By Joe Mathews

Is California abandoning its poorest students?

That question would be dismissed as absurd by our state’s education leaders, especially Gov. Jerry Brown and the state Board of Education. For years, they have been building a new educational architecture they say will do more for the poorest kids in the poorest schools.

Joe Mathews

But as the many elements of this architecture are put in place, they have grown so complicated that the entire structure seems incoherent. It’s possible that this new architecture could undermine public accountability, resist public engagement, and obscure how disadvantaged students are really doing.

The new architecture is built on a foundation known as the Local Control Funding Formula, a multi-piece formula designed to give more money and authority to school districts, especially those with concentrated poverty. That formula is accompanied by the new Local Control and Accountability Plans, intended to give parents and communities more say in how money is spent. The state also adopted Common Core standards for math and English along with a computer-based testing system to better track individual students.

Last month, the State Board of Education wrapped all these elements together in a new accountability system to track their progress.

But the way that system was approved exposes the complexity, and shoddiness, of the new architecture. The system introduces six statewide indicators for measuring schools that go beyond test scores and local factors, like parental school climate. But it could be years before such measurements are a reality, since much of the required data does not currently exist.

Even worse, the board resisted urgent calls from child advocacy groups to boil down this new system into a rating that the public might be able to understand. Instead, the board, defiantly, released a sprawling draft built around a confounding color-coded grid. “Making sense of it is practically impossible,” the Los Angeles Times editorialized.

Fixing this accountability system isn’t just a matter of redesign. The trouble is that it is built upon the other pieces of the new architecture, and those are similarly confusing. The new local control formula encompasses eight priorities, myriad sub-priorities, and different grants. The Local Control and Accountability Plans aren’t local or even really plans. They are longwinded, technical answers to technical questions required by the state; the resulting “plans” run to hundreds of pages.

And if all that doesn’t give you a headache, the new system is soon to get even more complicated. California’s new architecture does not mesh with the federal government’s own new process to identify the worst-off schools, and improve them. Last week, Gov. Brown vetoed a bill, overwhelmingly passed in the legislature, to require the California system to align with the federal one. Eventually, there could be not one but two accountability systems for California schools—one answerable to Sacramento, the other to Washington.

In watching this process, I can’t help but wonder if all the confusion isn’t cynically deliberate. Throughout, the state has followed the advice of its powerful teachers union, the California Teachers Association, which has opposed any system that offers coherent ratings, and thus meaningful comparisons, of schools.

What does that mean for making sure poor kids are actually making progress? It means they may be on their own. Gov. Brown gave the game away in an interview with the policy website CALMatters earlier this year when he questioned whether the achievement gaps between disadvantaged and other students can be closed, even with the help of his Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF).

“The gap has been pretty persistent, “ he said, “so I don’t want to set up what hasn’t been done ever as the test of whether the LCFF is a success or failure. I don’t know why you would go there.” Closing achievement gaps is “pretty hard to do,” he added.

The defenses of the emerging system are equally lame. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson has argued that the complexity of the new system is a virtue—since education, and life for that matter, is complex.

The State Board of Education president Michael Kirst, a Stanford scholar whose writing on educational systems is distinguished by its clarity, has in this instance taken to issuing uncharacteristically foggy pleas for delay. We’re still ironing out the kinks and the whole system will evolve continuously, he argues. “Concluding now that the system is too complex,” he wrote for the website EdSource, “would be no different than arguing that people would not be able to use a smart phone based on the engineering specifications when the device is still in development.”

Kirst is right about the need for patience, in a way. It will take at least until 2019, when California finally gets a new governor, before Californians will have any chance to stop construction on this incomprehensible mess, and to focus coherently on our poorest students.

By Michael Schiess

Soon after I founded the Pacific Pinball Museum, an ex-police officer contacted me, offering to sell a rare artifact that was once confiscated by the Oakland police force.

The object in question was a Bally Bumper pinball machine from 1936. For many, this machine is the quintessential pinball experience. You launch a ball up a slanted table and try to get it to bounce off as many targets as it can before it drains back off. Bumper was the first machine to have electric targets that added points to your score when hit, and a totalizer that kept track of your score.

The officer took me to the Alameda garage of his recently deceased twin brother, who had also been a cop. The Bumper game was dusty, but looked like it still worked. The officer said that the machine had been set up here since they first got them, and that he had an identical one in his crawlspace. I asked when they received the machines and he replied, “My brother and I were Alameda police in 1936, when the Oakland cops confiscated these and gave them to us Alameda cops as gifts.”

Many people are stunned that pinball could ever have been considered gambling. However, if you play a couple of games on Bumper, which I quickly purchased from the police officer, you will see that even at a nickel a game, it’s horribly addictive and could quickly drain your pocket change.

What really made pinball gambling was awarding a prize for reaching a high score. In 1931, America was introduced to coin operated pinball. Almost overnight, pinball machines began replacing trade stimulators, which were mechanical games of chance that awarded gum or a cigarette that were designed to lure people into businesses, so they might buy something.

Pinball machines showed up everywhere—candy stores, bars, smoke shops—and many forms of award were given as prizes: cigars, free drinks, game credits, and of course, money. The payout didn’t happen like a slot machine. Instead, the proprietor of the establishment would handle the awards. Even if the card on the machine said, “For amusement only!” everyone knew the storekeeper would pay up.

With Prohibition winding down, organized crime was eager to take on pinball as a more acceptable alternative to the highly illegal slot machines of the day. It was a cash business, and it was a good one. For almost 30 straight years, pinball made more money than the entire motion picture industry. To the public of the 1930s, it was a welcome escape from the dismal economic climate and offered a chance of instant redemption.

Nationwide demand was so high for pinball machines that companies could not keep up. During that time, over 150 manufacturers got into making the “marble games.” And it would be David Gottlieb’s 1931 Baffle Ball machine that cornered that market, as he developed an assembly line process for making the game.

Despite manufacturing advances, demand was so high that Gottlieb soon was unable to meet his distributors’ requests. One of the frustrated distributors, Ray Maloney, decided to make his own machine, “Ballyhoo,” named after a popular gentleman’s humor magazine. The game was so successful, his company name—formerly known as Lion Mfg. Co.—was changed to Bally. Although all the manufacturers were cognizant of the gambling aspect of pinball, nobody pursued it as enthusiastically as Maloney, who allegedly developed ties to the Mafia.

The most famous opponent of organized crime’s pinball racket was New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. He had run on a ticket that opposed the corrupt Tammany Hall political machine and would serve for three terms, from 1934 to 1945. Living up to his promise to “Clean up New York City” he quickly declared war on slot machines. And after dumping thousands of confiscated devices into the Hudson from barges, he turned his attention to pinball.

LaGuardia campaigned so relentlessly against pinball’s evils that it seemed like he had a personal vendetta against the game. He loved publicity, and posed for photos in which he wielded a sledgehammer, smashing the now illegal games amidst crowds of law officers. LaGuardia boasted that the hardwood legs from the machines were being fashioned into police billy clubs, perfect for beating the heads of the nefarious operators.

Of the many pictures of the mayor posing with his “Sledgehammer of Decency” the one that really caught my eye was not obviously posed. Here, LaGuardia is seen pushing over a pinball machine that seemed strangely familiar. Upon closer inspection, and after comparing various photos, I concluded beyond a doubt that the machine in question was none other than my favorite game, Bally’s Bumper.

In 1942, after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the New York mayor had his final victory over pinball. He argued that pinball was a misuse of precious resources needed for the war effort, and successfully lobbied the federal government to ban the making of pinball machines in America. After the war, pinball manufacturing was allowed to resume, but the game had lost much of its appeal because of its bad rap.

Then, in 1947, pinball got a boost, thanks to the invention of the flipper, which was introduced by Gottlieb’s engineer Harry Mabs. Before the flipper was invented, the game was more akin to bagatelle, a French invention of the late 1700s, which was played with a cue stick; the concept was to shoot the ball up an incline and arch it over a barrier to attempt landing it in scoring pockets. Bagatelle and successor versions depended on the initial shooting of the ball. Before flippers, the player had no way to interact with the descending ball and thus it was much more a game of chance than skill.

Ironically, LaGuardia died one month before the introduction of the flipper, which brought on another pinball craze. But LaGuardia’s legacy was so powerful that pinball remained banned in New York for nearly 30 more years. In 1976, responding to pressure from the industry, the New York City Council heard arguments about how the flipper had transformed pinball into a game of skill. The council chamber had two machines brought in and had a ringer come in and display how he could beat the game using his flipper skills. The ban was lifted and Gottlieb made a limited run of games re-titled “New York” to celebrate the decision.

But the flipper’s invention did not stop Bally’s Ray Maloney from pushing a new design that would bring back the gambling aspect to pinball. Enter the Bingo pinball machine in the late 1940s. Early models were founded on the goal of getting the balls into certain holes for game credits, but that quickly evolved into a Bingo card format where the flipperless playfield was strewn with rubber ringed posts and 25 holes to catch the balls. The idea was to light three or more numbers in a row to get awarded credits. Whenever you see a pinball game that has a three-digit credit counter, you can safely assume it was designed for gambling.

The way it worked was, if you racked up a significant amount of credits, you would tell the bartender or shopkeeper and he would cash you out by paying you for all the unused credits. The bartender or shopkeeper would then push a “knock off” button that would count down all the credits and zero the game for use by the next player.

These machines were soon declared to be gambling. And in 1950 came the biggest single blow to pinball: the passage by Congress of the Johnson Act. That law banned interstate shipment of “gambling devices” (including repair parts, manuals, etc.) except to states in which the device was legal. So, it now was a federal offense to ship slot machines, “one-balls,” and pinball devices into any state which did not allow them. This should have been quite a deterrent to the manufacturers and distributors.

But the game was too popular, and it thrived in the many states where machines were legal, and even those where they weren’t. Enforcement was uneven at best. In San Francisco, where pinball was never illegal, the Bingo games were singled out as unabashed games of chance that were draining men of their paychecks. But the police could not keep up with all the secret rooms and payola protecting the operators.

Complaints from angry spouses eventually convinced the powers that be to declare that Bingo pinball machines had to be adapted to play only one game per coin. Players hated the decision but mostly surrendered; a few removing the modifications to make them play as originally intended.

Every time I get a chance to play a game on my Bumper, I look up at the museum’s poster of Mayor LaGuardia toppling the game. And I take a deep breath, pull back the plunger, and thank my lucky stars that his sledgehammer did not come down on my precious machine.

Michael Schiess is the founder and CEO at the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda. He wrote this for What It Means to Be American, a partnership of the Smithsonian and Zócalo Public Square.

To the community,

This November the right choice for South Lake Tahoe is Jason Collin.

Jason is a thoughtful, collaborative and engaging leader with a responsible and positive vision for our community. It has been my pleasure to witness his leadership skills firsthand working on volunteer boards and local events together. Jason is a top notch individual whose common sense, respectful communication style and energy are desperately needed on the City Council.

Jason Drew, South Lake Tahoe

To the community,

Sunbeam Blind Company owners Kurt and Laura Rasmussen are not new to volunteering at Bread & Broth’s dinner on Monday evening at St. Theresa Grace Hall.

They’ve volunteered their time as sponsor crew members when the Lake Tahoe Windjammers Club has hosted Adopt A Days in the summer.

However, on Oct. 3, their Sunbeam Blind Company sponsored its first AAD. According to Gail Clair, the B&B Adopt A Day coordinator, the Rasmussens and their fellow crew member Brendan Lockamy were “awesome! So nice, fun and helpful!”

“We enjoyed working with the amazing B&B crew to serve the many hungry people that came today to enjoy a nutritious meal,” said Laura Rasmussen.

Unfortunately, many of our community members are food insecure and the meals provided by Bread & Broth and funded by the AAD sponsors are often the only hot meals that they are able to enjoy throughout the week.

Generous donors like Sunbeam Blind Company not only ease hunger but through their sponsorship they are also helping to provide a safe, secure place for the dinner guests to visit, socialize and experience a sense of community where they are treated with kindness and dignity. Through their monetary donation and giving their personal time and energy, the Rasmussens partnered with B&B to help make a lot of people’s day a lot better.

For more B&B information, contact me at 530.542.2876 or carolsgerard@aol.com.

Carol Gerard, Bread & Broth

Publisher’s note: This editorial is from the Oct. 6, 2016, Sacramento Bee.

The drought persists. This summer was the hottest on record. Last month, a National Weather Service meteorologist called the chance of adequate winter rainfall this year “a crapshoot.”

Farmers in the Central Valley are pumping groundwater like there’s no tomorrow. And they may not be wrong; it’s not for nothing that the rest of the world ratified the Paris climate accord last week.

Thank heaven Californians finally have gotten serious about water conservation – oh, wait.

To the surprise of pretty much no one, state water authorities reported that the state is already backsliding on last year’s efforts to cut water consumption. Savings were only 18 percent below the 2013 baseline level, compared with 27 percent last year.

Read the whole story

By Joe Mathews

Next month, California might almost catch up with Carpinteria.

The small beach town in Santa Barbara County, population 13,500, is rarely cited as a leader in anything. But when it comes to the California cause of eliminating single-use bags—a cause responsible for two measures on the November ballot—Carpinteria is our model city.

Joe Mathews

Carpinteria boasts California’s broadest ban on single-use bags. It doesn’t just bar getting plastic at the grocery store or other larger retailers; it’s the only place in the state that prohibits paper bags as well. By contrast, the proposed state ban on bags—which voters are being asked to approve by the referendum known as Proposition 67—prohibits only single-use plastic bags and allows people to get their groceries in a paper bag for 10 cents a pop.

The debate over plastic bags may seem like a narrow policy question on whether the benefits of keeping plastic bags out of the environment outweigh the inconvenience of having to bring your own reusable bags to the grocery store.  But the bag ban is actually part of a much broader story about how, even in the grandest of states, it’s still possible for a few individuals in a small place to make an outsized difference.

The roots of the bag ban in Carp (as some locals weary of saying the five-syllable name call their town) lie in the 1990s recession. As vacancies in the small downtown rose and graffiti became more common, several residents incorporated the all-volunteer Carpinteria Beautiful civic organization. Then, as now, it had no dues and no rules for members. It started with graffiti removal and then took on all kinds of local projects, from litter pickups and bus bench painting, to maintenance of the millstone fountain in Seaside Park and the Linden Beach Ping-Pong table.

Carpinteria Beautiful and other groups were active in environmental causes, including fighting to protect Carp’s distinctive seaside bluffs from development. The interest in plastic bags dates to 2007, when Santa Barbara City College students and faculty presented at a City Council meeting on the environmental problems caused by plastic bags ending up in Carp’s creeks and the ocean. Other Californian coastal cities were pursuing bag bans, but Carp’s city government was wary of the high legal costs of defending the city against inevitable litigation from bag manufacturers. Carpinteria Beautiful, instead, began a community campaign to encourage citizens to switch voluntarily to reusable grocery bags; it won some converts, but not as many as a ban would.

In 2011, the conversation changed. The local Albertsons grocery store was undergoing renovations to make the story greener, in everything from lighting to refrigeration, so its manager Ahmed Jahadhmy, a longtime Carp resident, announced that Albertsons would go “bagless” and worked to convince people to switch to reusable bags. Fortuitously, the California Supreme Court a few months later found for the city of Manhattan Beach in a lawsuit over its own bag ban; that gave Carpinteria the confidence to enact a ban in 2012.

The impact was clear. Volunteers who pre-ban had found 40 to 50 plastic bags during creek clean-ups were now finding one or two.

“The beauty of it was the community,” said Jahadhmy. “The people here are just so understanding and patient, and all the groups and the businesses in Carpinteria were involved in the whole process.” (Word of Carp’s green Albertsons has spread beyond the town and the state, to the powers that be in Washington—the store has received visitors from the U.S. Department of Energy and even the White House.)

Locals say the ban —and all the other beautification work—renewed the city and created momentum for tougher fights, including against an effort to permit new oil drilling in Carpinteria. Going forward, the success of the ban could provide momentum to efforts to introduce commercial composting, improve water quality, and get the city government of Carpinteria certified as a green business.

As California debates whether to approve the single-use bag ban statewide, the picture can seem complicated. It doesn’t help that there’s a second bags-related measure, Prop. 65, which involves where the fees consumers pay for paper and reusable bags go but was put on the ballot by the plastic bag industry to create voter confusion about Prop. 67, the referendum on the statewide bag ban. And with so many municipalities having followed Carp’s lead —by one count, there are 122 local ordinances covering 151 jurisdictions banning single-use plastic bags in the state— Californians have varying experiences with such bans.

So why not keep it simple and think only of that beach city south of Santa Barbara? What, after all, could possibly be wrong with making California a little bit more like Carp?

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

To the community,

There are many important issues concerning the nation, California and South Lake on the Nov. 8 ballot. Not only we will decide on who the next president is, but we’ll also be voting in two city officials, who some could argue will actually have a greater impact on our daily lives than the nation’s leader.

Another vote that will have a huge impact on our community is Measure P. Measure P is seeking to increase the tourist occupancy tax in the city of South Lake by 2 percent, which in turn will bring in an extra $2 million in revenue each year that will 100 percent solely tied to recreational initiatives. A win win for our local community – without the community paying for it. The first benefit to that community will be the redevelopment of the recreation center on Rufus Allen Boulevard – turning it from a one level, 40-year-old, decaying monster into a two level, state of the art, community facility. Once that is complete, beaches, bike paths, parks will also get to benefit from the extra tourist dollars.

Now $2 million a year is a lot of money, and reading this I know that some of you are thinking that the money would be better spent on fixing the potholes, putting in new bike paths or building affordable housing. And indirectly, by voting yes on Measure P, you will be putting more money toward those other vital projects. Because the rec center, and all the other city managed recreation, cost the General Fund millions of dollars each year and those costs are only going to go up. Due to its age the swimming pool can’t hold a consistent temperature, the dome roof is falling apart and every week there is a new maintenance issue to contend with. If Measure P fails, rather than $2 million of tourist dollars to put toward the building, the city will have to take funding from other projects and initiatives, and that way no-one wins.

And for those concerned that a 2 percent TOT increase will discourage tourists, do not worry. The Lodging Association is 100 percent behind the increase and as astute businessmen and women they would not support an increase that would hurt their business. Tahoe will still have a lower TOT than many other California destinations; including Napa, San Diego and San Francisco and the more recreational opportunities we can offer our tourists, the more they will want to come.

Measure P will build the facility that our community deserves, without costing the citizens a dime; and instead the city can put our taxes to work on other essential projects.

Doug Williams, South Lake Tahoe Lodging Association 

By Larry Weitzman

El Dorado County is still suffering from a multitude of management issues from the legality of funding road maintenance from the Missouri Flat Master Circulation and Funding Plan (CFD for the Missouri Flat Corridor), which is evidently waiting for a legal opinion from county counsel, to awaiting new numbers from CalPERS of the county’s unfunded liabilities regarding the its pensions and the new $60 plus million non-voter approved obligation for the sheriff’s headquarters

Larry Weitzman

In a Sept. 30, press release about the new EDC budget from the Board of Supervisors there was a bullet point that said the BOS is putting “$2 million additional funds for road maintenance and improvements, increasing the road maintenance and operations budget ….” It was only a year ago that this very same BOS, including both Mike Ranalli and Sue Novasel voted to end General Fund road maintenance. And when the issue of using General Fund road maintenance money was agendized a few months later by Supervisor Shiva Frentzen, it was voted down by the rest of the BOS again.

More important is that the voters by a margin of 65 percent to 35 percent mandated a portion of General Fund money for road maintenance with the passage of Measure H 16 years ago. How the BOS forgets and ignores.

The reality is that EDC is not adding any General Fund money from General Fund revenues to road maintenance, but that EDC hopes to raid the Missouri Flat Master Circulation and Funding Plan or legally known as Community Facilities District No.  2002-01 which is essentially a Mello-Roos District. Connected to this CFD are a series of at least a half a dozen development agreements with the large landowners. This is a very complex deal and therein lies an insurmountable problem.

The other reality is a political one. EDC’s largest asset is its nearly 1,100 miles of roads. After public safety the largest priority for the county is the maintenance of this asset. And that is a huge job considering the heavy truck traffic, and hot and cold weather. So the press release was for the purpose of making the BOS look good to the public and hopefully the re-election of two county supervisors, Ranalli and Novasel. Politics is all about perception and has nothing to do with what really happens. This CFD was formed in about March 2002 by Resolution No. 074-2002 which established CFD No. 2002-01. It was created by a special tax  allocation giving 85 percent of the increase in sales and property tax within the district to fund the district. That money now amounts to about $6 million in the bank and growing.

At a recent BOS budget meeting, head of the CDA, Steve Pedretti, said that essentially there was more than enough money in the CFD for the balance of needed road improvements, the purpose being that the BOS could make a finding that they could use the money for general fund road maintenance as stated in the aforementioned press release. The idea is to dissolve the CFD and grab the money at the detriment of every county resident who uses the road, never mind the businesses in the CFD who paid into the fund on the promise of a much improved traffic circulation plan for the Missouri Flat Corridor. If the BOS can’t get to the money for road maintenance, no problem, they will blame Pedretti whose last day at the county is in two weeks.

It must be assumed that no one has read the 22 pages of Resolution No. 074-2002 (the CFD formation document) except for probably former BOS member Jack Sweeney (he seems to read everything) who was not even on the BOS at the time of passing this resolution. Considering the amount of typographical errors and slip-shod paperwork on the document that was executed by the chair of the BOS and clerk of the board, I doubt anyone other than the typist read the document when it was passed in 2002, otherwise the more than a dozen typos and other errors would have been at least corrected.

How do I know about the typos and other mistakes? I printed and read Resolution 2002-01. The work required under the CFD has been barely started as two of the biggest projects haven’t even begun construction and another is in need of a redo. The three large projects were the “fixing” of the 1) Missouri Flat/Highway 50 interchange which while ostensibly completed is still in need of a retrofit as the two shopping center exits on the north side are clearly inadequate, 2) Missouri Flat Road Widening-Phase B: Forni Road to Future Pleasant Valley Connector, and 3) the Pleasant Valley Connector Roadway: Missouri Flat Road to Hwy 49/Fowler Lane Intersection.

These two major improvements have yet to break ground and the merchants in the corridor want them built to increase the ease of access to their stores. It is mandatory that these improvements be finished before any disbandment of the CFD take place and any left over money is available to the general fund for road maintenance or any other purpose. On top of that this CFD has a 40-year lifespan, until June 30, 2042.

The county counsel said he would write a legal opinion saying that the BOS could get $2 million from the CFD bank account. County counsel has also not read the formation documents either or he would not have made such a promise. Most of his recent “legal opinions” are replete with misstatements of the law, poor legal construction and general balderdash. But there is a real reason for this charade and it is political and that is the BOS wanted to tell the public they were going to do lots of road maintenance and fix our decaying infrastructure which is destroying our vehicles every day. They are not going to do that. This road maintenance promise is very important to the reelection campaign of Mike Ranalli and Sue Novasel. They wanted to tell their constituents, “look, I am fixing the roads. See what a good guy (gal) I am.” Politicians love to brag about their promises, not their real accomplishments.

The only way this No. 2 county priority was going to get handled was “cut spending” but instead the county continues with more of the same as spending continues to grow. And if that doesn’t get you aggravated, our new total of unfunded CalPERS pension liability and unfunded county employee health costs will probably more than triple the new sheriff’s facility obligation while the county continues to spend like a drunken sailor with the rank of admiral (they make good money and is meant as no derogation to any of our dedicated Naval Personnel.)

As another example of wasteful spending, the BOS approved the job description and salary of a new hire at the Oct. 11, the new public information officer at between a cost of about $130K to about $160K annually. The sole purpose of this new spin doctor is to make the BOS and higher county officials look good even though they continue to make bad decisions, especially with your money. What do they care, it’s not their personal money and they know how to get more of your money. I wonder what kind of press release the new PIO will write when the BOS can’t take the $2 million from the Missouri Flat CSD? I doubt you will ever see that press release.

If EDC hires anyone it should be a butcher from Archer’s, Raley’s or Safeway to trim the fat from our budget spending. He would do a much better job than what EDC BOS has done.

Larry Weitzman is a resident of Rescue.

To the community,

Annie Davidson should be the next LTUSD school board member from trustee Area 1.

My name is Brooke Martone- Ballachey. I was born and raised in Christmas Valley and attended elementary school through high school in the Lake Tahoe Unified School District. I am now raising two children in our community and am the owner of a small business.

Before I knew of Annie’s long impressive resume and dedicated career as an educator; I met Annie as a fellow parent at Tahoe Parents Nursey School (TPNS). Over the past three years I have gotten to know Annie through both various school activities and community events. Having served on the TPNS board with Annie I was always impressed with her fairness and ability to listen and communicate with a varied group of people all having different opinions.

Both Annie and her husband, Matt Lucksinger, are always one of the first people to offer a helping hand and dedicate themselves to our community needs.

Annie would be an invaluable asset on the School Board. Both her background and career  in education and what I have seen of her ability to critically think; work with many people that may not agree on all issues and come up with a creative solution make her the ideal candidate.

I believe it is in those simple interactions with Annie on a day to day basis that you see her brilliance and passion for our children. Annie being the Mother of two elementary school kids also adds another level of depth to her understanding of our school district’s needs. She is always approachable and puts 100% into whatever task she takes on.

It is for these reasons I think Annie Davidson being a member of the school board would help to influence our community in a positive direction and I urge you to vote Annie Davidson for school board member trustee area #1.

Brooke Martone-Ballachey, South Lake Tahoe

To the community,

This November, please vote yes on Proposition 52. Proposition 52, the Medi-Cal Funding and Accountability Act, extends the current partnership between the state and California hospitals to help fund the health care needs of 13 million children, seniors, and low-income families in California.

Clint Purvance

In the last two years, the number of Med-Cal recipients in South Lake Tahoe has doubled. El Dorado County receives $20,136,379 in federal funding each year and without this money our working families who would not be able to afford health care services.

Prop. 52 is not a tax increase. It allows hospitals to pay an upfront fee that is matched by federal money to fund the health care needs of Medi-Cal patients. Prop. 52 prevents lawmakers from moving the funds to other places and can only be used for the intended purpose: health care for children, seniors, and low-income families.

Since 2009, this funding partnership has existed and provided about $18 billion in federal funds. Without these additional funds, children, seniors, and low-income families would be at risk for losing access to critical medical services.

Barton Health is dedicated to providing and expanding health care services to all community members, regardless of their income. Prop. 52 is supported across party lines and by more than 1,000 health care systems, taxpayer groups, businesses, and children’s advocate organizations from around the state. As the CEO and president of Barton Health in South Lake Tahoe, I encourage all California voters to vote yes at Prop. 52.

Clint Purvance, CEO and president Barton Health