By Jim Reece -

Shy of a quorum, the Amador Regional Planning Committee had an informal meeting last week and directed staff to prepare a presentation on profit sharing for the next meeting, Oct. 2. The location of the next meeting is to be determined, said Mike Daly, city manager of Jackson and a staffer for the Committee. Only one of the five members attended, Tim Murphy of the Sutter Creek City Council, while alternate member, Jackson Mayor Rosalie Pryor-Escamilla attended in the place of Vice Mayor Connie Gonsalves. Committee members absent were Supervisor Louis Boitano, Ione Mayor Andrea Bonham and public member Elida Malick of Fiddletown. Ione City Manager Kim Kerr brought a packet of revenue sharing research she had compiled, with attendees including Sutter Creek Planning Commissioner Frank Kuhna and Plymouth Vice Mayor Patricia Fordyce.

In the research, Kerr said was the Twin Cities, Minnesota, Fiscal Disparities Program that began in 1976. She said the 7-county area of Minneapolis and St. Paul had 300 taxing jurisdictions that contributed 40 percent of commercial tax base into an area-wide pool. Part of the report, by BBC Research & Consulting, said an area-wide tax rate is calculated using “weighted average local property tax rates of all participating jurisdictions in the previous year.” Revenue was shared “based on each municipality’s aggregate property value per capita compared to the area-wide average property value per capita.” The formula was criticized for not considering service needs, which some municipalities wanted to be added to disbursement based on “indicators of need, such as poverty rates and age of housing stock.” Kerr said the Twin Cities program shared 406.8 Million Dollars in property tax revenue in 2000. Pryor-Escamilla said revenue sharing would allow industrial projects to locate where appropriate and preserve the small-town ambiance. Kerr said the object of the committee and profit sharing is to attract businesses to Amador County, saying “we can’t do it as individuals, we have to do it together.” Kerr said she was looking for direction and Murphy asked if she would volunteer to put the 83-page report into a presentation for the committee’s Oct. 2nd meeting. The location of the meeting is to be determined.