A 2009 South Tahoe High School graduate is in ICU following a horrific car accident that killed his girlfriend on Dec. 28.

Chris Cocores, 26, who now lives in La Mesa, was the passenger in the vehicle. His girlfriend, Ceci Casares, 21, of La Mesa was driving on Highway 395 near Kramer Junction about 11:20pm when the crash occurred.

According to the California Highway Patrol, Casares’ was trying to pass a vehicle when her vehicle collided with two cars coming from the other direction. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Officers said people in the other vehicles sustained minor to major injuries.

A GoFundMe account has been set up to assist Casares’ family and to help pay for Cocores medical bills.

Also killed in the crash was Cocores’ dog.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

Brynn Kennedy

A Truckee woman was arrested early New Year’s Eve on felony driving under the influence charges.

Four people were injured in the head-on collision on Donner Pass Road and Northwoods Boulevard on Dec. 31 at 12:05am.

Truckee police officers said witnesses and evidence show Brynn Kennedy, 30, was driving south on Northwoods and turned west onto Donner Pass where she crossed into an opposing traffic lane and struck the victims’ vehicle.

The driver and two juveniles from the victims’ vehicle were taken to Tahoe Forest Hospital. All have since been released.
 
Kennedy was arrested after being treated for minor injuries.

Truckee officers will be conducting extra patrols this holiday weekend.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By Seth Borenstein, AP

North America couldn’t catch a break in 2017. Parts of the United States were on fire, underwater or lashed by hurricane winds. Mexico shook with back-to-back earthquakes. The Caribbean got hit with a string of hurricanes.

The rest of the world, however, was spared more than usual from the drumbeat of natural catastrophes. Preliminary research shows there were fewer disasters and deaths this year than on average, but economic damages were much higher.

While overall disasters were down, they smacked big cities, which were more vulnerable because of increased development, said economist and geophysicist Chuck Watson of the consulting firm Enki Research.

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By Associated Press

WASHINGTON — U.S. home prices climbed a robust 6.2 percent from a year ago, amid strong demand from would-be buyers and a shrinking supply of properties for sale.

Standard & Poor’s said last week that its S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller national home price index stood in October a solid 6 percent above its previous 2006 peak. Prices are rising at more than double the pace of wage growth, creating some affordability pressures that have been offset by relatively low mortgage rates. Metro areas with booming job markets and the steepest home price gains could see more residents staying as renters.

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By Amy Zipkin, New York Times

For many air travelers, getting to and from the airport has long been part of the whole miserable experience. Do they drive and park in some distant lot? Take mass transit or a taxi? Deal with a rental car?

Ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft are quickly changing those calculations. That has meant a bit less angst for travelers.

But that’s not the case for airports. Travelers’ changing habits, in fact, have begun to shake the airports’ financial underpinnings.

Fewer people are parking cars at airports, using taxis or renting cars, according to a recent report from the National Academies Press.

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The Holiday Fire burning in the Pine Nuts has been contained.

The wildland fire that stared Dec. 29 holiday fireburned 122 acres.

The incident is in the Preacher Mine area south of Gardnerville.

Bureau of Land Management officials are investigating the cause.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By Lake Tahoe News

Shorts weather is going to continue for the next couple days in the greater Lake Tahoe area.

Record highs were broken several places on Dec. 29 and Dec. 30.

The National Weather Service in Reno reports:

South Lake Tahoe’s high on Saturday was 58 degrees, breaking the high of 53 set in 1998. Glenbrook hit 56, the record was 53 degrees set in 1963; Daggett Pass was 51, old record set in 2000 was 47 degrees.

Records were also set on Friday:

South Lake Tahoe was 61, with the previous high of 56 set in 2011; Tahoe City was 60, old record was 55 from 1998; Truckee hit 63, previous record of 57 was from 1917; Glenbrook was 59, beating the 2008 record of 53.

“Through New Year’s we are expecting to flirt with some record high temperatures,” Evan LaGuardia, meteorologist with the Weather Service, told Lake Tahoe News. “Through New Year’s Day we should be 15 to 20 degrees above average.”

The weather is expected to start changing by Thursday when the high pressure system starts to break down.

LaGuardia said at this point to expect light precipitation with the incoming front. Snow levels are expected to be above 7,500 feet.

By Kathryn Reed

How Herbert Avenue will tie into the redevelopment project where Whole Foods 365 is being built just became a little murkier.

No longer is the commercial property on the corner of Herbert and Highway 50 locally owned.

Chutima Vasakarnpanich and Tavewat Youngunpipatkul of Palo Alto closed on the property Nov. 30. Mike McKeen was the seller.

McKeen had been battling with the city over ownership of Herbert Avenue.

“I did organize a good group of neighborhood support. We have since sold the property, couldn’t commit to years of meetings,” McKeen told Lake Tahoe News.

The leases on the two apartments in the back have been renewed by the new owners.

“It will continue at the moment as the way it is,” Peggy Eichorn, who is managing the property for the couple, told Lake Tahoe News. “They like the mix of tenants and the town. It’s investment property for them.”

For now, that is the truth based on the fact they haven’t submitted any plans to the city.

However, the day after the sale went through SouthLakeTahoeGroup.com was formed. That web address redirects people to a survey. The owner of the site is listed as private.

The survey questions are:

1.     Would you be in favor of closing Herbert Ave at Bill Ave for through traffic? (Y/N)

2.     Would you be in favor of putting in a stop light at Herbert Ave and Tahoe Blvd? (Y/N)

3.     Would be [stet] in favor of rezoning the property from commercial and retail to high-density residential housing at the Bijou Marketplace site? (Y/N)

4.     Would you be in favor of a mixed-use development that incorporated high-end retail shops below and housing above, at the Bijou Marketplace site? (Y/N)

5.     If Whole Foods withdraws from the Bijou Marketplace, would you be in favor of a high-end restaurant taking its place? (Y/N)

6.     The city of South Lake Tahoe has the ability to take over the homes and properties from private citizens abutting the Bijou Marketplace site. Are you in favor of the city utilizing Eminent Domain to take over these properties? (Y/N)

7.     Do you feel that the City should take the decision of whether to build the Bijou Marketplace into their own hands? (Y/N)

8.     If Whole Foods withdraws from Bijou Marketplace, would you be in favor of any of these retail establishments taking its place: Top Golf, Total Wine, a Night Club, a Cigar Bar, a Marijuana Superstore, or high-end clothing retailers? (Y/N)

9.     What businesses would you like to see at the Bijou Marketplace site? (Multiple Answers)

The backers of South Lake Tahoe Group have not come forward. They have sent material to neighbors encouraging them to take the survey. It talks about wanting to provide the city with high-end shopping, and to have the city take over the project through eminent domain.

City officials and Halferty Development, the company developing the site between Ski Run Boulevard and Herbert, both say they are not behind the South Lake Tahoe Group and don’t know who is. Bijou Marketplace referenced in the survey is the name of the project.

The propaganda and even some of the questions are misleading. That’s because the contract between Halferty, which owns the land being developed, and Whole Foods is described as iron clad by the developer. And while other tenants have been secured, the names of the businesses have not been released. There is still space available.

The city has no interest in regaining control of the property. It owned the Ski Run site for years, and basically in a pass-through had the land where the Knights Inn used to be. Plus, there are strict legal constraints when it comes to the use of eminent domain, which would not apply to this land. Even if it were legal, it would take a four-fifths vote of the City Council to allow it to happen.

Steve Teshara, who heads the Lake Tahoe South Shore Chamber of Commerce, said no one with his organization is behind the survey group.

Lake Tahoe News emailed the South Lake Tahoe Group and received no response, so the intent of their busy work remains a mystery.

By Julia Angwin, Noam Scheiber and Ariana Tobin, New York Times

A few weeks ago, Verizon placed an ad on Facebook to recruit applicants for a unit focused on financial planning and analysis. The ad showed a smiling, millennial-aged woman seated at a computer and promised that new hires could look forward to a rewarding career in which they would be “more than just a number.”

Some relevant numbers were not immediately evident. The promotion was set to run on the Facebook feeds of users 25 to 36 years old who lived in the nation’s capital, or had recently visited there, and had demonstrated an interest in finance. For a vast majority of the hundreds of millions of people who check Facebook every day, the ad did not exist.

Verizon is among dozens of the nation’s leading employers — including Amazon, Goldman Sachs, Target and Facebook itself — that placed recruitment ads limited to particular age groups, an investigation by ProPublica and the New York Times has found.

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By Eli Day, Mother Jones

For the first time in seven years, the number of people without a safe, regular place to sleep in America has grown. On any given night in 2017, nearly 554,000 people across the country were homeless, just under a 1 percent rise above 2016 levels.

The figure comes courtesy of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which publishes an annual report on the landscape of American homelessness. Overall, the number of people without a decent place to lay their heads at night is still down by more than 83,000 since 2010, a 13 percent drop. 

Fueling this year’s rise in homelessness is California, which had 134,278 homeless people in 2017, more than any other state and 25 percent of the nation’s total. California saw the largest absolute increase in homelessness of any state between 2016 and 2017.

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