A man renting property owned by the Nutting Family Trust has been arrested on charges of marijuana cultivation.

Former El Dorado County Supervisor Ray Nutting is a trustee.

Justen David Schultz, 44, is accused of growing pot in 10 foot by 30 foot, and 20 foot by 40 foot plots. There are also two greenhouses on the property on Gravel Court, according to officials.

Schultz also faces charges of transportation, distribution or importation of a controlled substance; cultivation of marijuana; and possession of marijuana for sale. An enhancement was also added.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

The July 13 accident where a bear was killed on Highway 50 near Zephyr Cove did not involve a local teenager.

Lake Tahoe News apologizes for publishing wrong information.

“Our dispatch center cross referenced another person and vehicle with the same accident number. We have cleared up the issue,” Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper Dave Gibson told Lake Tahoe News.

Jose Cruz Calvillo-Vasquez of Sun Valley was traveling east on Highway 50 at 9:35pm when he struck a bear in the fast lane and knocked it into the slow westbound lane.

No people were injured.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By Kathryn Reed

By the time the Bijou erosion control project is completed this year, South Lake Tahoe will have put in an $11 million investment to curtail fine sediment from reaching Lake Tahoe.

This section of town is responsible for about one-third of the sediment in the city limits that reaches the lake.

“It’s designed to handle most storms,” Ray Jarvis, city public works director, told Lake Tahoe News. “Bijou has historically been the biggest problem for discharge into the lake.”

Crews work July 15 on the Bijou erosion control project. Photo/LTN

The city per Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board’s total maximum daily load policy is mandated to reduce the amount of fine sediment entering the lake.

The 42 acres are comprised of 43 parcels, most of which are commercial.

At the July 15 City Council meeting a community facilities district was formed that includes 10 of those parcels. This means they will pay for some of the improvements and ongoing maintenance via a tax that will be assessed to the property. This will allow property owners to receive their best management practices certificate from the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.

That BMP certificate is something all properties in the Lake Tahoe Basin are supposed to have by now. It demonstrates the property owner has met mandated erosion control requirements.

What no one at the city or TRPA could immediately answer is if property owners who are not in the community facilities district, will still get a certificate.

The 10 properties that are part of the CFD are paying a reduced price for their BMPs compared to if they did them on their own. The cost is about 10 cents per square foot of impervious surface through the CFD, while it is between $1 and $3 per square foot individually.

The remaining properties can join the CFD at a later date if so desired.

This project looks at the stormwater runoff more holistically instead of parcel-by-parcel. So instead of keeping water on each site, the water collected via gutters is diverted to larger catch basins for filtration purposes.

The problem with this area is that so much of it paved. It includes the Bijou center where CVS is located.

Storm vaults were inserted underground by Lake Shore Lodge last year. Now much of the work is concentrated on Fairway Avenue on the other side of Highway 50.

The system is designed to handle 220,000 gallons of water at once.

The water will collect in the basins for the sediment to settle, then the water will be pumped back to the meadow area near Glenwood Avenue where it will be filtered naturally. There are still drains that are along the beaches of Lake Tahoe that carry treated water.

By Amber Phillips, Las Vegas Sun

WASHINGTON — Sen. Dean Heller has invested months lobbying his colleagues to extend benefits for unemployed Americans.

In a rare feat of bipartisanship, Republicans and Democrats from Nevada’s six-person delegation have backed Heller’s effort to renew benefits for the long-term unemployed after Congress let the program expire in December.

The bill has become personal for Heller because Nevada’s unemployment rate remains stubbornly high at 7.9 percent, the second highest in the country. “This year has been extremely difficult for Nevadans who still do not know how they are going to pay their bills or feed their families,” Heller said in a recent press conference.

But there has been one noticeable holdout from Nevada’s delegation: Republican Rep. Mark Amodei.

Amodei, who represents Reno and Carson City, didn’t support extending the benefits when it passed the Senate and died in the House this spring, and he isn’t sure he’ll join in this time, either.

Amodei’s opposition falls in line with House Speaker John Boehner. Despite Heller’s repeated calls on Boehner for support, the Ohio Republican hasn’t brought the bill to a House vote.

Read the whole story

By Seth Nidever, Hanford Sentinel

HANFORD – The struggle to find additional irrigation water for Kings County’s parched Westside was on full display Monday as the comment period closed on a proposed 35,000 acre-feet water transfer from Placer County Water Agency to thirsty Westlands Water District, 80,000 acres of which are in Kings County.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the Central Valley Project that is contracted to supply Sacramento River water to Westlands, is brokering the deal.

The Bureau has given Westlands a 0 percent allocation this year due to drought and regulatory demands in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River delta.

That means that Westlands, like other districts with permanent crops that face an imminent threat from drought, is out on the open market trying to find more of the precious wet stuff.

The water will make its way down the American River into Folsom Lake, then through the delta and a series of canals to Westlands. It could be used immediately on crops, or it might be stored in San Luis Reservoir.

Westlands is paying Placer County $325 an acre-foot for the transfer, according to Einar Maisch, director of strategic affairs for Placer County Water Agency. That comes out to $11.4 million.

Read the whole story

By Jennifer Chaussee, Reuters

A long-shot effort to break California into six separate states got a boost on Monday, when the billionaire venture capitalist behind the proposal said he had gathered enough signatures to place it on the ballot in two years.

Timothy Draper, a founder of a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that has invested in Twitter, Skype and Tesla, among other companies, has been agitating for months for a ballot initiative to chop the most populous U.S. state into smaller entities.

“It’s important because it will help us create a more responsive, more innovative and more local government, and that ultimately will end up being better for all of Californians,” said Roger Salazar, a spokesman for the campaign. “The idea … is to create six states with responsive local governments – states that are more representative and accountable to their constituents.”

Salazar said Monday that the campaign had gathered more than the roughly 808,000 signatures needed to place the measure on the November 2016 ballot. Draper and other supporters plan to file the signatures with California Secretary of State Debra Bowen on Tuesday.

Read the whole story

By Whip Villarreal, Las Vegas Review-Journal

CARSON CITY — Much of urban Nevada is quickly moving forward to license medical marijuana dispensaries, but patients in some rural areas might find it difficult to obtain the drug because local governments are opting out.

Another barrier to getting the drug is the apparent lack of interest by entrepreneurs to operate in the sparsely populated areas. Nevada’s rural counties reported little to no interest from applicants wishing to establish dispensaries, according to the Nevada Association of Counties.

The City Council in Fernley, which in 2010 had a population of 19,368, voted 3-1 last week to prohibit the dispensing, growing and manufacturing of marijuana for medical purposes within the city limits, according to Mayor LeRoy Goodman. The action taken was to direct staff to draft an ordinance to officially ban a dispensary in the Northern Nevada city.

Elsewhere in Lyon County, Yerington Mayor George Dini said a medical marijuana dispensary is “not a good fit for our city.” The town in 2010 had a population of 3,048.

With decisions by Lyon and Storey counties not to allow dispensaries, residents of this western Nevada region will be forced to drive elsewhere to purchase medical marijuana. A patient from Yerington would need to travel 120 miles round trip to get to the nearest dispensary in Carson City.

Read the whole story

Shake Shack pays employees well above minimum wage. Photo/LTN

By Steven Greenhouse and Stephanie Strom, New York Times

CONCORD, N.H. — Ben Nawn, a sophomore at the University of New Hampshire, says his friends who work at McDonald’s are envious of what he earns working for the Boloco burrito restaurant here.

While they make $7.25 an hour, the federal minimum wage, Nawn receives $9 an hour, which Boloco sets as the floor at its chain of 22 restaurants, most of them in New England.

Nawn works at one of the handful of restaurant chains that deliberately pay well above the federal minimum wage. In-N-Out Burger-based in California pays all its employees at least $10.50 an hour, while Shake Shack, the trendy, lines-out-the-door burger emporium, has minimum pay of $9.50. Moo Cluck Moo, a fledgling company with two hamburger joints in Michigan, starts everyone at $15.

These companies’ founders were intent on paying their workers more than the going rate partly because they wanted to do the right thing, they said, and partly because they thought this would help their companies thrive long term.

“The No. 1 reason we pay our team well above the minimum wage is because we believe that if we take care of the team, they will take care of our customers,” said Randy Garutti, the chief executive of Shake Shack.

The nation’s fast-food restaurants, which employ many of the country’s low-wage workers, are at the center of the debate over low pay and raising the federal minimum wage — fueled by protests demanding that fast-food chains establish a $15 wage floor. McDonald’s was pilloried last year for a hotline that advised employees how to seek food stamps and public assistance for heating and medical expenses.

Read the whole story

The vacant lot on Ski Run and Highway 50 looks to Ski Run Marina, from left, Lake Tahoe Vacation Resort, and Red Hut. Photo/Kathryn Reed

By Kathryn Reed

South Lake Tahoe is about to own a highly valuable piece of property in the city – assuming the City Council agrees to buy it.

On the July 15 council meeting the 1½ acres on the corner of Ski Run Boulevard and Highway 50 is on the agenda. It had been acquired by the now defunct Redevelopment Agency in deals with the prior owner of the timeshare complex that is kitty-corner to this lot. Originally that land was to be developed as another phase of what is now a Diamond Resorts owned property.

It is one of several parcels the Successor Agency needs to eventually unload.

“This is one of the last pieces of undeveloped prime real estate (in the city),” City Manager Nancy Kerry told Lake Tahoe News.

The appraised value is $800,000, which is what the city would pay. The city has $1.8 million in undesignated reserves. That pot of money is proposed to be tapped to buy the land.

“This meets the council’s objective to advance economic development. This gives them the opportunity to own a piece of land they have never owned,” Kerry said.

It comes with coverage, but no commercial floor area or tourist accommodation units. It has 88 parking spaces deeded to it from the parking garage next door that is owned by Diamond Resorts.

With the state dissolving redevelopment agencies, a convoluted process is in place for those entities to get rid of land and other holdings they own. Ultimately the Oversight Board will have to approve the purchase. That group’s next meeting is July 25 at 3pm at Lake Tahoe Airport.

This parcel has been on the market, but no potential buyer could make it work in the post-redevelopment era. Ideas had been to turn it into a high-end spa or drugstore like Walgreens.

Now the city would have control over what goes there. It’s possible the city would sell the land to a developer contingent upon what is built. There could be a lease to buy option as well.

“The next step is to market the property and see what kind of interest there is today,” Kerry said.

South Lake Tahoe is sitting on commercial floor area commodities, so developing the site is possible. (In the Lake Tahoe Basin, the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency has made commercial floor area and tourist accommodation units commodities, and has limited how many of each is allowed.)

Other redevelopment/Successor Agency items are also on Tuesday’s council agenda. They involve dealing in part with the $7 million the city took from the general fund to make the Heavenly Village project a reality and the other is the Housing Agency.

This taking was unbeknownst to the public until long after the money was spent. And allegedly the council – which at the time consisted of Hal Cole, Tom Davis, Judy Brown, Kathay Lovell and John Upton – didn’t know either. At least that’s what they said at a May 2003 council meeting when the gifting of public funds – aka taxpayer money – was acknowledged by then City Manager Dave Jinkens.

It was in 2004 that then-Mayor Davis signed a retroactive loan agreement between the city and Redevelopment Agency so the general fund would be repaid. There is still $4 million, which includes interest, that needs to be paid.

Tuesday’s agenda item will help speed up that process.

In 2010, the state “borrowed” $2 million from the city’s Redevelopment Agency. The agency didn’t have the money so it borrowed $426,000 from the Housing Agency.

Money to pay back the Housing Agency and city will come from revenues of sales of former Redevelopment Agency holdings, like the Ski Run-Highway 50 property, as well as property taxes.

A complicated state process allows those debts to be added back as an obligation of the non-existent Redevelopment Agency. The Successor Agency has to approve these transactions.

Kerry said the multimillion-dollar note owed the city could take upward of 10 years to pay off, but she was adamant the debt would be paid once the agencies vote on all the transactions.

On the Aug. 5 council agenda will likely be the option to refinance the bonds associated with redevelopment. This will lower the debt payment, which could mean the Housing Agency and general fund bills get paid sooner.

A boat pulling a skier on Donner Lake ran over the tow-line of a Jet Ski, ejecting the children who were riding on the inner tube behind the personal watercraft.

The 7- and 8-year-old suffered minor injuries July 13. One youth was flown to Renown Medical Center in Reno by Careflight as a precaution based on the nature of the collision, but was listed in stable condition with only minor injuries. Both were wearing life vests.

Neither alcohol nor drugs appear to be a factor in the Sunday afternoon accident, according to Truckee police officers.

“There is no doubt the use of personal flotation devices in this incident reduced the severity of the injuries. Boaters on Donner Lake are also reminded the lake has a counterclockwise rule, meaning boats must travel in a counterclockwise direction whenever they are on plane or towing persons,” Truckee police officers said in a statement.

Anyone with any information on this incident is asked to cal 530.550.2323.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report