To the community,

After attending the March 7 [South Lake Tahoe] City Council meeting and workshop, I have to say that I am very concerned by what transpired. At the beginning of the meeting, prior to “public communications,” [Councilman] Austin Sass read the following statement that had been added to the agenda: “This is the public’s opportunity to speak on any topic not listed on this agenda. Comments shall be limited to four (4) minutes (or less). Please note, however, in accordance with the Brown Act, the City Council cannot deliberate or vote on any matter raised under public communications, but at the conclusion of public comment, the City Council and/or City Staff may comment on any public comment for clarification of the public record. (Government Code Sections 54954.2)”

Tami Wallace

Mr. Sass went on to say that that the council and staff would use this time to “correct any inaccuracies,” as well as doing so “on camera.” Essentially, they will be using this opportunity to call members of the public liars. Mr. Sass and mayor pro-tem, Wendy David, both recently used councilmember reports as an opportunity to call out former Councilmember/former county Supervisor John Cefalu’s comments during “public communications” that the city’s snow removal operations were perceived as less than satisfactory by many members of the public. This, I believe, is what’s known as “a matter of opinion.” Yet, members of our City Council have chosen to call this person a liar.

Mr. Sass made the comment during a previous City Council meeting that “he will no longer sit back and allow the public to lie during public communications and on camera.” Unfortunately, Mr. Sass has decided to call members of the public, his supposed constituents, liars even when they speak on subjective matters. What may be his “truth” may not be a member of the public’s “truth.”

As elected officials, the council should 1) have thicker skin or get out of politics, 2) listen to the public they were elected to serve, and 3) be very careful calling members of this community liars when they are coming forward to express an opinion. Isn’t this what we elected them to do and are paying them for?

Bottom line, as many are aware, public speaking is the biggest phobia we humans face and knowing that our comments/opinions expressed to our local elected officials — our employees — will be met with scorn and accusations, will have a chilling effect on the public’s right to take an active part in local government. I guess when they want our opinion, they will tell us what it is.

Respectfully,

Tamara Wallace, executive director South Tahoe Chamber of Commerce

By Dave Heighway

You get some funny looks when people see you riding to the mountain on a fat bike with skis strapped to it, wearing your ski boots and goggles. Quite a few nods, smiles and thumbs up from people driving by, seemingly supportive of the idea. Of course, occasionally it’s not a thumb people have raised, but a different finger, which I assume is also a sign of support. Let’s chalk it up to cultural differences, after all Whistler is an international destination.

The fat bike I’ve been riding is actually an eBike. It’s part of an ongoing experiment in alternative transportation that started in 2012 when my buddy Rosie and I made the two-hour drive down to Vancouver to buy a couple that had just arrived at the warehouse of a company that was moving into eBikes and away from ATVs and dirt bikes.

Snow is not a problem for eBikes. Photo/Cory “Rosie” Leis

Of all the grand schemes the two of us have hatched on the chairlift over the years – and there have been many  – the electric bike stands out because it really has become a game changing “life hack” for us; one of those clever ways peoplediscover to short-circuit the system and achieve their goals. In this case, we’ve managed to “hack” automobile transportation.

What makes an eBike so effective is the convenience: you park where you want and set your own schedule, you can carry what you need and still ride up hills without working up a sweat. For us that means we’ve mostly eliminated our need for a car, thereby drastically reducing our CO2 emissions and saving us thousands of dollars on repairs, insurance as well as the price of the car itself.

I personally get a lot of pleasure riding past the Husky station and not handing over 75 bucks for fuel. It’s a small – but genuine – divestment from the fossil fuel companies.

I know what you’re thinking: You’re being a hypocrite if you think you can claim to care about the environment and continue to live in a ski town like Whistler. After all, it’s CO2 emissions everywhere you look: open outdoor fireplaces, groomers, taxis, sleds-on-pickups and of course all those jets that bring the long-haul visitors. And it’s the visitors who’s dollars keep a resort like Whistler functioning. No fossil fuels, no happy resort town in the mountains, and no billion dollar annual boost to the provincial economy.

I won’t argue, I see the hypocrisy, and know it to be absolutely paralyzing if you strive to be eco-conscious. But there’s no denying the climate crisis is urgent and we need to find ways to move beyond paralysis and start enacting solutions. I think the environmentalist and Guardian columnist George Monbiot offers a way forward: “Hypocrisy is the gap between your aspirations and your actions. Greens have high aspirations – they want to live more ethically – and they will always fall short. But the alternative to hypocrisy isn’t moral purity (no one manages that), but cynicism. Give me hypocrisy any day.”

Here’s my interpretation: there’s some middle ground between living in a cave eating dirt and doing nothing about global warming, so do what you can.

So, riding a bike around town instead of driving isn’t going to solve the climate crisis, but it’s a meaningful step in the right direction, and one the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) agrees is a priority. According to the latest tally,Whistler is exceeding their GHG reduction targets in every category except transportation, where they’re actually going up. According to their website, “[r]educing personal car use is the most significant action individuals can take to reduce climate change in Whistler.”

But Whistler is not unique, there’s a lot of potential for bikes and eBikes to reduce carbon emissions across the continent, much as they have in Europe and Asia.According to the U.S. EPA, 25 percent (in Whistler it’s more than half) of total CO2 emissions come from transportation, and it’s estimated that half of all trips are less than 5 km (American Bicycle League). In Copenhagen and Amsterdam for example, 30 to 40 percent of all trips are made by bike, something like a wet dream for urban planners.

“Copenhagenizing” our communities in North America is a worthy goal, and technologies like eBikes that make riding a bike easier and more convenient will help us achieve it. Already there is growing evidence that a biking renaissance is under way. The good news is that you don’t have to go “Gonzo” like Rosie and I did. You can start turning the tide of growing emissions by simply replacing a couple of your car trips each week with a bike trip. It’ll make a significant and meaningful difference in your personal footprint, and perhaps more importantly, you’ll be sending a message to the people in your community that getting around by bike is normal. And when riding becomes normal, as it is in Copenhagen, we’ll be well on our way to low-carbon future.

Dave Heighway and Cory “Rosie” Leis live and ride in Whistler, B.C., and are the co-owners of iCleanCommute.com, a company that promotes eBiking as a way to bikify North America.

By Andrew J. Pridgen

A couple weeks ago, the marketing office at Squaw Valley came up with a strange and context-free Instagram rant about silencing the “trolls and haters” on their “corner” of the internet. By way of background, the post was sparked by a number of incidents of questions on the social medias (as well as inquiries to the Squaw front office directly) about the Squaw and Alpine’s reticence to open terrain.

Though several dry years in a row have prevented the resorts from turning every lift, a snow year that is shaping up to be the best, if not most tumultuous, in the Basin this century and perhaps the wettest year in California since ‘82-’83, has raised questions among longtime Squaw skiers whether the private equity firm-owned resort isn’t sandbagging with its terrain accessibility.

By now you may have perused Truckee resident and a former Squaw employee Erik Hurst’s critical letter to the front office, which seems to have been the smoking gun. On January 22, Hurst sent an email to Squaw CEO Andy Wirth calling out the front office for a number of transgressions, most notably, a consistent culture of deceit.

Read the whole story

By Larry Weitzman

Salary and benefits paid to the El Dorado County Community Development Agency now exceed $30 million a year. It employs about 300 individuals with a number of high-ranking employees being paid $200,000 a year and many taking home well in excess of $100,000.

Just type in an employee’s name at Transparentcalifoirnia.com. I did that for the employee who made the Dixon Ranch subdivision presentation at the Feb. 14 Board of Supervisors meeting, Roger Trout. As the Development Services Division director, Trout was paid $241,000 in salaries and benefits for 2015. For 2016, that number will probably top a quarter million dollars. Big money.

Larry Weitzman

You can bet that the many of Trout’s deputies are paid close to or more than $200,000 and the CDA department head total compensation for 2015 was $247,000. The head of long range planning whose title is the assistant director of community development grossed, over $185,000 in 2015 and the transportation division director was paid $195,000 in 2015. All those numbers would be up in 2016 when the final 5 percent (of the 15 percent) raise took full effect.

In other words, we spend millions of dollars for the CDA to do its job, of which one is to protect EDC in dealing with new developments. Their job is to make sure new developments pay their “fair share” in the costs and impacts of their development on current county residents and homeowners, especially when the developer wants to change property zoning from low density to high density, as much as 10 times the density as in Dixon Ranch.

Dixon Ranch, which required a general plan amendment to drastically increase housing density and traffic, was denied its proposed subdivision at the aforementioned BOS meeting by a 3-2 vote. The two dissenting supervisors wanted the matter essentially continued off calendar so the developer could “repair” its two essential financial documents, the development agreement and the financial impact analysis, a document that is supposed to show the financial impact to the county and its residents.

CDA’s job is to review and negotiate on EDC’s behalf to make sure the development doesn’t cut county services or impact traffic flows for its current residents. Prior to the BOS meeting these documents were recommended by the CDA as being “adequate,” with the county receiving a benefit from the development fees for the more than 600 new homes off of Green Valley Road.

Back in August, EDC’s auditor examined the documents (the DA and FIA) and sent email after email that the development agreement was not good for the rest of the county, that the FIA had incorrect assumptions and that the FIA was sorely deficient in its analysis of this development. The auditor, in August, also sent emails to the developer saying the same thing. But that didn’t stop the developer from saying at the hearing “the DA and FIA came at us pretty hard” trying to look like he was blind-sided and looking for pity from the BOS. The FIA was admittedly prepared by the developer. They claimed it was prepared by a professional consultant. The problem is that our CDA who “negotiates” and is supposed to examine and review the document are a bunch of amateurs, highly paid amateurs.  

Without boring you with the details of this deal, our new CAO had this to say at the meeting when asked about the sufficiency of the documents and how this development would affect EDC’s position in providing its necessary services to its existing residents: “I have concerns with the financial components of this project. …The county is taking a risk that I would not encourage. … If started over, I would do it differently.”

But CDA ineptness is nothing new. Back in May of last year Trout presented to the BOS for approval some 50 units for development in Serrano, but their review was so bad that Trout and the rest of the staff recommended the project not knowing that the development agreement underlying this project had expired eight years ago, and had no force and effect. At the Planning Commission meeting six months’ prior, there was also no mention by the CDA that the DA had expired and they too approved the additional 50 lots. Without a valid existing DA, the Planning Commission and the BOS had discretion to make new demands on the developer for more road money or parks. They were not locked in to the expired DA. A new deal should have been required and renegotiated that would have been much more beneficial to the county. Did anybody lose their job over that deal? Of course not, mediocrity and assisting out of town, west-end developers are the norm for our CDA. There is no penalty for doing a bad job.

There were huge questions over the Green Valley corridor with respect to the Dixon project, but our Transportation Division director, who makes about $200,000 a year just rubber stamped whatever the developer did. In fact, the Transportation Department within the CDA in December 2016 presented a series of 34 safety improvements on Green Valley Road (20 percent of all improvements within EDC relate to Green Valley Road), yet the Developer wasn’t asked to pay for any of them. Why?

Our county auditor reviewed these documents, wrote several emails about the deficiencies and perhaps the CDA staff thought they could slide Dixon Ranch through. Even certain Planning Commission members said knowing what they know now with respect to the FIA, that perhaps their recommendations would have been different.

These issues go back well before CAO Don Ashton was appointed some seven months ago, they go back to the days of Kim Kerr when she ran CDA and packed it with ineptness, to CAOs Terri Daly, Pam Knorr and Larry Combs who help shepherd Dixon Ranch through the county. We are still paying that price.              

Speaking of still paying, where are all the hours that should have been billed to the developer or this project review and examination? There should be hundreds of hours billed by the CDA, CAO’s office and the county counsel who also signed off on this fiasco. However, under Terri Daly, Pam Knorr and Larry Combs it was not their practice effectively subsidizing developers, this one included (no problem subsidizing developers, just cut road maintenance). All these documents were done prior to a December 2015 Planning Commission meeting, a January 2016 Planning Commission meeting and were approved for a March 2016 BOS meeting. There was essentially no billing done by CAO’s office or county counsel. Why?

District 2 Supervisor Shiva Frentzen spoke of obtaining “operational efficiencies.” Here is a suggestion, maybe the entire CDA should be eliminated and these jobs should be hired out to contractors that we can do something about like sue them for a bad job. Who do we sue here? If it weren’t for the auditor and the CAO’s comments, Dixon Ranch probably would have been approved in spite of significant public opposition.

New flash:  Somebody (at least CAO Don Ashton) is getting it as on the Feb. 28 BOS calendar was Item 30, to reorganize the CDA at the top with was appears to be the elimination of two net high ranking positions in the Planning and Building Services area, Department of Transportation, Environmental Management, and Community Development Services. It will create new job specs, bargaining unit designation, salary schedules and perhaps most important, these new positions will be at will. And it will save EDC almost half a million dollars annually. Ashton’s proposal passed 5-0. Maybe EDC can fix some potholes now. More on Item 30 in my next column.

Larry Weitzman is a resident of Rescue.

By Mike Kazmierski

I hate to sound like Chicken Little, but this is not a new message. In July 2015, yes,  over 18 months ago, I wrote an article titled “The Impending Housing Crisis.” That article talked about the 50,000 new jobs we were expecting in the region and the 30,000 to 40,000 new housing units we would need to accommodate that growth.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we have added more than 20,000 new jobs since then, but added just 4,000 new housing units over the same 18 months. This is a problem. At 1.5 jobs per housing unit, a common jobs to housing ratio, we should have produced 13,000 new housing units. Is there any wonder why our housing prices have doubled, our rental rates are up 30 to 50 percent and our vacancy rates are at record lows?

Mike Kazmierski

So, yes, the sky is actually falling and the adverse impacts of failing to meet these growing housing needs will hurt us all. So what can we do?

The first thing we must do is understand that this is not a bubble. We need to acknowledge that this is not the last housing boom, which was built off of speculation, but one based on real sustainable job growth. Additionally, we must recognize that this has become a genuine crisis and we have frittered away the time we had to slowly accelerate our construction efforts to accommodate this growth. There is little doubt we will add nearly 30,000 additional jobs to the region in the next three years, so our failure to address this very real need, as a community, is a recipe for disaster. It would be as if we just got notified by the weather service that due to the heavy rains in the mountains we could expect to see a major flood in a week, but then we choose to do nothing to prepare for it.

Some may say fine, we don’t want this growth anyhow. To those that ignore the warnings, like a flood, failure to prepare will just make the impacts of this critical shortage of housing that much worse. Those who will be hurt the most are the vulnerable in our community; minimum wage citizens; the working poor, our elderly, the retired, and our college students. The affordable housing they are now in will soon be gone.

The market is all about supply and demand, and as a community we have failed to keep up on the supply side, so as demand continues to go up, so will the prices. As prices go up, we also encourage more urban sprawl and associated traffic with the longer commutes. A growing housing shortage can build a real pricing bubble that will at some point make it too expensive to live here, driving the jobs and our talent away and forcing us into a localized recession of our own doing.

There are many things we can do to avert this crisis. The key players must get on the same sheet of music and work together to find a way to get our new housing starts up – dramatically. We were at over 6,000 housing starts in 2005 and averaged over 5,200 new housing units in the six years before the recession. Yet over the past eight years we averaged just 1,350 units a year with our peak of just under 3,000 last year, which is still a fraction of our pre-recession rate.

Here is what we are hearing from our construction and development industry. “The costs of everything are going up. There is an increasing shortage of construction workers, land prices are increasing and the land that was ready to go has been absorbed, so it will take longer to get more housing developments and apartment projects through the planning process. Additionally, it is taking much longer to get government approval to build housing and the increasing scrutiny by our elected officials, even after approvals are received by their planning commissions, is further slowing the process and increasing the costs. It is almost like charging triple and requiring weeks of paperwork to draw and fill sandbags just days before the flood.”

So now is the time to embrace this challenge as a region. We did it when our schools were overcrowded and falling apart by passing WC-1. It will take the same community effort and government’s realization that it can no longer be “business as usual” when it comes to housing.

Reducing fees, fast tracking housing developments and encouraging, even incentivizing infill of housing projects, are all things to consider.

The development and construction industry must also look at ways to get affordable housing up as fast as possible. It will take a collaborative effort between local governments and the private sector to address this crisis. Now let’s start filling those sandbags because the flood is coming.

Mike Kazmierski is president and CEO of the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada.

To the community,

This year was South Lake Tahoe Fire Rescue’s second year hosting a coat drive for kids. It ran from mid-December to the end of January, and was once again a success. 

I am inspired by the generosity and compassion displayed by our residents who stopped by one of our two stations and donated many coats and other miscellaneous items. 

We received 138 children’s coats, 54 adult-sized coats and 18 miscellaneous items including scarfs, ski bibs and hats. Many of all these items were brand new with tags.

Kid sizes went to Choices for Children and adult sizes went to Tahoe Youth & Family Services for high school kids. Eight went to El Dorado County Child Protective Services. There is a real need in our town for coats for our youth, particularly due to our adventurous weather this year.

It is so inspiring and admirable to witness how people care within the South lake Tahoe community.

Thank you to all who donated. 

Kim George, South Lake Tahoe Fire Rescue

Publisher’s note: This editorial is from the March 1, 2017, Las Vegas Sun.

Nevadans spoke loud and clear about legalizing the adult use of recreational marijuana, approving a November ballot measure on the issue by nearly 100,000 votes.

Now, the state’s leaders must take every reasonable action to carry out the results of the vote, including opposing any effort by federal officials to inhibit the will of Nevada and other states to loosen laws on pot.

In the aftermath of last week’s announcement by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer that the feds would be stepping up enforcement of federal laws banning the sale and use of recreational marijuana, there’s been a great deal of uncertainty about how Nevada would be affected.

Read the whole story

By Joe Mathews

What do we do now, Nelson Rising?                                                                  

I pose that question not just because this is a confusing era. And not just because no living Californian is better than Nelson Rising—developer, lawyer, civic leader—at navigating our state’s complexities.

Joe Mathews

“What do we do now?” is the question that concludes the 1972 film “The Candidate,” in which Robert Redford plays an idealistic U.S. Senate candidate corrupted by the political process. Rising, who ran the successful 1970 U.S. Senate campaign of John Tunney, was a producer on the film. When Redford wins unexpectedly, he plaintively asks his campaign manager, “What do we do now?” The manager has no answer.

Fortunately, Rising, 75, has some reassuring answers about today’s California. And if you don’t know the name Nelson Rising, don’t worry—that’s the point.

Nelson Rising’s story is about all the big things you can get done in California if you’re willing to listen more than you talk, and don’t much care about taking credit.

Rising has done more big things in California than can fit in a short column. You could start with downtown L.A.’s Library Tower, long the tallest building in the state (it will be soon be surpassed by the new Wilshire Grand Center). You could throw in Playa Vista (the heart of Silicon Beach), and add San Francisco’s Mission Bay, the largest mixed-use development in that city’s history.

But then you’d still be leaving out dozens of major developments like the mixed-use Santa Fe towers in San Diego and Orange County’s planned community, Coto de Caza. “He is to blame for The Real Housewives of Orange County,” says Rising’s son Chris.

Beyond buildings, Rising managed the campaign of Tom Bradley, L.A.’s transformational mayor, and during a Northern California stint, chaired the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and the Bay Area Council.

Rising’s remarkable career stands as a rejoinder to the maddening conventional wisdom of today’s California: that you can’t do big things in our state because everything is too complicated, regulated and expensive. Any big project requires dealing with too many different constituencies, goes the argument. Who has time to talk with everyone, much less accommodate all the stakeholders?

Nelson Rising makes the time.

Rising says that if you’re willing to talk with everybody and to accommodate every opponent, you can still accomplish great things. That’s not conventional wisdom today, when civic contests are often about rallying one’s base of supporters, while discouraging one’s opponents. But he says Bradley, L.A.’s first African American mayor, succeeded because he went everywhere and engaged everyone, making even opponents comfortable.

“I enjoy communication, and the best part of communication is listening. Many people don’t do that,” says Rising. “I always start the conversation by asking, ‘What’s your concern? Why don’t you want me to do this development? And if I can figure out a way to solve your concern, will you be supportive of it?’”

Such modesty suits the man, the polar opposite of the real estate developer in the White House. Rising’s parents never attended college; he went from Glendale High to UCLA on scholarship. He’s been married to the same woman for 53 years.

And he’s succeeded by embracing conversation and complexity. He made the Library Tower happen by arranging a complicated swap of air rights between the project and L.A.’s Central Library. To win approval for the Playa Vista project, he visited Westchester homeowners in their living rooms to address anger about multi-unit housing in his plan.

In San Francisco’s Mission Bay, Rising, then CEO of Catellus, took over a troubled development and satisfied local concerns with affordable housing and a 43-acre donation to UC San Francisco. The development was approved without opposition or environmental litigation. In thanks, San Francisco named a street in Mission Bay after the Los Angeles developer—Nelson Rising Lane.           

Today, Rising, having flunked retirement, remains in business with his son. They are raising a social impact fund for investments in buildings that produce less carbon and incorporate technology.

Rising still works in the historic Beaux Arts PacMutual complex that he restored and then sold in 2015. His firm has since purchased 433 S. Spring, an Art Deco building where Rising began his career as an O’Melveny lawyer. The firm is working in L.A., San Diego, and San Francisco, and eyeing Sacramento, where the Risings have been impressed with downtown’s growth. He’s bullish on California. “The state’s economy is poised to keep exceeding the country,” he says.       

So what do we do now, California? We follow Rising’s singular example: listen to each other—and recommit to doing big things that endure.

Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square.

By Anne Foster

One of the priorities mentioned during Trump’s election campaign, public health, is thus far missing from the “top issues” category of his government’s new website.

Experts are stressing the importance of governmental support for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its work with international institutions, to prevent the spread of illness in the United States. The CDC plays an important role in public health, detecting and responding to STDs and infectious diseases such as Ebola, fighting the proliferation of highly antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and working to lower chronic health issues such as obesity and heart disease. The agency is also in charge of battling serious issues caused by substance abuse, especially prescription drug abuse, in an attempt to reduce the high rate of drug overdoses in the U.S.

Tom Frieden, former director of the CDC, recently told the press that the CDC lacks the funding or power to deal with imminent threats, with due rapidity, and that the establishment of an emergency fund for emergencies, is key. Legal authority to act quickly is also important, if serious threats such as Zika and Ebola, which know no borders, are to be addressed as and when they arise, so they can be nipped in the bud.

Frieden also noted that a repeal of the Affordable Care Act would place the Prevention and Public Health Fund, which takes up over 10 percent of the agency’s budget, at risk. The Prevention and Public Health Fund has supported immunization programs, which could be eliminated if funding was no longer available.

Frieden recently handed over the reins of the CDC to Anne Schuchat, who was principal deputy director during his reign. It is not clear how long she will continue to hold the post, since she is currently acting head. What is clear is that whoever commands the CDC in the long-term, will have to make education and training a priority, so the agency can glean the most pressing issues both on a national and worldwide scale.

According to Frieden, keen diplomacy skills are also key if trust is to be built between countries. Most countries, he noted, would be reticent to admit they were facing the problem of superbugs, as bad press could result in a big drop in tourist figures. Therefore, great diplomacy would be needed in dealing with these countries.

The new CDC director will also need to stress the importance of funding global health initiatives. It is a myth to think that problems such as Ebola can be solved by closing borders. Rather, other countries are unlikely to share knowledge about the health threats they are facing, unless a relationship of trust is established. The United States needs to be financially involved if it is to help these countries detect and quell serious health threats. Providing funds for research is also important. For instance, the link between Zika and microcephaly in babies has been discovered, yet there is much that is still to be learned about the long-term effects of this virus.

The administration will also need to develop plans for tackling HIV/AIDS. The CDC notes that around 1.2 million Americans are currently battling HIV. Thus far, Trump’s platform on health care has not mentioned the issue. Vice President Mike Pence, meanwhile, was at the center of the largest HIV outbreak when he was governor of Indiana. The outbreak, which occurred in 2015, saw Pence initially refuse to lift the state’s prohibition of needle exchange programs, which have been shown to significantly reduce the risk of spreading HIV. Pence has voiced his opposition to needle exchanges forming part of an anti-drug policy. During the outbreak, he did allow some of these programs to operate in Indiana, but some many argue that the response should have been quicker and more extensive.

Trump’s choice for secretary of Health and Human Services, meanwhile, Tom Price, opposes the expansion of Medicaid, which aids may of those battling HIV and AIDS. As Global Heath Access Project activist, Matt Kavanaugh states, “One of the most important things that happened with Medicaid expansion is that people were able to move off of ADAP and not just get HIV drugs but full [health] insurance.”

The Trump government’s health policy is still to be formulated, though it is hoped that it will uphold rather than destroy the national health safety net, and take a global view of major health concerns.

Anne Foster)is a freelance writer and mother. Prior to parenthood she worked in the healthcare industry and now tries to combine her two passions for a more flexible lifestyle. 

To the community,

Local arts organization Tahoe Art League has long been serving Tahoe artists and promoting the arts to feed hearts and minds in the South Shore. On Feb. 20 the Art League fed the hungry of our community by sponsoring Bread & Broth’s Monday meal at St. Theresa Grace Hall.

At the Monday meal, current and past Art League board members Connie Clark, president; Barbie Crawford, secretary; Janet McDougall, vice president; and Robert Schimmel; past president, volunteered their time and provided incredible service to the B&B volunteers.  these wonderful volunteers helped serve a heartwarming shepard’s pie served with green beans, salad, peaches and yummy desserts donated by local stores.

Taking a break from serving, Schimmel shared his comments. “We are grateful to have the opportunity to serve those who have less and so appreciate this ministry. It is humbling and very gratifying to help the B&B crew and personally see the good that is done at the Monday meals.” 

Thanks to generous Adopt A Day sponsors like Tahoe Art League, B&B has been very fortunate to provide meals to those in need for over 27 years.  Our incredible financial donors and their sponsor crews, who donate their time to work side by side with us, are an appreciated and integral part of B&B’s Monday Meal program.

For more Bread & Broth program information, go online.

Carol Gerard, Bread & Broth