Jesse Shane Gage
A South Lake Tahoe man is accused of threatening to kill his grandmother with a knife.
Jesse Shane Gage, 30, was arrested on charges of terrorizing and trying to harm an elderly person, and exhibiting a deadly weapon. He was taken into custody Nov. 20 about 11:35pm.
The two live together. The 73-year-old woman was able to escape and call 911 from a neighbor’s.
— Lake Tahoe News staff report
By Dale Kasler, Sacramento Bee
CalPERS pushed back against Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday, defending an investment strategy the governor had labeled “irresponsible.”
Rob Feckner, CalPERS’ board president, issued a statement saying Brown’s alternative plan “would have caused financial strain on many of California’s local municipalities who are still recovering from the financial crisis.”
After more than a year of studying the issue, the board of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System approved a plan this week that’s designed to gradually reduce its investment risk – and its expected returns as well. The plan is expected to reduce the CalPERS “discount rate,” a forecast of annual returns, to 6.5 percent in 21 years. The rate is currently 7.5 percent.
By Sandra Chereb, Las Vegas Review-Journal
CARSON CITY — A state panel Friday finalized short-term and long-range recommendations for dealing with drought, from requiring meters on all water outlets in Nevada to stepping up drought monitoring and conservation efforts.
The recommendations to be delivered to Gov. Brian Sandoval from the Nevada Drought Forum are a starting point. Much of the heavy lifting, if the governor pursues the findings, will come during the 2017 Legislature.
Sandoval created the forum in April following four years of drought and looming uncertainties over how long it will last. While forecasts call this year for a strong El Nino year — a weather phenomenon associated with wetter than usual winters, especially in the Southwest — its effect on Northern Nevada is not assured.
By J.D. Morris, Las Vegas Sun
Nevada gaming officials put in place sweeping new regulations for nightclubs last week, increasing their oversight of a crucial but sometimes risky component of business at casino-resorts.
Under the set of rules adopted by the Nevada Gaming Commission on Thursday, casino operators must make at least one employee in charge of monitoring their nightclubs and a broad set of club employees need to register in the same way as casino workers, among other requirements. The regulations were hashed out in previous workshops that included the Gaming Control Board members and industry representatives.
The registration requirement applies to “all supervisors, managers, security and surveillance personnel, servers, server assistants, bussers, restroom attendants” and anyone employed or contracted to offer hosting or VIP services, according to a draft of the regulations.
Two men are wanted in connection with a home invasion robbery on the West Slope.
El Dorado County sheriff’s deputies say they have positively identified Jeremy Ross and Deshawn Stone, both 21, as the suspects in the case. They are considered armed and dangerous.
The duo is accused of entering a home in Greenwood in the late morning of Nov. 19. They allegedly used zip-ties and duct-tape at gunpoint to restrain the occupants. A large quantity of processed marijuana and other miscellaneous property was taken in the robbery, deputies said.
The sheriff’s office did not release the information until four days after the incident.
Ross and Stone fled the area in a white or silver smaller SUV. Felony warrants have been issued for them.
Any information on their whereabouts should be forwarded 530.642.4710 or payneb@edso.org.
— Lake Tahoe News staff report
Over the next year and a half, the “snowball effect” caused his relationship to crumble and he wound up homeless, scraping by on a $221 monthly general relief check.
With add-on penalties, his total fines swelled to $5,000.
Thanks to a sweeping traffic ticket amnesty that took effect Oct. 1, Jefferson now is on a payment plan of $1 per month — an amount that will increase once he lands a job. Last week, he got his license back.
By Chris Isidore, CNN Money
Driving over the river and through the woods will be quite a bit cheaper this Thanksgiving, thanks to rapidly falling gas prices.
The average price of a gallon of regular gas is $2.13 according to AAA, down 75 cents from a year ago. That decline means consumers will save about $7 billion on gas during the 37-day period between now and Christmas, or about $40 a driver.
And prices are expected to keep falling.
By Kathryn Reed
It pays to shop local.
To keep sales tax dollars in the Lake Tahoe Basin and Truckee areas groups are making it potentially profitable to not leave the hill to shop.
This is the inaugural year for Lake Tahoe South Shore Chamber of Commerce’s shop local campaign, while the North Shore-Truckee area started a similar campaign in 2013.
“We are encouraging people to change their habits by offering some prizes,” Shannon Earley with the South Shore chamber told Lake Tahoe News.
Awareness is the first step – for people to realize shopping outside the area, even online, is hurting local businesses as well as tax coffers.
“When you spend money locally, significantly more money stays and circulates in the community through payroll, taxes, and other expenditures, thus strengthening the economic base and well being of our community,” the North Lake Tahoe Chamber says on its website. “Local businesses help sustain vibrant, walkable town centers, which in turn improve water and air quality. Even though things appear to cost less elsewhere, when you factor in the cost of shipping, driving and your time, a local purchase may be the best choice and helps to reduce your footprint.”
According to an economic report released this fall by the Tahoe Prosperity Center, retail spending has not reached prerecession levels in South Lake Tahoe, Incline Village, Stateline and Zephyr Cove. However, Northstar and Squaw Valley are posting numbers better than when the economy collapsed. This is attributed a new mix of retail at those villages.
The South Shore chamber say, “Money spent at a local business generates 3.5 times more wealth for the local economy compared to money spent at a chain.”
The incentive programs are different at each end of the lake.
On the South Shore – which goes from Zephyr Cove to Meyers to Camp Richardson – the shop local campaign requires customers to submit their receipts online. For five weeks the person spending the most money that week will win a prize. Grand prizes at the end of the promotion will go to the overall biggest spender as well as to the person who has the most number of receipts no matter the total.
Shopping does not have to be done at a store that belongs to this particular chamber. There are a few limits on what counts as shopping – insurance and mortgage payments don’t count, buying a new car does.
On the North Shore shoppers collect stickers for every $25 spent at a participating store. Each card with four stickers is then entered into a drawing.
The South Shore campaign runs Nov. 28-Jan. 1. The North Shore dates are Nov. 27-Dec. 24.
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Notes:
· For more info on the South Shore program, go online.
· For North Shore-Truckee info, go online.
By Jim Miller, Sacramento Bee
There is no such thing as free money.
That chestnut of fiscal wisdom sometimes gets overlooked amid local or statewide campaigns to authorize borrowing to pay for public works projects, avoid spending cuts, or cover other endeavors without raising taxes.
But a huge new set of government borrowing data from the California Treasurer’s Office for the first time details how government entities – from the state on down to counties, cities and special districts – planned to repay $1.5 trillion in bonds sold since the mid-1980s.
Some of the borrowing has been financed with special taxes, or from the growth in property tax revenue in now-defunct redevelopment areas.
By Tara Duggan, San Francisco Chronicle
Local crabs for Thanksgiving are a lost cause, but crustacean lovers and local crabbers got a glimmer of hope Thursday.
New tests showed that crabs collected from the area around San Francisco, Half Moon Bay and Morro Bay have dropped to safe levels for domoic acid, the neurotoxin causing the unprecedented closure of the commercial crab season, which was supposed to open Nov. 15.
The new results from the California Department of Public Health are no guarantee the season will open any time soon, though. Local crabs tested high for domoic acid in previous tests, and in order to lift its health advisory against Dungeness crab for specific areas, all samples collected from that area have to test at safe levels — defined as below 30 parts per million — for two weeks in a row.