A former Stateline nightclub worker is likely going to prison.
Joseph I. Guillen, 37, is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 22. He admitted to taking nearly $10,000 from Peek inside Harrah’s Lake Tahoe when he worked there in 2015.
Guillen was a bartender in the VIP area.
— Lake Tahoe News staff report
A second search warrant was executed this month at the home of Niki Congero who is under investigation for allegedly embezzling from Lake Tahoe Humane Society.
More evidence was seized from the house where she was living in the states street area of South Lake Tahoe.
She has not been arrested nor charged with any crime.
Humane Society officials believe Congero took at least $100,000 in the few years she worked at the nonprofit. She was fired March 31.
Congero is no longer living in South Lake Tahoe. She had been posting garage sale dates on the Facebook page South Lake Tahoe & Around the Lake Garage Sale. She is reportedly in Tennessee.
“I have heard about her leaving town,” Police Chief Brian Uhler told Lake Tahoe News.
Uhler would not share a time line for filing any potential charges.
— Lake Tahoe News staff report
A red flag warning has been issued for today from 1-11pm for northeastern California and western Nevada.
This means the fire danger is extreme.
The National Weather Service in Reno said the combination of high winds and low humidity through June 27 will pose a greater fire risk.
This means people should be on even higher alert when conducting activities that could lead to a fire.
On Sunday night Tahoe Douglas fire crews were making people extinguish there barbecues as they were tailgating at the Paul Simon concert in Stateline. That’s an illegal fire in the basin.
— Lake Tahoe News staff report
By Carole Jablon-Bernardi
TRUCKEE – Truckee Tahoe Airport District doesn’t fall short when living up to its slogan, “Connected by more than a runway.”
Between 2012-16, there was a steady uptick in the economy and the airport authority noticed demand became greater. In 2016 the airport had 32,524 flight operations (landings and take offs) which was an increase of 5,000 operations from the previous year. This equates to an average of 89 operations per day, with heaviest aircraft traffic over holiday weekends and heavy tourist periods.
In order to manage this increase, the airport is building 10 “new” executive box hangars to accommodate larger twin engine planes with bigger wing spans. The hangars can’t get built fast enough as there is an 11-year wait list of approximately 27 people. Presently, there are 220 hangars.
Building more hangars isn’t the only solution to meeting a greater demand. The airport’s board realized its first priority was enhancing aviation safety.
Air traffic controllers work at the Truckee airport during the summer months. Photo/Carole Bernardi
Marc Lamb, aviation and community services manager at the airport, is prideful when describing the reasoning behind Truckee’s first temporary tower.
“The primary purpose of the new temporary seasonal tower, which started operations June 1, is to enhance aviation safety and to reduce neighborhood overhead flight annoyance. The pilot community feedback that we’ve been getting to date has been overwhelmingly in favor of the tower at KTRK,” Lamb said.
Why a seasonal tower? It’s based purely on volume. After setting things in motion back in 2014 with plans and FAA permit approval, KTRK – the call letters for the airport – started working with Midwest ATC based in Kansas. Midwest ATC moved ahead with building a pre-fabricated, modular, custom built military cab which is frequently used for temporary airport tower setups in extreme locations. The interior occupies radio transmission, recorder, automated weather observing systems, airfield light control, navigational monitoring, airfield surveillance and approach radar, and a complete suite of air traffic controller equipment. It was hoisted onto six shipping containers. A metal stairway leads up to the entrance.
“The idea of using shipping containers to form the main body of the tower, which would house the tower cab was well researched and fulfilled with Midwest ATC. We were assured the structure would meet all stringent building permit code requirements and that it could be erected relatively quickly and fit into our budget constraints,” Lamb told Lake Tahoe News.
The Truckee airport traffic control tower looks like stacked cargo trailers. Photo/Carole Bernardi
The tower is owned outright by the airport. It will be operational from June 1-Sept. 15. The structure will remain standing year round.
Midwest ATC staffs the tower with a floating reservoir of certified FAA air traffic controllers. Staffed with never less than two controllers (one air, one ground), from 7am-9pm; the maximum staff moves up to six controllers during peak hours.
There is a voluntary, but strongly requested flying curfew between 10pm and 7am as part of the airport’s good neighbor policy. When the tower ceases to operate come September, it will not be dismantled. The cost of the structure was $500,000, which included the hiring of FAA controllers. Because the tower is already assembled, the cost to operate next year will be at least half this amount.
In October, staff will report to the airport board and present the metrics based on the success and/or failure of the tower’s presence. They will be looking for fewer incursions (range of error) and reduction in noise and annoyance complaints.
Before the temporary tower was built, flight operations were run out of the universal communication viewing bay in the main airport building. Through radio frequency all air traffic control took place. Besides small aircraft flight the airport also deals with the glider operations, sky diving and flight instruction school on the property.
The airport serves 35,000 full-time residents and 60,000 peak period visitors, covers 1,200 acres at an elevation of 5,900 feet above sea level in the Martis Valley region (7 miles north of Lake Tahoe), straddling the Nevada and Placer county lines.
Classified as a general aviation airport (no TSA), it services charter and private aircraft only (less than 30 seats) and no commercial flights. The popularity of member airline travel companies such as Net Jet, Wheels Up, Red Stripe and Surf Air (Surf Air has a reception space in the airport lobby) have shown enormous growth reflecting the demand.
—–
Note:
· The Truckee Tahoe Airport invites the community to come learn about the new temporary tower every Friday from 4-5pm through June. These Q&A opportunities will take place in the administration building.
By Ivan Penn, Los Angeles Times
As record-setting temperatures surged into the triple digits in parts of California last week, the manager of the state’s electrical grid put out an urgent plea: Turn down the AC and conserve power to avoid rotating outages.
The two-day flex alert by the California Independent System Operator drew headlines from dozens of media outlets across the state and country. It also sent electricity prices on the wholesale market soaring four to five times higher than normal — a cost that will be passed on to utility customers.
There was no statewide shortage of electricity — not even close, according to a Times analysis of federal and state energy data.
Even as the mercury climbed, consumers used 44,184 megawatts Tuesday — 3,656 fewer than the forecast. But the system can generate about 71,000 megawatts, which means there was 38 percent unused capacity. That’s well above the 15 percent reserve required by the state for emergencies.
By Chris Kudialis, Las Vegas Sun
In a Legislature in which the ratio of women to men was among the country’s highest, gender equality issues ranging from tampon taxes to equal pay were advanced.
Representing less than a quarter of the nation’s lawmakers, women held almost 40 percent of the seats across Nevada’s Senate and Assembly in the 2017 session. Ellen Spiegel, a Democratic assemblywoman from Henderson, said this year’s session demonstrated the difference more women can make.
“Having so many women legislators be interested in women’s issues and with there being enough of us, we were able to make our voices heard and make an impact,” said Spiegel, who sponsored Assembly Bill 113 on accommodations for working mothers.
There is some temporary rejiggering going on within the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit headquarters in South Lake Tahoe.
Forest Supervisor Jeff Marsolais is currently the acting deputy regional forester role for the Pacific Southwest Region.
He should be back in Tahoe in mid-August.
Teresa McClung, who came on board last fall as deputy forest supervisor for LTBMU, is the acting forest supervisor.
“She is already engaged in projects in the basin and this makes for a more seamless transition,” Lisa Herron with the LTBMU told Lake Tahoe News.
The acting deputy forest supervisor is Lesley Yen.
The changes have been necessary to accommodate the leadership transition within the USDA.
— Lake Tahoe News staff report
By Richard N. Velotta, Las Vegas Review-Journal
Policies on how the legal use of marijuana will affect the gaming industry are expected to be aired next month as regulators grapple with the oncoming legalization of recreational pot.
Nevada Gaming Commission members took advantage of an unrelated company licensing Thursday to glean information about how Colorado gaming authorities address issues related to recreational pot as an unofficial preview of coming attractions.
While gaming regulators have drawn a line in the sand between gaming and marijuana, there are still dozens of unresolved questions they want to discuss as the date of the first sales of recreational marijuana nears.
By Micah Madenberg, New York Times
The travel industry is voicing a common refrain: President Trump’s travel ban, terror attacks in Europe and a laptop ban represent a recipe for a potential sharp decline in visitors to and from the United States.
“When you hear words like ‘travel ban,’ it puts a big chill” on travel and tourism, James J. Murren, chairman and chief executive of MGM Resorts, said at an industry conference in New York.
Some data is backing up those concerns. Nearly 20 percent fewer people are visiting this summer from the Middle East, the focus of Trump’s travel ban, even though the policy has been blocked by American courts. As of early June, overall advance airline bookings to the United States were down 3.4 percent for this year’s summer travel season compared with the same time last year, according to ForwardKeys, a Spanish company that tracks air travel.
Beaches are hard to find with all the water in Lake Tahoe. Photo/Kathryn Reed
By Amy Graff, San Francisco Chronicle
The process of the Sierra Nevada spring snow melt sped up last week as a heat wave brought triple-digit temperatures to parts of the Western United States.
More than 12 billion gallons of water poured into Lake Tahoe over the past week. That staggering amount of water resulted in the lake level rising 4 inches since June 16.
With all this water, the lake is now only three inches from filling — and will likely reach full capacity in mid-July.