By Anna Tong, Sacramento Bee
A new ranking of the health of America’s counties puts Placer and El Dorado counties in California’s top 10 and Sacramento further down the list.
Placer County is the sixth-healthiest, El Dorado is 10th and Yolo is 12th. Sacramento lags, at 32 out of 56.
Marin County in the Bay Area ranked first, and Del Norte County next to the Oregon border ranked last in health outcomes.
It’s a groomer kind of day in Lake Tahoe. Here is the ski report from Curtis Fong, the Guy from Tahoe.
Event: The Big Nasty
What: Performance
Start Time: Feb. 20 at 10pm
Where: The Divided Sky, Meyers
Event: Watercolor Painting Workshop
What: Watermedia workshop with Peter Darvas
Start Time: March 10 at 9am
End Time: March 13 at noon
Where: South Lake Tahoe
Info: info@talart.org
The 11th Snowshoe Thompson Ski/Snowshoe Tour will take place in Hope Valley at the yurt at the junction of highway 88 and 89.
It goes from 9am-1pm on March 6.
Cost is $10.
Weidinger Public Relations of Stateline went four for four, including two Silver Spike Awards and two Awards of Excellence, at the Public Relations Society of America, Sierra Nevada Chapter’s 23rd annual awards program.
The Silver Spike designation is the top award given. Seven Silver Spikes were presented to public relations agencies, firms and businesses throughout the Sierra Nevada.
Weidinger PR struck silver in the “Special Events & Observances with Budget under $10,000†category for its efforts on behalf of the Virginia & Truckee Railroad.
The second silver was in the “Special Purpose Video†category for a viral video campaign, “Become a Granlibakken Viking†on behalf of the Granlibakken Conference Center & Lodge.
WPR’s American Century Championship entry in “Special Events & Observances with Budget over $25,000+†received the highest award given within the category. The success of the celebrity golf tournament’s PR efforts was collaboration between WPR and Vizion Group of Philadelphia.
WPR also received an Award of Excellence in the “Overall Campaign with Budget over $25,000+†category for the firm’s year-round PR campaign with the Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority.
Weidinger Public Relations, established in 1985, specializes in travel, tourism, real estate, recreation, and special and sporting events. For more information, call (775) 588.2412 or visit www.weidingerpr.com.
Pending favorable conditions, U.S. Forest Service will conduct a hand pile burn operation in the Kings Beach area on Feb. 18-19.
The project area is less than 10 acres in size.
Please be aware that other fire management agencies, state and local, may also be conducting prescribed fire operations during this period.
Residents and travelers can expect to see smoke from prescribed fire project areas.
By Kathryn Reed
With the centennial of naval aviation in 2011, preparations are under way to commemorate this event. South Lake Tahoe may be part of those of festivities.
The Navy asked Lake of the Sky Air Show officials to apply to be one of the 25 sites to host a celebration next year. Word should come in March if South Lake Tahoe has been selected.
Planes of all kinds come to the annual Lake of the Sky Air Show. Photo/Kathryn Reed
Rick Jenkins, who heads the volunteer committee that puts on the annual air show, said this would be huge for the South Shore. Admirals, a Navy squadron and more would be part of the spectacle. The monetary benefits could be substantial as well as the media exposure.
For now, though, the committee is focused on Aug. 28. That is the date of this year’s 21st annual Lake in the Sky Air Show.
Even though it is months away, every month the committee meets at Lake Tahoe Airport in order to pull off the event that can attract 10,000 people. Volunteers get two months off between wrapping up the last show and beginning work on the next one.
On Wednesday night the 14 people gathered at the table tackled a three-page agenda.
“They are concerned about security. They have never landed anywhere other than a military base,” Jenkins said of the EA-18 Growler. This electric plane has been part of the military fleet since August.
Discussions centered on what type of 24-hour security could be made available.
Talks are ongoing about having a C-5 transport aircraft do a flyover. There’s one at Travis Air Force Base.
The MV-22 Osprey, which flies like a plane and lands like a helicopter, may come to the show. A squadron is based in Miramar.
War birds are being secured, like an OV-10.
Last year more than $300 million in aircraft came to the one-day Tahoe air show.
On the tarmac each year are planes of all sizes. Some are one-seaters, other can haul several tanks or other military vehicles. Some are privately owned, some the taxpayers of the United States have paid for.
As Jenkins describes it, “We put on a $100,000 show for $20,000.”
At the most recent planning session, it was discussed that local law enforcement will be returning. New this year is the possibility of the Douglas County bomb squad using its high-pressure air tool to blow things up.
“Absent an emergency, these guys love to bring their toys out,” Lt. Les Lovell of the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department said of all law enforcement. Lovell is a member of the committee.
K-9 demonstrations are also part of the fun. So are a pancake breakfast, 5K run and motorcycle display.
Coming up with a sky diving demonstration is still being worked on.
As with most events, much of the minutia that must be attended to happens at meetings like the one Wednesday night. It means discussing portable toilets, assigning someone to talk to Caltrans about verbiage on reader boards, attracting sponsors, discussing entertainment beyond the aircraft and the three acrobatic pilots, where handicapped parking should be, and that it will cost $5 to walk-in to the all day show or $15 per car.
For more information about the air show, click here.
Letter to the community,
Tahoe Victims of CPS has joined together with families on the West Slope of El Dorado County to form the El Dorado County Victims of CPS. All parties involved are either advocates for CPS reform, or families that have had their constitutional rights violated by CPS.
First and foremost, we do not want any more children removed from innocent parents; but we also want to ensure that social workers employed by Child Protective Services’ Investigative Unit have the proper training.
We have heard from numerous parties in the community that social workers are hired off the street with no training, and the funding is not available to properly train these social workers. So what we have are employees of the county that enter people’s homes by intimidating them, and removing children without a search warrant. Not only are the families traumatized by these actions, but also social workers then falsify the facts in their report to the court to cover up their illegal activities, a fact confirmed by a number of court-appointed family court attorneys.
Law enforcement, whom we support whole-heartedly, has somehow been misinformed that they need to support these illegal acts. We encourage all law enforcement officials called to a home by a social worker, to ask where the search warrant is, unless exigent circumstances exist that put the child in harm’s way. We do not want our wonderful law enforcement members, or even social workers for that fact, leaving themselves open to criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits.
El Dorado County is a great place to live, but as residents, we need to live here without the fear of renegade social workers misinterpreting the Child Welfare Codes, which were written to protect children from gross neglect, abuse, and possible death. We want our county’s CPS to be the model that other counties and states can mirror.
We are inviting any resident of El Dorado County, past and present, to write us with their experiences of violations by Child Protective Services and their interest in a class-action lawsuit against Child Protective Services for violation of their constitutional rights, namely the 4th and 14th Amendments.â€
The mailing address is:
El Dorado County Victims of CPS
P.O. Box 22
Placerville, CA 95667
Ernie Claudio, co-founder of Tahoe Victims of CPS
By Liz Bentson, Las Vegas Sun
About a year ago, investors were so convinced that Harrah’s Entertainment would file for bankruptcy protection that the company’s bonds — its promises to pay back billions of dollars — traded for 10 cents on the dollar.
Since then, the world’s largest gaming company — one of the country’s biggest buyout targets during the real estate bubble — has surprised naysayers by carving out a foothold of three years during which it can afford to make interest payments on its debt. The hope is that by 2013, its earnings will be high again. They will need to be because that year a $6 billion debt payment will be due. Another $9 billion in debt, by analysts’ estimates, comes due between 2015 and 2019.
The 2008 leveraged buyout that took Harrah’s private doubled its debt — it has more debt than any other gaming company.