opinion

With the March 6 South Lake Tahoe City Council meeting slated to have SnowGlobe on the agenda, the Parks and Recreation Commission has called a special meeting in order to prepare a coordinated statement/recommendation to give Council.

The commissioners normally meet the third Thursday of the month but with the annual winter concert on the Council agenda before their next official meeting they wanted to meet to provide their opinion.

They meet at the SLT Recreation Center located at 1180 Rufus Allen Blvd, South Lake Tahoe. Start time for the special meeting is 3:00 p.m.

The list of New York City; Takoma Park, Maryland; Seattle, Washington; Washington DC; Miami Beach, Florida; Freeport and Portland, Maine; Nantucket, Massachusetts; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Portland, Oregon and San Francisco, California could soon have South Lake Tahoe added as the 113th California city or county to ban polystyrene. Berkeley has had a ban in place since 1988, the first California city to do so.

There is an item on Tuesday's El Dorado County Board of Supervisor's agenda that caught many by surprise, especially those supervisors appointed to address the issue. Supervisor Shiva Frentzen is seeking conceptual approval of urgency ordinance to place a moratorium on the issuance of new vacation home rental permits in the unincorporated portions of the County located in the Lake Tahoe Basin.

The rural mountain lifestyle we all enjoy at Lake Tahoe is not isolated from the major urban areas nearby. On a typical holiday weekend, the Tahoe Basin turns into a recreation thoroughfare as tens of thousands of day and overnight visitors who sustain our local economy drive up from the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento, and Reno.

As a parent, you may be concerned about how to pay for your child’s future higher education expenses. You want what’s best for your child and to help them fulfill their dream of becoming whatever they want to be. However, as we all know, the cost of college is getting more expensive each year. By the time your children are ready for college, it may be even more expensive than you thought.

Many of South Lake Tahoe's roads are decades past their prime, and Measure C is in front of voters November 7 to increase taxes by one-half percent to pay for their maintenance and repair.

I support Measure C and let me tell you why, but it will have to start with a look back to see how we got here.

As a proud longtime resident of South Lake Tahoe, I find it embarrassing that our community has not been able to take care of our roads. From a lack of sidewalks to enormous potholes and cracks, our roads are dangerous and need to be fixed.

Throwaway polystyrene coffee cups, soup bowls, plates, trays, meat packing trays, egg cartons, to-go boxes and packing peanuts are already a thing of the past in cities across the country, and South Lake Tahoe might soon have their name on that list.

City Council members heard a presentation at their October 17 meeting, testing the waters to see if there is a desire to eliminate or limit the use of Polystyrene within the City limits.

Single use plastic bags in grocery stores were banned in South Lake Tahoe in 2013 and recently made a pledge to use 100 percent renewable energy by 2032.

The following is a letter received concerning the Sass Talk published on October 7:

I hate to waste my time, but I cannot let the erroneous propaganda put out by the Emperor of City Hall go unrebutted. The City will not let go of this “nuisance” problem as it diverts focus on the dismal road conditions that the City has neglected for years. Also, City management has totally failed to provide a reliable snow removal system as we experienced last winter.

Have an opinion about road projects in Nevada?

Now is the time to let the Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) know through a series of community workshops and online feedback forms.

September is National Suicide Awareness month and I would like to share part of a talk I have given to the Military.

A SOLDIER WITH PTSD FELL IN A HOLE and couldn’t get out.
A Senior NCO went by and the Soldier with PTSD called out for help. The Senior NCO yelled at, told him to suck it up dig deep & drive on and then threw him a shovel. But the Soldier with PTSD could not suck it up and drive on so he dug the hole deeper.

There is no need to rush into an ordinance regulating the sale of marijuana in South Lake Tahoe. That was the overwhelming opinion of the SLT City Council Tuesday night after a special, four-hour long Cannabis Workshop.

"We owe it to our community to make sure we take every measure to protect them," said SLT Mayor Austin Sass.

For 20 years, every August we’ve paused to reflect on our collective commitment to Lake Tahoe’s restoration at the Lake Tahoe Summit. This year, with U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein hosting the event, the issue of climate change will be front and center. Climate change poses incredible challenges for Tahoe, affecting not only the health of its famously cold, clear waters, but the health of its expansive forests and what is to become of our $5 billion outdoor recreation-based economy.

Littering in Tahoe is a big problem. Everywhere you go, there is trash and no one picks it up. People don't throw their trash in the garbage; they leave their trash on the ground and it makes its way into the lake. Other people who pass by it don't pick it up either. The problem started with the tourists who come to the beaches and throw their trash anywhere and they think that it won’t do anything to our lake. Tourists don’t take care of nature and our lake as much as the locals here. Some locals leave their trash everywhere as well.

It is that time of year again. It is time for the youth in our beautiful community to take the big plunge. We, the members of the Lake Tahoe Unified School District Board of Education wish to congratulate each and every member of South Tahoe High School and Mount Tallac High School class of 2017 for all their hard work, not just for the last 4 years, but for the last 12. We are deeply proud of our seniors, and we hope that moving forward you never forget the closeness and care of a community like South Lake Tahoe.

On June 1, 2017 as I watched President Trump announce that his administration would be pulling the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord I couldn’t help but reflect on President Reagan’s farewell address to the nation in which he imparted, for the final time as president, his vision that the United States is the world’s shinning “light on a hill.”

In 2015 and 2016 the Washoe County Detention Facility was faced with a spike of in-custody deaths. Each of these resulted in a thorough and thoughtful investigation to help us better understand and mitigate critical community-wide issues that permeate our facility. These investigations helped lead to changes and pursuits aimed at prevention.

South Lake Tahoe – Tahoe Chamber would like to thank Councilmember Davis, Mayor Sass, and the Council for the invitation to attend the City Council February 14 special meeting and for the opportunity to present the business community’s priorities to the City as they prepare for their strategic planning retreat.

Several years ago, the Tahoe Chamber and its members established a vision and a set of priorities for the South Shore community titled Tahoe Future 2020. The vision statement from that document reads:

The City of South Lake Tahoe's second workshop on vacation home rentals (VHRs) drew about 45 people in person Wednesday, while several others participated from home via the internet. As is every discussion about VHRs in the community, passions ran high and differences were apparent.

Third Eye Blind will be celebrating their 20th Anniversary with Summer Gods Tour at Lake Tahoe Outdoor Arena at Harvey's on July 16, 2017. This is the first concert announced for the popular summer concerts.

Their supporting act(s) have not been announced.

Third Eye Blind will, for the first time in their storied history, play their debut album, considered one of the great rock records of all time, in its entirety, as part of a night of music including their latest, We Are Drugs. They are touring 31 cities as part of the the tour.

The Women’s March on Washington DC on January 21, 2017 is slated to be a historic demonstration of human beings who believe in equality and social justice for all. Although titled “women’s march” the march is for EVERYONE who cares about human rights. Human rights are women’s rights. This event will go down in history because it has turned into a march of global proportion with sister events being held in communities across the country and the world.

She wasn't crying, but she wasn't exactly not crying, either. We were about to get an early season storm, a typical hot-to-cold pattern, and I had been looking out the window waiting on rain to become snow. My wife had gone to the grocery store, and I wanted to know what had upset the hot chocolate run. An elderly homeless couple had been rummaging through a dumpster in the parking lot. They were literally freezing, threadbare clothes wet and icing over.

All candidates for South Lake Tahoe City Council were given the same questions. With just one day to go to the elections, we will be featuring their answers and a video of their interview with Tahoe Regional Young Professionals through the day.

Tamara Wallace, 46, Retired Businesswoman/Chamber Exec

Discuss your interest in serving on City Council. What is your prior experience in working with civic, community or governmental organizations?

It is an exciting time to live on the South Shore – during a critical point in our region’s evolution and potential. It is time to set our course: moving away from bickering and blaming, exclusionary special interests and single-industry dominance to consensus-building and proactively choosing progress. Whether we live in Nevada or California, everyone benefits from uniting towards a sustainable vision for the South Shore.