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My view: City celebrates 50 years (opinion)

Carl Ribaudo
MY VIEW
Tribune Opinion Columnist

Happy Anniversary!

The City of South Lake Tahoe just celebrated its 50-year anniversary with a community parade, the opening of the new bike park and a gala event.

I felt the city did a great job with each event and they deserve a pat on the back. Fifty years is a long time for a city, or anyone for that matter, and it’s plenty of time to get some things right and some things wrong. The challenge is to get more right than wrong over the long term and to learn from those mistakes. Who would have thought the founders of the city would have made that first right decision. Some may disagree, but the South Shore is better off for having the city. City residents have much more local control and therefore more ability to make positive change. Look at the rate of improvement in the city compared to the county. The county sees little change while the city is becoming a much more progressive and dynamic place. I’ll take change over the status quo.



MUSINGS

When the government wants to get something done, rules sometimes go out the window. Recently, Governor Brown announced that the bark beetle’s impact on California forests was so severe the state needs to take action and in the process bypass environmental review — namely CEQUA.



Closer to home, remember back to all the traffic jams along Highway 50, the tie-ups, the waiting, and the general mess that occurred. It didn’t seem to bother the city’s fire department, the police department, the El Dorado County Sheriff, the highway patrol or Caltrans — not a public peep from anyone. I would love to know if we, as citizens, were in danger because of the traffic created. Were emergency response times impacted? I can’t imagine they were not. What about all that tail pollution spewing as we sat and waited. Where was TRPA? We can’t seem to have a drive-through pharmacy or an In-N-Out, but traffic on Highway 50 — no problem.

These double standards undermine the credibility of government at all levels. Now, if that was a private-sector event creating the mess, these entities would have gone ballistic. So the next time a private-sector event like a bike ride around the lake gets any grief from these agencies, let’s remember back to this past summer and remind them.

In other news, I really enjoyed “Death of a Salesman” at Lake Tahoe Community College.

Carl Ribaudo is a contributing opinion columnist for the Tahoe Daily Tribune. He is also a consultant, speaker and writer who lives in South Lake Tahoe. He can be reached at carl@smgonline.net.


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