Opinion: Plenty to be proud of in Tahoe
By Joanne Marchetta
People at Lake Tahoe are working together like never before to restore our environment, revitalize our economy, and improve our communities. We saw significant progress all around the lake this year. And our progress is sustainable with continued partnership and collaboration, so critical to tackle the many challenges and important decisions on our horizon.
This summer, the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency and city of South Lake Tahoe adopted the Tahoe Valley Area Plan, a community vision to enhance the environment and revitalize the area around the Y intersection of highways 89 and 50. This vision for the gateway to the South Shore is the second area plan adopted in the city and is already attracting interest.
Joanne Marchetta
Barton Memorial Hospital is making major facility upgrades with the planned construction of a health and sports performance center on its medical campus. An investor is working on plans to overhaul the factory outlet stores at the Y, turning the tired shopping plaza into a contemporary retail center with a stage for events, community patio, and bike and pedestrian trails linking to the Tahoe Valley green belt envisioned for the area.
South Lake Tahoe also opened Bijou Bike Park, an impressive community undertaking. The bike park shows the kind of recreational assets we can build working together and is proving to be tremendously popular with residents and visitors.
Working with California State Parks, California Tahoe Conservancy, and U.S. Forest Service, El Dorado County completed the second phase of its Sawmill Bike Path, finishing an important 3-mile link between South Lake Tahoe and Meyers for bicyclists and pedestrians.
Placer County and Caltrans are nearing completion of the Kings Beach Commercial Core Improvement Project. This large project is calming traffic, improving pedestrian and bicyclist mobility, and beautifying Highway 28 in that North Shore commercial hub. It is also significantly reducing the amount of stormwater pollution that washes off the highway into the lake.
Douglas County Board of Commissioners passed a 5-cent gasoline tax increase that will help pay for future transportation improvements, showing how local communities can take action. North Tahoe transit providers are consolidating and working on funding plans to create a free-to-rider transit system with more frequent service for Truckee, Tahoe City, Kings Beach, and Incline Village. Similar initiatives are underway on the South Shore. By staying focused, we can achieve a seamless, free-to-rider regional transit system.
California officials awarded nearly $9 million in grant funding this year for several upcoming Tahoe projects. The funding will help California Tahoe Conservancy build another phase of the South Tahoe Greenway Shared Use Trail, help South Lake Tahoe improve bicycle and pedestrian access and safety around the South Tahoe Middle School, and help Tahoe Transportation District build the Highway 89/Fanny Bridge Community Revitalization Project in Tahoe City.
Budget enhancements California and Nevada approved this year provided TRPA and its partners with the funding needed to sustain Tahoe’s watercraft inspections. This frontline program is critical for protecting our lake from invasive species and it is working: No new invasive species have been detected in Lake Tahoe.
With the inspection program funded, we are now turning our focus to controlling or eradicating the aquatic invasive species already in Tahoe before they can do any more harm to its environment and world-class recreational opportunities. A science-based roadmap for invasive species control projects that researchers at UNR released this year will guide that initiative.
The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have moved forward on the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act of 2015. The bill would continue the federal government’s important investment and leadership at Tahoe, helping pay for projects to clear hazardous fuels from our forested public lands and protect our lake from the harm of invasive species.
The Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act, a five-year, $305 billion federal transportation bill Congress and President Obama enacted this month, includes language that will steer additional funding to Lake Tahoe for roadway improvements and enhanced transit service.
We are making significant progress at all levels and on all fronts and we have much to be proud of at Tahoe. But we have much more to do and continued partnership and “epic collaboration” will be critical to sustain our progress to restore our environment, revitalize our economy, and improve our communities. By working together we are making a real and meaningful difference.
Joanne Marchetta is executive director of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.
Thirteen paragraphs, single spaced blah blah that has one number of $DOLLARS$ exceeding three BILLION.
OK, all you Moms, Dads with a couple of kids, working two jobs and getting ready for x-mas. STOP. sit down with your morning coffee, read and digest, and prepare a response to ALL this.
This week I read the nightmare story of a boulder, a relatively small one at that! crashed into a truck on Hwy 50. Thank God No one was hurt.
The POINT being that several comments reported that it took 5-10 hours respectively to get in and out of Tahoe to Sacramento.
SO, you build ‘fanny’ bridge etc and get ALL these people into the basin, racing around the Lake by car and mono-rail:) AND Hwy 50 closes up above the basin?!
ALL these people are trapped in here…the traffic INSTANTLY backs up Pioneer Trail and Hwy 50 and sits there. FOR untold hours, depending upon the problem and all the ‘City’ people are on their planes and outta here.
We do have a NEW and first time EXECUTIVE hanger so planes can spend the night now….and that cost the taxpayers what? and the ‘city’ people are outta here, because the airport just happens to be where the city hall is.
On and on while you and your dogs and children SIT trapped in your cars up on HWY 50.
Bike paths are nice. But they aren’t going to make up for the additional cars that we are bringing to Tahoe with bigger resort developments, highway bypasses, and a chronically pitiful transit system that after 40 years, still can’t provide adequate transit. Making matters worse, our transportation agencies recently said that the locals need to figure out how to support better transit. What about all of the corporations that are profiting from those driving these extra cars into the Basin?
By trying to pay for all these improvements with tourist dollars, you are at the same time destroying Tahoe. The tourists are destroying our neighborhoods, clogging the roads and creating “people jams” everywhere they go. So many tourists, even they themselves complain about too many people.
Wake up and stop encouraging more and more tourists to come to Tahoe, we have enough already, make do with the numbers we already have.
There’s that word again “Collaboration”(Agencies conspiring with Developers)for the sole purpose of over-exploitation of Lake Tahoe for money.
Tragically – TRPA is right “on board” with over-development of resorts and tourism purely for purpose and fees to sustain their agency empire.
I agree with Steven Says entirely – Cramming as many tourists as we can into Tahoe does nothing more than accelerate destruction of the beauty of the Tahoe experience. It brings the kind of trash tourism that comes here for a quick cheap party with total disregard for residents and neighborhoods.
Personally, I don’t benefit one bit from the three vacation rentals across the street from me. In fact I feel it actually devalues my property and definitely ruins my enjoyment of living here.
I think it’s time for locals to organize and take suit to enforce their right to retain “residential only” zoning for their neighborhoods. Residential neighborhoods are not “House Hotel Zones” !!