Neva Roberts, who served on the South Lake Tahoe City Council from 1982-90, died Aug. 26.

The 79-year-old was most recently living in Reno. She had health issues for several years.

Neva Roberts

Ms. Robert’s two terms on the council were significant because this is when redevelopment was just beginning. Her tenure was during the time the project at Ski Run Boulevard that is now Lake Tahoe Vacation Resort and the one near the state line that today is Lake Tahoe Resort Hotel were approved.

She became mayor in 1989, following Terry Trupp who was arrested on federal drug charges in what was known as Operation Deep Snow.

The Los Angeles Times on Sept. 10, 1989, wrote, “South Lake Tahoe Mayor Neva Roberts is proposing that all of her city’s employees be required to submit to drug testing. ‘It (the community) may never be 100 percent (drug free), but the best place to start is by example,’ she said.”

Ms. Roberts had been a resident of the city before it was one, having been in town since the 1950s. There was a time when she worked for the post office.

One of her lasting legacies is having initiated a competition for artists to design a city flag. To this day it is the one that flies at city offices. In her honor they are now at half-staff.

Ms. Roberts was an accomplished artist, but didn’t enter the flag contest.

Del Laine, a friend and council colleague of Roberts’, wrote the following for Lake Tahoe News during the city’s 50th anniversary series, “Neva Roberts initiated the competition that gave us the city flag, but what she more reveres are the people who came to her when they felt unheard by others. Her strong advocacy gave a handicapped woman a variance from CTRPA strictures and put a stop sign in Al Tahoe to provide a sense of safety for a neighborhood.”

— Lake Tahoe News staff report