The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency is hosting its second annual Community Appreciation Day and Lake Spirit Awards on Sept. 27 from 4–7pm at its offices at 128 Market St., Stateline.

This year’s theme is Making Progress and will focus on the Regional Plan update and the fifth anniversary of the Angora Fire.

Partners include the Tahoe Science Consortium which will donate a display of Angora Fire photos and Tahoe Douglas Fire Protection District which will provide a ladder and squad truck, an interactive ember house, along with a booth on Living With Fire and creating defensible space.

The family event will include live music, a free barbecue dinner, activities for kids, an ice cream social hosted by members of TRPA’s Governing Board and Advisory Planning Commission, and demonstration booths explaining the Regional Plan update and TRPA’s mission, as well as a TRPA boat where children can conduct mock inspections for aquatic invasive species with staff from the Tahoe Resource Conservation District.

The event will also include announcing the winners of the Lake Spirit Awards honoring real people making real progress at protecting Lake Tahoe. Members of the public are encouraged to nominate members of the community who have gone above and beyond the call of duty to protect the beauty and clarity of the Lake.

This year TRPA is adding an extra category to the Lake Spirit Awards contest. One category will be for everyday citizens, and the other will be for agency and environmental science representatives. Nominations for the Lake Spirit Awards can be made online through Sept. 16.

Adam Rose, 38, of South Lake Tahoe as of Wednesday afternoon was in the intensive care unit at Renown Medical Center in Reno fighting for his life after being struck by a hit-and-run driver the day before.

The suspect, 54-year-old Christine Whalen of South Lake Tahoe, was later apprehended. She was booked into El Dorado County jail on charges of suspicion of felony driving while under the influence, felony hit and run, misdemeanor hit and run, misdemeanor evading police officers, and misdemeanor obstructing, delaying or resisting arrest.

The incident occurred Aug. 21 at 5pm on Highway 89 near 12th Street. Rose was on his bike headed north and Whalen in her Subaru headed the same way. According to police officers, Whalen swerved to the right and struck Rose.

A witness called 911 and followed Whalen’s vehicle.

Whalen reportedly hit several tree stumps near Tahoe Island Drive and Tahoe Vista Avenue. The vehicle finally stopped when it struck the Bi-State Petroleum building on James Avenue.

The suspect tried to run, but Officer Donna Kingman was able to chase her down.

The investigation is continuing and anyone with information is encouraged to call the South Lake Tahoe Police Department, at (530) 542.6100.

 — Lake Tahoe News staff report

By John Coleman, Harvard Business Review

When David Petraeus visited the Harvard Kennedy School in 2009, one of the meetings he requested was with author Doris Kearns Goodwin. Petraeus, who holds a PhD in International Relations from Princeton, is a fan of Team of Rivals and wanted time to speak to the famed historian about her work. Apparently, the great general (and current CIA director) is something of a bibliophile.

He’s increasingly an outlier. Even as global literacy rates are high (84 percent), people are reading less and less deeply. The National Endowment for the Arts (PDF) has found that “[r]eading has declined among every group of adult Americans,” and for the first time in American history, “less than half of the U.S. adult American population is reading literature.” Literacy has been improving in countries like India and China, but that literacy may not translate into more or deeper reading.

This is terrible for leadership, where my experience suggests those trends are even more pronounced. Business people seem to be reading less — particularly material unrelated to business. But deep, broad reading habits are often a defining characteristic of our greatest leaders and can catalyze insight, innovation, empathy, and personal effectiveness.

Note how many business titans are or have been avid readers. According to the New York Times, Steve Jobs had an “inexhaustible interest” in William Blake; Nike founder Phil Knight so reveres his library that in it you have to take off your shoes and bow; and Harman Industries founder Sidney Harman called poets “the original systems thinkers,” quoting freely from Shakespeare and Tennyson. In Passion & Purpose, David Gergen notes that Carlyle Group founder David Rubenstein reads dozens of books each week. And history is littered not only with great leaders who were avid readers and writers (remember, Winston Churchill won his Nobel prize in Literature, not Peace), but with business leaders who believed that deep, broad reading cultivated in them the knowledge, habits, and talents to improve their organizations.

Read the whole story

By Dale Kasler, Sacramento Bee

Raley’s and its labor union, locked in a lengthy stalemate over a new contract, are finally talking again.

The West Sacramento grocery chain and the United Food and Commercial Workers will resume negotiations Aug. 31.

It will be their first bargaining session since June 8 and follows several more weeks of turmoil in Northern California’s unionized supermarket industry.

Two weeks ago, UFCW members rejected a tentative contract with Save Mart Supermarkets by a wide margin – but stopped short of authorizing a strike against the Modesto grocer. Negotiations haven’t yet resumed.

And last Friday, Raley’s announced it’s closing two more stores – one in Woodland and one in Pittsburg. The struggling chain has now closed six stores this year.

Raley’s, Save Mart and Northern California’s third unionized chain, Safeway, are pushing for wage and benefit concessions as they try to recapture market share from Wal-Mart and other nonunion competitors. Talks began last fall.

Read the whole story

By Huffington Post

It’s tough to eat healthy, and even tougher to find healthy foods on a budget. Even though eating well is an investment in your long-term health, it can be hard to find nutrient-dense, environmentally friendly foods that don’t hit your wallet.

Environmental Working Group, a non-profit research organization, has examined over 1,000 foods to determine the ones that have the fewest pesticides, contaminants and artificial ingredients … and are reasonably priced. Their printable booklet “Good Food on a Tight Budget” offers tips for healthy, inexpensive foods.

They recommend making a meal plan, cooking at home, skipping processed foods, growing your own vegetables, and swapping beans and lentils for meat. Making the swap isn’t just good for your health.

According to a previous report by the group, if every American cut meat and cheese from their diet for one day per week, it would equal removing 7.6 million cars from the road.

Read the whole story

By Eric Hoover, Chronicle of Higher Education

Weathering the recession with a college degree can be tough. Weathering it without one is much tougher.

That’s the main finding of a new report based on a study by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. According to a report on the findings, the vast majority of jobs lost during and after the recession were held by workers with no more than a high-school diploma.

On the flip side of the job-loss equation, most gains during the recovery came in the form of jobs filled by workers with at least some postsecondary education. “The gradual shift to more educated workers has been going on for decades,” the report concludes, “but the recession gave it a mighty push.”

In this season of high anxiety about the economy and the costs of attending college, politicians and pundits have questioned whether college, in any form, is worth the money. The new report—which analyzes the effects of recession and recovery by education level, gender, industry, and occupation—offers a forceful answer.

“In jobs at every skill level and in many different occupations, the better-educated applicant has the edge,” the report concludes. “For workers, the findings point the way to acquiring the skills that the market needs and values. For students and their parents who are contemplating whether higher education is a good value, these findings make clear that the answer is a resounding yes.”

Read the whole story

Publisher’s note: This letter was read at the Aug. 21, 2012, South Lake Tahoe City Council meeting by the author, longtime South Lake Tahoe resident Gloria Hartoonian, and is reprinted with permission.

At the very end of the Aug. 21 City Council meeting, I heard Councilman [Hal] Cole suggest that our Tahoe Transportation District representative, Miss [Angela] Swanson, return to this council with five additional options for the loop road project. Out of the five, a subcommittee of the City Council would narrow the choice to three alternatives. And of these three, participants of a public workshop would then consider and choose the alternative that would be implemented by the TTD.

In this way Mr. Cole suggests that the city can reassert ownership of the loop road process on behalf of its citizens.

We should remember, however, that among the 50 alternatives, all but one was discarded by the TTD, so we will be considering already rehashed and discarded ideas. And by asking the TTD to send us five of these already discarded alternatives, the TTD, not you and the community, retain ownership of the loop road project.

The TTD could send back five ideas all unacceptable except the best of the bad that being the one our community has already rejected.

I don’t know what the solution to this problem is, but several council meetings ago many business and homeowners came forward and offered new possible ideas for the implementation of the road. To my mind these citizens were already trying to take ownership of the process by offering new ideas.

The upcoming workshop should be open to fresh possibilities from the community or else a subcommittee of this City Council — two of you — will have already narrowed the choices the rest of us may or may not want.

How this council shapes the public workshop — the openness and flexibility it allows — will determine its outcome.

Please avoid making the workshop manipulative, delivering a loop road alternative that pleases perhaps not even the majority of yourselves.

— Gloria Hartoonian

By Kathryn Reed

While neither the Tahoe Transportation District, nor the loop road was on the Aug. 21 South Lake Tahoe City Council agenda, plenty of words were spoken about the two.

It was agreed the previously scheduled Aug. 28 workshop on the loop road would be indefinitely delayed. This is to give TTD time to figure out its alternatives. However, Councilmen Bruce Grego and Hal Cole wanted to go forward with the meeting.

Proposed loop road by Tahoe Transportation District.

The TTD board is set to meet Sept. 14, 9:30am at its Stateline office.

While the district is working on alternatives, it is not releasing info about those discussions. This was mentioned by councilmembers and has been shared with Lake Tahoe News by others seeking to get details about what TTD is working on.

Carl Hasty, TTD executive director, told Lake Tahoe News, “What we are doing is more like compiling the alternatives that we know of into a briefing piece that can be used as part of the public process we want to get under way with the facilitated workshops. I think there are plenty of people out there with ideas and it is time to get the next phase of public input under way. As part of that we want to provide a concise background so that all can start from the same informed basis.”

At the September meeting he expects to seek approval of “acquisition of facilitation services, economic analysis services, and other technical studies for the range of alternatives in the area.”

The loop road, which has been discussed since the 1980s, in the latest configuration is designed to reroute Highway 50 behind Harrah’s and MontBleu, while abolishing businesses and residences in South Lake Tahoe. The outcome, as seen by advocates, is the creation of a more pedestrian friendly casino core. While the road would still go through this area, it would become a city street on both sides of the state line.

Correspondence between the city and TTD have been going back and forth. Here is the South Lake Tahoe letter and the TTD letter.

In other action Aug. 21:

• Tahoe resident Hanna Bernard spoke about the need to keep forested areas open to mountain bikers and snowmobilers by commenting on the U.S. Forest Plan – saying no to more wilderness areas.

• Bob Lear and Ann Colzzi are frustrated no one with the city approached residents in the Harrison Avenue area about plans to make streets one-way.

• An emergency no-smoking ordinance affecting city owned and operated property was passed. It takes effect immediately. The first reading of the permanent ordinance was approved as well.

Jude is one of those dogs who takes a while for shelter visitors to notice. Adopters just seem to pass up darker and brindle dogs, no matter their personality.

But he is a favorite of the shelter staff and volunteers because no matter what he looks like, he acts like a pure bred Lab – he is super happy and affectionate, and his tail is always wagging.

Keep your feet out of the way because he will probably sit on them. And look at those eyes and his big smile.

Jude is neutered, microchipped, and vaccinated. He is at the El Dorado County Animal Services shelter in Meyers, along with many other dogs and cats who are waiting for their new homes. Go online to see photos and description of all pets at the shelter.

Call (530) 573.7925 for directions, hours, and other information on adopting a pet.

For spay-neuter assistance for South Tahoe residents, go online.

— Karen Kuentz

• Freshies in South Lake Tahoe is hosting a Tahoe Youth & Family Services full Moon Dance Party on the roof Aug. 31, 8-10pm. Tickets are limited — (530) 542.3630.

• TJ Maxx is having a hiring fair for its South Lake Tahoe store Sept. 6-8 at Inn by the Lake.

• Lake Tahoe author Todd Borg has three spots left for his Sept. 14-16 writing workshop in Sacramento. Go online for more info.

• Human-powered athletes will unite Aug. 25 in Incline Village for the off-road triathlon XTERRA Lake Tahoe.

• According to the Sugar Pine Foundation, “After many years of testing, the Forest Service Blister Rust Program has confirmed that a lovely, old double-top Western white pine tree at Kirkwood is resistant to white pine blister rust. We will collect its seed as part of our annual cone harvest this September.”