The building on the left will come down and a BevMo will be built; while on the right a shoe store is slated to go in adjacent to T.J. Maxx. Photo/LTN

BevMo, which plans to open later this year in South Lake Tahoe, is getting ready to tear down the existing building at the Y.

There will be a public hearing on the proposal on March 13 at 3pm at Lake Tahoe Airport. This will before the city’s Planning Commission and a Tahoe Regional Planning Agency hearing officer.

The plan is to demolish the existing 9,972 square foot building to the left of the T.J. Maxx store. It would be replaced with a 10,000 square foot building. While more commercial floor area will be built, overall coverage will be reduced.

Historic Woodfords Hotel Photo/California State Library

Woodfords General Store Photo/Bill Kingman

Lake Tahoe’s immediate neighbor to the south, Alpine County, officially marks its 150th anniversary on March 16.

Although it’s the smallest California county in terms of population with only 1,200 residents (two per square mile), Alpine is not the smallest county in terms of size. That fact belongs to San Francisco.

Alpine County is bordered by five other California counties and Nevada. Its county seat is Markleeville, population 210, on Highway 89 almost seven miles south of the Woodfords junction of highways 88 and 89.

1972 Bank of American promo brochure. Courtesy of Rita Lovell and Lisa Gabon/Alpine County Library

BofA building is now the Chamber of Commerce. Photo/Bill Kingman

What was a new Bank of America branch at the north end of Markleeville in 1972 now houses the Alpine County Chamber of Commerce .

Original schoolhouse in Markleeville. Photo/California State Library

Alpine County Library Photo/Bill Kingman

The original Markleeville schoolhouse today is the Alpine County Library and Archives.

At the east end of Hope Valley on highways 88/89 is the historic Sorensen’s Resort, revived and operated by John Brissenden since the early 1980s.

Sorensen’s in the 1950s. Photo/Arthur W. Ewart, They Came Every Summer, 1993, with permission.

Sorensen’s in fall 2013. Photo/Bill Kingman

In the 1980s, a group called the Friends of Hope Valley formed to keep a powerline project out of the area. They lobbied successfully for government acquisition of land and today there are no big power transmission towers crossing Hope Valley.

To online to find out all the planned activities for the 150th celebration.

— Bill Kingman

Ten women receive awards March 6 from Soroptimist International. Photo/LTN

By Kathryn Reed

STATELINE – Women helping and recognizing other women. That in large part is what Soroptimist International is all about.

The two South Shore groups came together Thursday night to honor local high school students, women who have made a difference in the community, and to honor two women who despite struggles are turning their lives around.

In the latter category, the Women’s Opportunity Award was given to Monica Mata and America Ramirez Aranda. They were each given $2,000 to help further their education.

Mata is a full-time student at Lake Tahoe Community who hopes to earn her associate of arts degree in a year. Then she plans to pursue a degree in criminal justice at CSU Sacramento.

But Mata is also a single mother of five children between the ages of 2 and 10. She works 40 hours a week at MontBleu. She has overcome domestic abuse and abandonment. But she said if it weren’t for her parents, she would not be on the path she is today.

For Aranda, she too is a single mom – of one son. English is not her native language, but she was able to learn the language well enough to graduate in three years from South Tahoe High School. She has an AA from LTCC. Now she is working on a bachelor’s.

Aranda has worked at the local college for 10 years. After she gets her degree she wants to become a certified public accountant and work with low-income people.

She is chairwoman of the local Latino Affairs Committee.

The Ruby Award honors women who have worked to improve the lives of women and girls through their professional or volunteer work.

“Kathy has built a legacy and changed a school and the community forever,” Wendy David said of Kathy Haven.

Haven was the driving force behind getting Bijou Community School to have a two-way immersion program.

“It’s so nice to hear, but it’s really not about me. It’s a lot of people coming together,” Haven said. “I just have the biggest mouth.”

Also receiving the Ruby Award was Jeanette Shippee. She is the supervising cook at the El Dorado County Jail in South Lake Tahoe.

She does more than cook food. She has designed a culinary arts program in conjunction with LTCC that gives inmates college credits. They also leave jail with job skills. And while they are incarcerated, the inmates are doing most of the cooking.

The Violet Richardson Award is given to girls who are above average when it comes to volunteering in the community.

This years winners from South Tahoe High School are Emily Aminian, Zoe D’Angelo and Jessica Pak. The winners from Whittell High School are Danica Bunnett, Kelsey Kjer and Tori Jimenez.

By Andrew C. Revkin, New York Times

There’s no question that residents of California and much of the West face a collision between high water demands driven by growth and outdated policies and a limited and highly variable water supply.

But that reality hasn’t stopped heated arguments from springing up in recent days over the cause or causes of California’s continuing epic drought. Is one of the drivers the growing human influence on the climate? Or is this drought something we’ve seen before, the result of natural variability?

In the wake of an unusual public debate on this issue between President Obama’s science adviser, John Holdren, and Roger Pielke Jr., a longtime analyst of climate-related disaster losses at the University of Colorado, I received a helpful note from Martin Hoerling, who studies climate extremes for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Hoerling’s conclusions echo those of another longtime student of western drought, Richard Seager of Columbia University, as reported in Justin Gillis’s recent news report on the issue. “I’m pretty sure the severity of this thing is due to natural variability,” Seager told Gillis.

Read the whole story

By George Warren, Channel 10

As El Dorado County Supervisor Ray Nutting prepares to stand trial next month on multiple felony charges stemming from his alleged misuse of state grant money, he’s apparently found time to target the two elected officials who put him in the predicament.

Two candidates filed papers this week to run against El Dorado County Auditor-Controller Joe Harn, who first called attention to the irregularities, and District Attorney Vern Pierson, who obtained the indictment. Friday was the deadline to file.

Neither county official has ever been challenged in an election before and they say the two campaigns have Nutting’s fingerprints on them.

“This is political payback because the district attorney and I have done our jobs. That’s all it is,” Harn said. “Ray Nutting is looking for county officials who won’t call him out when he improperly obtains the public’s money.”

Read the whole story

Liberty Utilities is again warning the public of phone and email scams targeting utility customers that appears to becoming more aggressive.

Customers are receiving a phone call from someone posing as a Liberty Utilities representative and threatening to shut off the power if payment was not made within a specified period of time. Sometimes the caller has specific customer information such as last payment amount. Liberty is unaware of how this information has been obtained.

Liberty Utilities warns its customers not to respond to a payment demand of this type. The company says to not click on any link or open any attachment to an email or provide any payment type information over the phone.

Liberty Utilities representatives do not place such calls or send emails to customers demanding payment. Liberty encourages customers who receive such call 800.782.2506.

By Diana Lambert and Phillip Reese, Sacramento Bee

Young teachers have become far more scarce in California classrooms after school districts slashed their budgets to survive the recession.

From 2008 to 2013, California saw a 40 percent drop in teachers with less than six years’ experience, according to a Sacramento Bee review of state data.

As the state cut funding, districts laid off teachers with the least seniority and stopped hiring new applicants. Those employment practices, in turn, discouraged college students from pursuing the profession in California, as enrollment in teaching programs fell by 41 percent between 2008 and 2012.

Students are learning from more experienced teachers, but the hiring changes have disrupted the natural flow of classroom talent that districts typically rely upon. First-time teachers bring “freshness and energy” and ensure schools have a steady pipeline ready to replace veteran instructors who retire, said Jon Snyder, executive director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education.

Read the whole story

Dick Derby

• Dick Derby, chief financial officer for Barton Health, turned in his resignation this week. He will be leaving in August, but not before he is able to collect a bonus this spring.

• Staples is closing 225 stores. Corporate said it doesn’t know which stores are closing so it’s not known how the South Lake Tahoe one will be affected.

• The 11th annual Telegrass Festival at Sierra-at-Tahoe is April 5.

• Nevada Division of State Parks is having a public hearing at the Richard Bryan Building, 901 S. Stewart St., Carson City on March 31 from 3-5pm to receive comments regarding the amendment of regulations that pertain to Chapter 407 of the Nevada Administrative Code, relating to group camping fees and entrance fees for photographers with commercial photography permits. Call 775.684.2793 for a copy of the materials.

• Friends of the Library book sale in South Lake Tahoe is March 15 at 10am. FOL members bet in at 9am.

U.S. Forest Service fuels management crews may continue prescribed fire operations in several locations around the Lake Tahoe Basin on March 10.

Prescribed fire operations may take place on Spooner Summit, off Tahoe Woods Road near Tahoe City, on the west side of Highway 89 near Tahoma, and in the Luther Pass Campground off of Highway 89.

Crews may continue operations through the weekend if weather, staffing, and conditions permit. Locations may vary due to changing conditions.

All prescribed fire projects are conducted in accordance with an approved prescribed fire burn plan. Burn plans describe specific conditions under which operations are conducted including the weather, number of personnel, opportunities to minimize smoke impacts, and available burn days. This information is used to decide when and where to burn.

By Jennifer Welsh, Business Insider

Daylight saving time is about to start, and an interesting thing that you might not realize is how such a small shift in our time can have a large impact on our body clock and our health.

These negative impacts of daylight saving time even cost us real money in lost productivity.

This is the “bad” time change, since it means we lose an hour of sleep over night.

It was enacted during World War I to decrease energy use. Benjamin Franklin first advocated for the practice in 1784 because he noticed people used candles at night and slept past dawn in the morning. By shifting time by an hour during the summer, they would burn fewer candles and not sleep through the morning sunlight.

The debate still rages as to whether this time-switch does save energy, but along the way we’ve seen signs that it has negative effects on our health and the economy.

Read the whole story