Dear Editor and Members of the North Lake Tahoe Community,
I am watching a very disturbing trend unfold in the North Tahoe /Truckee area. I have seen it before but never to this extent. People are coming to Tahoe/Truckee, falling in love with the area and deciding to move here and raise their families. I have no problem with this, I did the same thing over 30 years ago. However, my problem is with those who move here and then decide to completely remodel the community in the image of wherever it was they had just left. If you miss it so much please go back there. Or try South Shore it may be exactly what you are looking for and you won’t have to spend all this time trying to change the North Shore.
People from out of the area are trying to push a concept of ‘Walkable, Liveable (sic) Communities.’ So they want to spend millions of taxpayer dollars to pave a 1-mile stretch of Kings Beach. Everybody who wants to walk already does, sidewalks will not make them walk more, believe me. Since it is impossible to walk from Kings Beach to Incline or Tahoe City, I personally don’t see that 1 mile of sidewalks as useful, in fact I see them as dangerous as well as disruptive. (Ask businesses on the highway what 2 years of roadwork will do to their economy). I certainly see a need for traffic control, which could easily and inexpensively be fulfilled by a pedestrian light at Bear St. Although I suppose they could just keep paving until they pave over the lake.
In addition similar people are discussing ‘sustainable’ living. A group of architects, who by the way make their money designing buildings so of course they would be pro growth, have decided that North Lake Tahoe and Truckee are a part of Reno, Carson City, Gardnerville, and Minden. I‘m sorry to inform them we are not. We do not ‘depend on’ Reno, Carson City, Gardnerville or Minden for anything really. If you ask those cities they will tell you they do not rely upon us for anything. In addition Lake Tahoe runs through Truckee, past Reno and out to Pyramid Lake. Carson City and cities east are not a factor.
This whole movement is eerily similar to Joni Mitchell’s song ‘Big Yellow Taxi.’ Do all you people really want to ‘pave paradise’?
