Amador County – The Amador County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved $12,500 to the Amador Council of Tourism to finance the building and maintenance of the Amador County fair booth for this year’s California State Fair.

Executive Director Maureen Funk said the exhibit designer and builder will be Richard Bey, who built the fair exhibit last year. After the board’s approval, she showed a mock-up of the fair booth idea, which will have a railroad “speeder” car, without a top, at the center of the design.

At the center will be a map with signage and a video, and other aspects of Amador County will be reflected, including with a display of county wines, a mine head frame and mining car, scale models of the Kennedy Mine head frame and tailing wheel, and snow-covered mountains in the distance. The drawing also showed a camping tent, and a girl on a horse.

Funk was excited about the fact that Amador County will have a corner booth space at this year’s fair. The funding included $10,000 for building the exhibit, and $620 for fair passes and parking passes for volunteers, for the 150 volunteers needed to man the booth through the fair.

It also included $250 for four meetings, and $400 for booth set-up and maintenance.

Funk said part of the approval included the request to show supervisors a “return on investment,” and she planned to do that with a coupon booklet to be handed out at the fair. She said another way to do that would be the incorporation of an Amador Tourism “Smart Phone App.”

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Amador County – The Jackson Revitalization Committee meeting was canceled this week to give members the chance to work with the Amador Council of Tourism on the upcoming vacation season.

Jackson City Manager Mike Daly in an e-mail to members said: “This month is another one in which the JRC meeting and the Amador Council of Tourism meeting occur at the same time,” Thursday evening.

Daly said: “The ACT has invited the JRC, as well as members of the Jackson Business and Community Association and the Sutter Creek Business and Professional Association to join them this month as everyone gears up for the 2011 tourism season.”

The ACT meeting is 5:30 p.m. Thursday, March 10, at the Holiday Inn Express in Jackson. Daly said “JRC will be canceling its regular March meeting to take advantage of this networking opportunity,” and told JRC members, “you are welcome to join us at the ACT meeting to hear all the exciting plans underway.”

Amador Council of Tourism Executive Director Maureen Funk thanked Holiday Inn Express owner, Atul Patel, “for hosting our first evening meeting of the year. ACT will continue to hold one evening meeting per quarter on second Thursdays in an effort to include our partners, who want to hear more details about what we are doing and cannot attend our morning meetings.” Other meetings are at 9 a.m. each second Thursday.

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Amador County – The Sutter Creek City Council declared an emergency Monday to start $20,000 in repairs work on a broken sewer pipeline on Karsan Drive, after a sewer spill.

City Manager Sean Rabe showed the council photos of the sewage spill caused by heavy root growth within underground pipes, which were cleared only to clog again a few days later. The photo showed the sewage pooling in the yard of a house on Karsan Drive. He said the spill was contained and cleaned up and the site was sanitized.

Combining to the clog and leak was that there was no manhole for repairs, and the clog was caused by unknown reasons. Pipes in the area are a “mishmash,” Rabe said, made of metal, terra cotta clay and plastic. He asked that the council “declare that an emergency exists due to potential health and safety issues for a sewer line replacement on Oak Court and authorize work to be done to replace the required amount of sewer line.”

He asked for the emergency to sidestep the formal bidding process so repair work could begin 7 a.m. the morning after the council meeting.

In public comment, Mimi Arata asked which city funds would pay for the project. Rabe said the money would come from the “collection system” fund and from the “line replacement” fund.

Rabe said after the original clogging of the sewer line, on Karsan Drive, city staff worked to try to unclog it, and were unable to removed a piece of equipment from the line. Rabe authorized staff to call Amador Mechanical to help with repairs, and they were able to get the wastewater flowing.

The repair clogged again a few days later, and the city crew again tried to unclog the line. “Amador Mechanical was called out again, due to the immediate health and safety issues of sewer leakage.”

Rabe said he and the city sewer engineer recommended the emergency declaration, and also recommended hiring Amador Mechanical to do the work because the “firm has already been involved in the examination of the line and knows what will be involved in the repair.”

A preliminary estimate of the line replacement cost was approximately $20,000, and Rabe said “staff would bring back any additional funding request if the repair goes over the estimate.” The council approved the declaration, and also the hiring of Amador Mechanical.

The work includes making needed replacement of sewer lines, and installing a manhole at the location, as the “pipe has collapsed on itself and there are several lines connecting at one point, without a manhole.”

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Amador County – Resource Connection seated its new Executive Director George Chimiklis March 1, and he hopes to see the good of his work first hand.

Chimiklis said Monday he was born and raised in Stockton and has spent years working for the Sacramento-based Rural Community Assistance Corporation, helping local rural communities expand their infrastructure.

Chimiklis said he came into the Rural Community Assistance Corporation “as employee number 18 and when I left we had grown into 130.” It was “established when I came along, but I was very much a part of its growth and maturing.”

RCAC helps small communities develop their own infrastructure by developing water and sewer and other special districts, mostly in the four-state area of New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Oregon. It helped organize and set up agencies and train people to run them.

In California, Chimiklis worked with Mercy Housing in Jackson and Amador County on water line or sewer line extensions, about 10 years ago. RCAC did mostly California-based projects in the 1980s then expanded field offices in the four states. Chimiklis first did grant writing and fund development, was an out-of-state field person for three years, and then went into management for nine years.

At Resource Connection, Chimiklis said he “would not put infrastructure out of the discussions,” as affordable housing remains an issue. But he didn’t think Resource Connection “is going to be putting hammer to nail” anytime soon. He said “market dynamics are such that you don’t just go out and build a 40-unit complex.” It must start at a smaller level.

He said Resource Connection programs include Head Start, Early Head Start, Women Infants and Children and a crisis center. It runs a 24-hour intervention hotline, a safe house for escape from abuse, and counseling programs. It operates the Oats Thrift Store in San Andreas, and a food bank and emergency shelter in Calaveras.

Chimiklis said Resource Connection could not operate without its dedicated staff, achieving success with the “outrageous hardships” of economy, making it though the holidays with dozens of donations. He said the Calaveras food bank last year distributed more than 1 million pounds of food.

They don’t just write a check and it is paid by Washington D.C., he said: The “money comes from your neighbors and yourself,” people “doing good things for neighbors and friends.”

Chimiklis said: “It’s great to be here,” and he is often asked why he is here. He said: “It has everything to do with living among the people that we are serving, and seeing the results of what we are doing.” He “never got to see the end result of what we were trying to do” at RCAC, but he expects a different experience at Resource Connection.

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