Amador County News, TSPN TV News Video, 5-23-11

·       An anonymous donor gave $100,000 for physical education programs at Junior High Schools.

·       NorCal Foresters plan a summer field meeting in Jackson to look at “Biomass: From Forests to Energy”

·       An anonymous donor will help the School District expand music education for the next year.

·       Jackson City Council today will review an update of a new city park survey, toward a Prop 84 parks grant.

·       Preston plans its final open house in a closure ceremony June 2

Amador County News, TSPN TV News Video, 5-23-11 - Supervisor Richard Forster sits down with Tom Slivick to discuss the agenda for the upcoming board of supervisors meeting.

Amador County – Amador Community Foundation has received a gift of $130,000 from an anonymous donor, with the intention of benefiting school physical education at Ione Junior High and Jackson Junior High, along with the overall music program.

Tina Hurley, Executive Director of the Amador Community Foundation announced the donation last week, saying she was “delighted” to begin her position as ACF executive director “by awarding a gift of $130,000 from a generous anonymous donor to benefit local schools,” especially “at a time when state budget cuts and pink slips are expected.”

Hurley said she met with the Physical Education staff at Ione and Jackson Junior High Schools “to announce that their departments would be enriched by $100,000, thanks to a generous donor to ACF. The gift allocates funds to both junior high P.E. programs.” It also supports music education in the elementary and junior high schools with a $30,000 allocation.

Hurley said she initially met with Justin Brazil, Christine Kearney and Kelly Hunkins, P.E. teachers at the two junior high schools, who “were thrilled that a donor saw the need to support P.E. at this time of reduced resources for our schools.” Ione and Jackson Junior High Schools will each receive about $50,000 to be used to enhance and improve P.E. at the schools, Hurley said. There are 385 students at Ione Junior High, and 320 at Jackson Junior High.

Justin Brazil of the Ione Junior High Phys Ed Department, said: “We have been able to make sure we have enough of each type of equipment to maximize each student’s chances for success. Having enough of the right equipment also allows us to offer a higher quality experience for our students.”

Brazil said the anonymous donation “has allowed us to get equipment to offer new units that we were not able to teach before, giving the students more potential choices to stay active and lead a healthy lifestyle.”

Hurley said the successful disbursement of the donation “truly exemplifies our mission to connect local generosity to local needs.”

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Amador County – The Northern California Society of American Foresters plans its 2011 Summer Field Meeting for August 5-6 in Jackson.

The organization announced the plans in its latest newsletter, saying “we will gather in beautiful Amador County, in the heart of the Mother Lode.” The meeting’s focus will be “Biomass: From Forests to Energy,” and a committee developed “an informative and enjoyable program to pique everyone’s interest and increase knowledge about the opportunities and challenges for foresters, landowners and agencies.”

Organizers said the “meeting will include a winery dinner and evening speaker to set the stage for the Saturday field tour, fuel site visits within the Mokelumne River watershed, lunch at a hunting preserve on the shores of Lake Camanche, and a tour of the Buena Vista Biomass Power plant in Ione.”

The newsletter said it is an “opportunity to learn, network and visit with foresters and others interested in this important developing issue.”

Recent postings said the Aug. 5-6 NorCal Society of American Foresters summer meeting “kicks off with wine tasting and dinner at Avio Vineyards (in Sutter Creek) with guest speaker James D. Boyd, Vice Chair, of the California Energy Commission.”

The postings said registration will be Friday night in the Jackson City lot behind Mel & Faye’s Diner, where attendees will get opening remarks and can organize carpools.

“Saturday’s field tour will visit past and current forest thinning operations designed to create fuel breaks for adjacent subdivisions.” The group will travel up Highway 88 to the Pioneer area for field stops to see work on “fire hazard reduction & wood utilization; fuels management & thinning for biomass.”

They will also “discuss the economics and environmental implications of fuel treatment options and end uses, including biomass for energy production, and address the challenges of working in the wildland-urban interface and the Mokelumne River drainage.”

Field meeting attendees will take lunch at the private Camanche Hills Hunting Preserve, “where managers will describe land management challenges” in the Moke watershed, which “supplies water to Bay Area residents while providing diverse recreation opportunities for local residents and visitors.”

They will also “explore the relationship between hazardous fuel treatment and fire safety in the upper watershed and water resource management down river.” They will also consider the difficulties and “social and economic benefits of building an energy facility in California.” The field meeting will end at the “Buena Vista Biomass Power plant, an 18-megawatt generation facility that is being repowered as a long-term sustainable biomass energy generation facility.”

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Amador County – Amador Community Foundation announced last week the anonymous gift of $30,000 toward music education in county schools.

Amador Community Foundation Executive Director Tina Hurley, who is disbursing the donation, said the gift is for music education. She said “Chris Tootle, Amador County Unified School District Music Educator, had partial funding for music education from other resources, but this gift allowed him to hire additional teachers and fund the music program through the next year.”

Hurley said now the High School Jazz Band can be offered this year as well as 5th & 6th grade elementary band classes. All three are “programs which were previously cut, with the loss of two full-time music teacher positions.” She said “generous gifts from other private donors at the Amador Community Foundation, Sutter Creek Elementary, and Pioneer Elementary, allowed many of these classes to return.”

Elementary Band classes are the feeder system for the Junior High and High School Bands, and the High School Jazz Band keeps the most advanced students challenged, so getting these classes back was first on the ACUSD Music Education department’s priority list, Hurley said.

“With these sizeable financial donations, we created a budget that makes it possible to teach students Band in 6th Grade, as well as Jazz Band, twice a week,” said Tootle. “We are going to try and stretch the budget through the 2011-2012 school year as well as this Spring, but once the funds run out, it is back to square one.”

In the past 20 years, ACSUD staff has gone from five full-time music teachers to one, as a result of state budget cuts, Hurley said, while many school districts across the state have cut Arts Education entirely.

Amador County schools that have added Elementary Band twice a week this spring are Pioneer, Sutter Creek, Pine Grove, and Ione Junior High. Plymouth Elementary, Jackson Elementary, and Jackson Junior High will teach Band in the 2011 school year.

Pioneer also offers K-2 General Music, 3-4 Recorder, and 5-6 Band/Violin. Thanks to the efforts of their Parent Faculty Club, Ione Elementary School offers General Music classes to each student once a week. Ione Elementary School also holds beginner, intermediate and advanced violin. The High School Jazz Band also rehearses twice a week.

The $30,000 donation was part of a total $130,000 anonymous donation to ACUSD, with disbursement made by the Amador Community Foundation. About $50,000 of the funding went to each of the Physical Education programs at the two Junior High Schools, in Ione and Jackson.

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Amador County – The Jackson City Council today will hear additional survey results for potential uses for a new city park on the Oro de Amador, also known as the former “Wheel Development,” on land that holds former Kennedy Mine tailings.

The Council is scheduled to hear results of the survey being conducted by the Amador County Recreation Agency as part of a Proposition 84 grant application for the property, as park land and potential facilities. An April meeting of the Council had a consensus that more surveys be sought from other age groups and different areas of the community, said Mike Daly, in a report for today’s meeting.

ACRA Executive Director Tracey Towner-Yep submitted the updated survey findings, which could be discussed by the council today, with possible direction to staff and ACRA as lead agency, on behalf of the city in the application.

The results show the total polled responses, including three groups of surveys taken at fifth grade classes Jackson Elementary Schools, as well as other classes at Argonaut High School. The results also broke down the numbers with responses from the “taxpaying population,” as requested by the Council in April.

The Council will also consider an expansion of the city Façade Improvement Program to the northern areas of the city, and will discuss application periods for positions on the city Planning Commission and the Cemetery Committee.

The meeting is 7 p.m. today at the civic center.

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Amador County – The Preston Youth Correctional Facility plans its final open house to coincide with a closure ceremony June 2nd at the Ione facility.

Preston officials announced that “after more than 100 years in operation, Preston Youth Correctional Facility will hold an open house closure ceremony next month.”

“To celebrate its rich history,” officials said in a release that “the public is invited to an open house closure ceremony,” set for 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday, June 2. On-ground tours of the facility will be offered to the public from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., and from 12:30 to 2 p.m. A flag lowering ceremony will be held at noon in front of the administration building in the parking lot.

The Preston Visiting Hall will be open to the public from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., with various historical displays, and refreshments will be served.

The Release said the “Preston Youth Correctional Facility, established in 1894, is scheduled for closure on June 30 by action of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the Legislature. Preston has served the state of California and its youth for 117 years. Preston began as a proposal in the Legislature to remove youthful offenders from San Quentin and Folsom state prisons.”

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Amador County News, TSPN TV News Video, 5-20-11

·       Officials searched for a missing plane in the El Dorado National Forest in southeast Amador County Thursday, and will resume the search today.

·       A bank robbery suspect arrested Wednesday in Stockton reportedly implicated himself in an Amador County bank robbery.

·       Plymouth will look to get fees to help operate Arroyo Ditch.

·       Amador Farmers’ Market opens its 18^th season Sunday in Jackson with a “Mediterranean Flair.”

Amador County News, TSPN TV News Video, 5-20-11 - TSPN's Tom Slivick speaks with Doctor Matthew Watson of the Jackson Rancheria Health Complex about its Tribal Healthcare Programs for Indians and Alaska natives.

Amador County – A search will continue today for an airplane that dropped sharply in altitude Wednesday afternoon, and then fell off radar in southeastern Amador County.

About 6 a.m. Thursday, members of the Amador County Sheriff’s Office Search & Rescue Nordic Team began a search of an area identified by the Civil Air Patrol as a possible location of interest in a suspected plane crash.

Undersheriff Jim Wegner issued a release Thursday night from the Sheriff’s Office, saying the “location was identified based upon their analysis of radar data and experience with past aircraft accidents. The search is being conducted with both ground and snowmobile teams. The identified area is heavily wooded and currently covered with 6-10 feet of snow.”

“A California Highway Patrol Helicopter assisted with both a detailed and expanded search of the area,” the release said. “Additionally, several Civil Air Patrol aircraft have searched the region. At this time no evidence of the aircraft has been located.”

At 8:13 p.m. Wednesday, “the Amador County Sheriff’s Office was advised of an overdue aircraft which was last identified as flying through Amador County” at 3:47 p.m. “The missing aircraft is a Lancair, composite, single engine airplane. The aircraft was piloted by Robert Henderson “Budge” Brown Senior, 78, of Gardnerville, Nevada.”

The Sheriff’s release said the “aircraft reportedly left Minden, Nevada at approximately 3:30 p.m. en route to Tracy. The aircraft, which was tracked via radar, reportedly rapidly lost altitude from 15,000 feet to 12,000 feet and then fell off radar at 11,000 feet in the southeastern area of Amador County within the El Dorado National Forest. Brown is reportedly a very experienced pilot having flown this route hundreds of times.”

As of 6:47 p.m. Thursday, the release said “there has been no emergency radio traffic from the pilot, and no Emergency Locator Transmitter signals have been received from the aircraft. A search of local airports has been conducted and the aircraft was not located.”

The search will be expanded and continue today.

Brown is a philanthropist, and owner of Cleavage Creek Winery, which he purchased to raise money to fight breast cancer, after his wife, Arlene, passed away from breast cancer in 2005. The wine’s labels have photos of women who have survived breast cancer, and the business has raised 10s of thousands of dollars for the cause.

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