To Fallen Leaf Lake Community Members,

After a lengthy conversation with David Livingston {El Dorado County counsel], it became very clear that I am unable to legally participate in the voting process at Fallen Leaf Lake. Per the Fallen Leaf Lake Community Services District “By-Laws” [see below], I must be registered to vote within the district in order to serve as a board member. Because I am unable to legally do so, I am resigning from the Fallen Leaf Lake Community Services District Board.

In parting, I would like to make a couple of comments. Fallen Leaf Lake has always been a very big part of my life. My family has been present at the lake since 1926 and we have always felt privileged to be ableto enjoy such a beautiful and wonderful place. Many, many of the people I have known over the years at Fallen Leaf Lake have been quite special to my family and myself. In order to preserve the beauty of Fallen Leaf Lake I spent countless hours and several hundred dollars of my own money to establish the first and only mandatory boat wash system and program in the state of California. I did this to ensure the physical beauty of Fallen Leaf Lake is kept intact for future generations.

Over the past two years, I have experienced a side of Fallen Leaf Lake that I am truly disheartened about.

It was my feeling that by simply being a member of our community the people at the lake had a special bond. Apparently this is not the case. Our community is divided, it is my belief that there is a portion of our community that wishes to control the community area for selfish reasons. This group does not seem to have the entire community, the CSD’s financial interests, and/or the public at large in mind. The fact that the board had accomplished so much in such a short time while being constantly criticized and even threatened is disturbing to stay the least. Within the last 1½ years we have seen the resignation of our interim General Manager Lee Vestal, our board President Dana Clark, our concessionaire Rick Firkins, our board Vice President Terri Thomas, and as recently as this morning our Secretary Treasurer Patsy Miller.

You can ask any of these people about their time involved with the CSD board and they will tell you that the criticism, harassment, and threats they received were if not the entire reason for their resignation at least part of their reason. There have been many people that have treated myself and others with disrespect, arrogance, aggression, and they have shown a sense of entitlement that would be unflattering to anyone.

This has been an organized assault on the board and people supporting the boards decision regarding our new concessionaire, the meetings, petitions, straw votes, letters, and emails [with no recipient list so the CSD was unable to reply to recipients] were circulated trying diligently to regain control of the community area. Many of these email and correspondences included inaccurate, false, and misleading information in order to sway the recipient’s views on issues. On several occasions these actions were done disrespectfully and even in unethical ways.

I have lost friends that I have known for years based on rumors and correspondences that have been circulated about me with no fact to back them up. These rumors and correspondences were circulated with the intent to discredit me personally.

As I have said in the past, the community area is not for controlling it is for sharing with everyone, this includes the entire community and the public at large. I wish our community and the public luck in being able to share and enjoy Fallen Leaf Lake in harmony with each other, at this time I am unsure if this is possible.

Sincerely,

Mike Kraft, CSD president

To the community,

The Lake Tahoe Bicycle Coalition is keeping its efforts rolling and producing results. And, we can accomplish more with your help. Here are a few ways you can help build our bicycle community: tell your favorite business about the free bike rack program and encourage them to get one; share your top 10 bike rides for a new bike website, help improve the bike trail map, get ready to participate in the Tahoe Bike & Trail Day Festival, and attend the mountain bike trails conference to learn and connect with others planning to build a world-class bicycle community and destination.

Now, no more whining about what isn’t happening. It is long time for all of us to recognize what is — how a dedicated group of bicyclists are working together with key stakeholders, agencies, organizations and businesses to help transform our region and become more livable, sustainable and bike friendly.

We can do more with your participation. Become a member of the Coalition. Volunteer to help out at our events. Voice your views and concerns at governmental meetings. Write letters to the editor and your representatives. Create events, programs, products or share your ideas with others to help build the future you see for Tahoe.

Working together, we can help create what is to be — now.

Enjoy the summer, be safe and friendly, and see you on the trails.

Ty Polastri, president Lake Tahoe Bicycle Coalition

By Kathryn Reed

Is Harry Reid taking a page out of Sharron Angles’ playbook?

It appeared so Tuesday at a soiree at a private home of a supporter of Reid’s. After the annual environmental summit at Sand Harbor, some people were invited to gather at this house off Lakeshore Boulevard in Incline Village.

I had an email invite. I showed up. Though my name was not on the list, I was let in and given a nametag. I mingled a bit. Then as the hostess began to speak I sat upfront on the wet grass in my skirt so I could hear and see what was going on.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid at a "private" house party Aug. 17. Photo/Kathryn Reed

She said all the niceties that one would expect at a function like this.

But what was a bit different about this gathering is that it was not a fundraiser for the Senate majority leader who hails from Nevada. It was not just Democrats in the crowd. It was not just Nevadans. A whole lot of registered voters from California were there to hear what he had to say.

Then Charles Goldman, Mr. Lake Clarity, said a few words about how scary it would be for Lake Tahoe if Reid were not re-elected. Then he read a poignant poem he wrote about Tahoe.

Next up was the senator. He spoke for a bit and then took questions. It was unscripted. Questions ranged from what his opinions are about volunteer health care professionals needing malpractice insurance to how the Democrats are going to get organized and have a more coherent message like the Republicans do to what’s going to be done about the U.S. Forest Service-biomass plants-fuels reduction.

As the questions started, a guy walked over and asked if I was with the media. I answered truthfully. He said he is one of Reid’s press guy’s and that this was not a media event. I said I wouldn’t write about it.

I guess I lied. But I didn’t mean to at the time. I did stop taking pictures and notes. It was just as well. I had someplace else to be.

Even though at the time I knew the First Amendment had my back, I chose not to cause a raucous. I commented to one person at the event as I left, “He needs the media more than we need him.” It’s pretty much the case for most electeds, but even more so in an election year.

It’s been in the intervening hours that it has gnawed on me being told this was not a media event. Who do these politicians and wannabe politicians think they represent? Who is paying their salary? Who is paying their Cadillac health insurance? Who is paying their enviable retirement?

The homeowner didn’t ask me to leave. If she had, I would have been good with that. It’s her house. She has every right to say who is and is not allowed in.

Is Reid like Angle, who he faces on Nov. 2?

Angle has told Fox News, “We wanted (the media) to ask the questions we want to answer so that they report the news the way we want it reported.”

Why didn’t Reid want the media to report on this event? He didn’t say anything substantive at the summit at Sand Harbor. Were his people afraid he might actually say something newsworthy? Wow – isn’t substance and honesty what voters deserve?

His people haven’t always cloistered Reid. That’s why I was shocked to experience this. Plus, I was invited.

Reid should look at who is working in his offices. I called weeks ago to his Reno and Washington offices seeking information about the Aug. 17 environmental summit that he hosted. No word from any of his people until I was told to leave an event hosted by someone else.

When Lake Tahoe News reporter Susan Wood was working at the Tahoe Daily Tribune a few years ago she rode the Heavenly gondola with Reid and two others. Just the four of them. Now that is giving the media access. That was the time he called the last president a liar – yes, that was his four-letter word for George W. Bush.

Harry Reid – talk and listen to the voters. The media, all media, are your conduit to do that. Preaching to the converted at private house parties isn’t going to get you elected.

The same goes for all people running for election at every level. Like, love or hate the media, we are the Fourth Estate. We have rights. We will exercise them. We will demand access, answers and the truth. You can tell it or we’ll uncover it. You decide.

Kathryn Reed is publisher of Lake Tahoe News.

By Carl Danner

Important details are delaying legislative confirmation of California’s commitment to a requirement of 33 percent renewable electricity by 2020. But there are more fundamental questions about what this mandate might achieve, and at what cost.

Start with the basics. The idea of renewables seems to be electricity made without fossil fuel, and therefore sustained through natural processes such as sunshine and wind. But the legal definition excludes our greatest renewable resources, California’s huge Sierra hydroelectric dams and the imports we get from similar facilities in the Pacific Northwest. Why not them?

The answer seems to involve a political perception that the genuine numbers make a less compelling case for the policy. In fact, not-eligible hydroelectricity covers between 10 percent to 20 percent of California’s needs, and existing nuclear power plants (if a lack of emissions is the test) add another 10 percent. It would weaken the argument to acknowledge that an additional quarter of our electricity already comes from zero-carbon sources.

Read the whole story

Carl Danner is a director with LECG, a consulting firm in San Francisco, and former chief of staff to the president of the California Public Utilities Commission.

Publisher’s note: This editorial is from the Aug. 13, 2010, Reno Gazette-Journal.

If you’ve wondered what the real impact of Title IX, the law that required schools to offer comparable athletic programs for men and women, has been, just thumb through the yearbook from a typical American high school of 50 years ago.

For someone accustomed to the vigorous sports programs available to so many young women in middle school, high school and college today, the dearth of girls in the athletics sections of those yearbooks is shocking.

With just a few exceptions, women weren’t expected to play sports, or even invited to play sports. (It should be noted that 50 years ago, many schools still steered boys into “manual training” — carpentry and auto mechanics — and girls into cooking and sewing classes.)

The credit for turnaround is owed almost entirely to Title IX.

Read the whole story

Publisher’s note: This editorial is from the Aug. 11, 2010, Orange County Register.

State legislators have decided to delay for two years a ballot measuring asking voters to approve an $11 billion bond to pay for water improvements – and a lot of pork, including a golf course, parks and Lake Tahoe water taxis. Proposition 18 was to appear on the November ballot. But, as the Sacramento Bee reported, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislators were “concerned voters will reject it” because of the state’s $19 billion budget deficit and a struggling economy.

We’re pleased to see Sacramento do the right thing, if for the wrong reasons. The water bond boondoggle was rife with payoffs to local constituencies added in order to win enough votes in the state Senate and Assembly to put the issue on the ballot. Those projects had little, if anything, to do with meeting the state’s water needs.

Backers also lost momentum when the state’s three-year drought ended amid late-spring storms covering the Sierra with snow, nearly filling the state’s largest reservoir and dumping above-average rainfall on California.

We’re unsurprised that the best reason to remove the water bond from the ballot wasn’t among those cited by its backers. California taxpayers would have been on the hook for about $800 million a year from the state’s general fund to pay on the bonds.

It borders on ludicrous that a government already $19 billion in the red would assume yet another $11 billion debt. That legislators and the governor were willing to borrow more when they couldn’t even pay off their ongoing expenses explains how California got in this $19-billion hole.

Read the whole story

By Joanne Marchetta

As has been the tradition each summer since 1997, all eyes will be on Lake Tahoe this month when the 14th annual Lake Tahoe Summit unfolds on the beautiful shores of Nevada’s Sand Harbor State Park.

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, host of this year’s summit on Aug. 17, has designated “Clarity for the Future: Protecting and Promoting the Wonder of Lake Tahoe” as a theme. This theme is fitting and appropriate, considering discussions taking place in Tahoe.

Joanne Marchetta

It is no accident that the day before the summit, local and state policymakers, agency heads, business leaders and elected officials will set the tone with the first Lake Tahoe Prosperity Forum, a look at how the Lake Tahoe Basin is positioning itself to become a national leader in both economic and environmental sustainability.

This is a critical discussion. Lake Tahoe will not continue to enjoy environmental success without remaking itself economically.

Read the whole story

Joanne Marchetta is executive director of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.

To the community,

The El Dorado County Grand Jury, in its Final 2010 Report states, “The (South Lake Tahoe) City Council, in its reports, procedures and by evidence received by the Grand Jury, points to a severely handicapped organization that needs major changes.”

If ever there was a time when substantive change could happen, this is it. I first moved to Tahoe in 1979. I have always believed in the importance of law and government, even more so in a community like South Lake Tahoe where so few votes elect the five city leaders who have such power over our lives. Over the years, I have become disheartened with the City Council’s blatant disregard of the needs and voices of the hardy, long-suffering locals they were elected to serve.

It seemed the council’s collective deafness had very few negative consequences for them until the latest Grand Jury Report, which has focused a blinding spotlight on how the same select few good-old-boys and girls have been able to continually replace the will of the electorate with their own personal agendas.

It seems the incumbents have all chosen to run for cover, rather than to stay and have a hand in fixing some serious procedural and philosophical problems. As the Grand Jury put it, “The City Council, when facing controversial issues or after threat of litigation, routinely drops issues, even if addressing the issue would improve the function of government or service to the public. … voting often appears to be the result of Council members pursuing personal agendas rather than operating in the best interests of the City.”

I for one am not going to shed even one tear over these former leaders’ hasty departure. The mission statement on the city’s website says, “The City Council exists to represent the public interest….” Maybe now there’s a chance to elect a council that will do just that.

But it still requires the willingness of fearless locals to get off their backsides and step up to the plate. You’ve still got until Aug. 11 at 5pm to file -– whether you’re a former unsuccessful candidate and longtime local, or someone just new to town. This is going to be a wide-open race in a way it hasn’t been in decades. A small group of civic-minded individuals have run for City Council in the past, asking for voters’ support to help create positive change. With the right mix of candidates, the unbreakable voting block of the monied special interests that sent them down to crashing defeat in the past can be overcome this year. Even if you can’t run for office, you can vote in November.

Maybe the City Council has chosen to turn a deaf ear to the Grand Jury’s scathing remarks, but Tahoe locals need to heed them well. The time for complaining is over. Now is the time for action.

Joann Eisenbrandt, South Lake Tahoe and Camino

By Carl Young

Tahoe’s best asset is its natural beauty.

The region holds great potential as an ecotourism destination for low-impact recreation. Paddle-boarding is the latest craze, but high-quality recreation opportunities, such as kayaking, hiking, cycling, back-country skiing and beach-going continue to draw visitors to the Lake Tahoe Basin.

Now, as part of the 20-year planning process, there is an effort under way to build nine urban cores at Tahoe, introducing more congestion, traffic and a degradation of the natural environment that would detract from any visitor’s experience.

The League to Save Lake Tahoe’s vision for the region’s future is simple: a lake that is beautiful and clear, a region that offers abundant low-impact recreation opportunities, a community that is engaged and residents and visitors who are stewards of the lake so that future generations can enjoy Tahoe’s beauty.

Read the whole story

Carl Young is program director of the League to Save Lake Tahoe.

To the community,

The city of South Lake Tahoe has prepared a draft Green Building Program. This voluntary incentive program will encourage the transformation of the city’s built environment to achieve energy efficiency, water conservation, healthy indoor air quality, and reduced impact on the Earth’s resources.

A description of the draft Green Building Program is posted on the city’s website. Click here or the review the proposed draft Green Building Program. Comments on the program will be taken through Sept. 1. Comments may be submitted in writing or given orally during the following public hearings:

City Planning Commission, Aug. 12 at 3pm, City Council Chambers, 1901 Airport Road or the Sustainability Commission on Sept. 1 at 4pm, City Council Chambers, 1901 Airport Road.

Please contact me at (530) 542.6024 with any questions or written comments.

Thank you,

Hilary Hodges, planning manager South Lake Tahoe