foundation of the boathouse to be completed by Oct. 15 and framing to be done this winter. Construction was to be done in July. No date has been given for when Lakeview Commons might be something other than an unusable fenced off area.

RKC will only get paid for the cost of work done, no profit, per state law.

The judge’s decision can be appealed within 60 days of being issued.

The city’s options per court order are to either award the bid to Clark & Sullivan or start the bid process all over.

“From our perspective there is no urgency to the matter,” City Attorney Patrick Enright said when asked if the sitting council will make the decision or if the one sworn in Dec. 14 will pick up the pieces.

The current council meets again Nov. 16 and has a special meeting set for Nov. 30. (The latter is to approve the reconfiguration of Redevelopment Area 2 per the city and county’s negotiated deal.) Lakeview could be on one of those agendas.

Enright would not commit to which council is definitively going to handle the Lakeview mess.

With construction not able to resume until May per Tahoe Regional Planning Agency rules of not being able to move dirt in the basin between Oct. 15 and May 1, the bid process could resume after the start of the year on the multi-million dollar project to transform El Dorado Beach from a rundown area to a showcase for the city.

Click on decision to read the judge’s response.

MontBleu casino in Stateline is having its annual food drive Nov. 6.

Non-perishable food items will be accepted at MontBleu from 10am-4pm. They food will benefit Christmas Cheer. This food bank provides dry goods to families on the South Shore year-round.

MontBleu will partner with the Barton Foundation to host the second annual Festival of Trees and Lights Dec. 3-5 at the Convention Center. Proceeds will benefit the Barton Community Clinic, which provides medical care to the community, especially for those living in poverty or without insurance. Tickets are available Nov. 8. For a complete schedule, to purchase tickets or for more information, visit www.festivaloftreeslaketahoe.org or call (530) 543.5909.

U.S. Forest Service fuels management crews will conduct prescribed fire operations in the upper Kingsbury Grade area Nov. 3 and continue through Saturday.

If favorable weather conditions continue, crews will move into the McKinney/Rubicon, Meeks Bay and Blackwood Canyon areas beginning Nov. 5 and continuing through early next week.

Residents and visitors can expect to see smoke from prescribed fire project areas. Smoke management is part of every prescribed fire burn plan, and efforts will be taken to reduce actual or potential smoke impacts on community areas.

This and other prescribed fire projects are designed to reduce wildfire risks to communities and critical resources.

South Lake Tahoe AAUW welcomes members, guests and the public on Nov. 13 at 10a, at the Aspen Room at Lake Tahoe Community College library to learn about the women who contributed to the passage of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote.

Storyteller and AAUW member Sherna Kopple Svensson will share a brief history of the suffragettes and the almost forgotten women who filled in for men fighting World War I.

Following her presentation, a multi-generational panel of women will discuss the changes brought about in their lifetime as women took a greater role in determining the course of their own lives.

The event is free and the public is welcome.

At this meeting, a $4 brunch will be available as well as complimentary beverages.

Call (530) 542.8748 or emailaspens11@att.net by Nov. 11.

Missoula Children’s Theater production of “Treasure Island” is Nov. 20 at 2pm and 6pm at South Tahoe Middle School multipurpose room. Cost is $10 for adults, $5 for children/seniors.

For more information, call (530) 542.3632.

Have you ever seen flashing blue lights in your neighborhood and wanted to know what was going on? Do you want to find out how safe your neighborhood really is? Now you can, through a new partnership between the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office and CrimeReports, creators of the National Crime Map, at www.CrimeReports.com.

“Providing reliable, timely information to our citizens is one of our top priorities,” Sheriff Fred Kollar said in a press release. “And partnering with CrimeReports gives us the ability to keep the public informed

on a regular basis as to what is going on in the community.”

The map is also available through the CrimeReports iPhone app.

The service lets local citizens sign up for free customized email alerts to stay on top of crime in their neighborhood. Putting in your city let’s you see where registered sex offenders are.

“Information is power,” Kollar added. “And we hope that giving the community this information will help them prevent crime in their neighborhoods.”

The El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office is joining more than a thousand other law enforcement agencies of all sizes across North America that are sharing their crime information with the public through the map, like Baltimore, Boston, San Jose, San Francisco, Portland, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles County, and more.

You can access your local crime map and sign up for daily, weekly, or monthly email crime alerts at www.CrimeReports.com.

Poet and professor of English at Sierra Nevada College, Karen Terrey, will share her thoughts on how one lives as a writer and how she works with other writers to inspire and motivate.

Since spending the summer of 2009 studying poetry in Prague, she finds inspiration for her efforts to help build literary community in Tahoe from the underground writing movement called Samizdat that resisted Communist rule in Prague. She’ll also perform a short reading of some of her historical and regional poetry. She encourages the audience to engage with questions and comments.

Terrey teaches creative writing in Truckee through her business Tangled Roots Writing. She facilitates creative writing workshops and one-on one-coaching with project-focused writers to help guide creative process and improve craft. At SNC, she teaches classes in Freshman Composition, American Literature, and Creative Writing. She is also poetry editor for a literary arts journal, Quay, published in print and online twice a year.

Terrey received her bachelor’s from University of Vermont in biology and environmental studies and her M.F.A. in creative writing from Goddard College.

Her poetry explores boundaries of neighborhood and relationships between people and place. Some of her poems have been published in Moonshine Ink, Sierra Nevada Review, Autumn Sky, Word Riot, Rhino and Edge. She is the recipient of a Sierra Arts Endowment Grant in 2009 and a John Woods Scholarship to the Prague Summer Program.

To learn more about Terrey’s efforts to build literary community in Lake Tahoe, see her blog at www.karenaterrey.blogspot.com and Tangled Roots Writing on Facebook.

The event is Nov. 13 from 10am-noon, Prim Library, Sierra Nevada College, 999 Tahoe Blvd., Incline Village.

Fee: $3 optional continental breakfast.

Threats. Murder. Revenge. Todd Borg’s eighth novel — “Tahoe Heat” featuring his long-standing protagonist private detective Owen McKenna — involves a fatal fall at Lake Tahoe’s Cave Rock, encoded piano strings, and a wild mustang named Heat.

Borg’s series of mystery thrillers set exclusively around Lake Tahoe will be the featured topic of the next Fireside Chat, hosted by Andy Whyman, Nove. 18 at 7pm in Sierra Nevada College’s Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences, rooms 139/141.

Stunned by the beauty of the second highest big lake in the world, Borg and his wife moved from Minnesota to Lake Tahoe in 1990. While he had written short stories, reviews, articles, and three novels before moving to the region, the dramatic Tahoe landscape gave Borg the idea for a series of novels with a detective protagonist who lived at Lake Tahoe. The result was Owen McKenna, an ex-cop with a tragic background, who moved from San Francisco to the mountains to study art and earn a slightly more genteel living as a private detective. McKenna works out of a rented office space on Kingsbury Grade on the South Shore, and lives with Spot, his Harlequin Great Dane, in a tiny log cabin (500 square feet) that sits 1,000 feet above the East Shore. All eight of the Owen McKenna Mystery Thrillers are available for check-out at SNC’s Prim Library and the Incline Village Library.

Borg’s work has won numerous awards including the Ben Franklin Award for Best Mystery of the Year and the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association’s Best Thriller of the Year. A prolific lecturer and speaker, Borg also teaches at Lake Tahoe Community College. His three-day writing workshop The Hook, the Twist, and the Cliffhanger is open to any aspiring fiction writer and focuses on the craft of writing entertaining fiction, including character development, the rising plot curve, and critical aspects of writing effective prose such as scene construction, point-of-view, and dialogue.

For more information on the event, contact Shelia Leijon, IVGID Seniors Program Coordinator, at (775) 832.1310, shelia_leijon@ivgid.org, or Debi Noonan, SNC director of Special Events, at (775) 831.1314, ext. 7420, dnoonan@sierranevada.edu.