By Jennifer Wilson -

Upcountry residents are doing their part to aid in the Amador County General Plan update. At the Upcountry Communities Council, or UCC, meeting Thursday evening, member Bob Currall had attendees break up into groups according to Upcountry region. About 25 residents attended and broke up into three groups, one each for Amador Pines, Buckhorn, and Pine Grove/Lower Pioneer. Currall asked each group to discuss what they wanted for their area in terms of land use designations and other attributes. The main concern echoed throughout the groups was keeping things the same and keeping densities low. Currall, who lives in Amador Pines, says, “We like it the way it is.” Amador Pines mainly wanted their area to be only Agricultural-Transition, which represents 5-acre minimum lots. Currently, some of Amador Pines has that designation, but not all. Others had questions about the proposed Local Service Center, or LSC, designation, which will allocate “town center” areas for local townships such as Pine Grove and Buckhorn. That proposed designation has a density of 18 units/acre, and some residents’ properties in the Buckhorn area were shown as LSC on Alternative Map D. Currall reminded the crowd that the alternative maps were only suggestions and that the end result will be a little bit from each map, including resident’s suggestions. Another change pointed out at the meeting was that on the proposed maps, Gayla Manor would have the designation, “Special Planning Area.” Currall asked each group to record their questions and suggestions so that he could pass those on to Susan Grijalva, the county’s Planning Director. At the UCC’s next meeting, Currall will bring back some of those answers, and hopes to complete what he calls an “Upcountry Land Use Profile” by the end of November to hand in to the county Planning Department. While it is not guaranteed that all suggestions will be included in the new General Plan, Currall reported that he was informed that they would “weigh heavily” in its formation. UCC meetings are held the third Thursday of each month, usually in the Veteran’s Hall at Pioneer Park. For more information, contact Bob Currall at 295-7630.

State – Proposed changes to California land-use law could allow Native American tribes to bypass current legal hurdles and public interest and immediately cancel contracts in order to build tribal infrastructure. The revisions are introduced in Senate Bill 170 proposed by Senator Dean Florez on behalf of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash, which has a small Rancheria in Santa Barbara County. “In a nutshell, it will give tribes the ability to say what is in the public’s interest and condemn Williamson Act land, removing one of the legal hurdles citizens, local government and the State have used successfully in preventing fee land from transferring into trust,” said one concerned via email. Under current restrictions set-forth by the Williamson Act, landowners can restrict their land’s use for ten year intervals. In return, the county will tax the land based on lower agricultural values rather than speculative development prices. The Regional Council of Rural Counties (RCRC), the California State Association of Counties (CSAC), and local group No Casino In Plymouth have all made clear their opposition to the bill. In a letter to the Senate Local Government Committee, Kathy Mannion of RCRC and Kathy Keene of CSAC stated that, “these proposed amendments are in conflict with this policy direction and make a mockery of the state’s most successful voluntary farmland conservation program.” The letter went on to say, “our small, financially strapped counties will likely not even have the option to rebut because they lack the resources to enter into a costly lawsuit with tribal interests.” If it passes, the bill will apply to more than 100 federally recognized tribes in the state. The majority of tribes are in rural areas where land borders with Williamson Act land. In many cases, tribes own off-reservation land with Williamson Act provisions. The Local Government Committee, on which Amador County Representative Dave Cox sits, will conduct a hearing on the bill on April 15. In the words of John Gamper, director of taxation and land use for the California Farm Bureau Federation, “this bill would give the Indians more power than the government entities in California.” Story by Alex Lane This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Amador County – The Amador County Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission broke its meeting on the update of the Draft General Plan last week by voting to omit 3 development projects from the land designation maps. Principals of Golden Vale, Garbarini Ranch and Pine Acres North housing developments sought to have their projects amended from the General Plan, and the 10-member panel voted 6-4 to do just that last Thursday. The 3 applications were received before a moratorium on appeals was established by the panel. 2 of the projects were awaiting the joint panel’s ruling before starting environmental work, while the third, the Pine Acres North project, was already having its Environmental Impact Report developed. County Planner Susan Grijalva said Pine Acres North developers chose to continue the EIR work, outside of the ruling, as allowed because the appeals for amendment were filed before the moratorium. Grijalva said last week that the planning department is “expecting (Pine Acres North’s) EIR” and “should be getting that in the near future.” The joint panel ruling will allow all three to go forward with their project and later seek to amend the general plan land uses. Pine Acres North, located at the southeast corner of Highway 88 and Tabeaud Road in Pine Grove, would re-designate approximately 44 acres from a mix of Commercial, Residential Low-Density and Residential Suburban to all “Residential Low-Density, “for residential development of 66 single-family units, five 4-plex lots, and a 12-unit apartment complex. The Garbarini Ranch at Stoney Creek development application is to designate approximately 225 acres as a “Special Planning Area” for mixed-use senior housing and commercial development. Golden Vale, located on the north side of Highway 88, just west of Sunset West, applied to designate approximately 383 acres as a “Special Planning Area” for a proposed mixed-use development of single-family, multiple-family and commercial projects with open space. The General Plan Update joint panel meeting will reconvene for 1 or 2 more days, starting Wednesday, April 8th, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Amador County - The Joint Planning Commission and the Amador County Board of Supervisors have scheduled a pivotal 3-day serial meeting in the development of the General Plan. The continuation of the comprehensive General Plan Update serial meeting is set to resume the fourth week of this month. The series – called “The Path to 2030” – is a continuation of the serial meetings held in October and November, 2008. The joint meeting of the Amador County Board of Supervisors and Amador County Planning Commission sees work from both local “stakeholders” groups and staff work on direction of the Supervisors and commissioners that began last fall. County Planner Susan Grijalva in the announcement said: “Because the General Plan is the basis for all regulations – such as zoning, subdivision improvements – and decisions made regarding the use of property and when considering development projects, it is vitally important to be informed of this Update.” The joint session will convene for 4 hours on consecutive days, noon to 4 p.m., Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, March 24th, 25th and 26th. Meetings each day conclude with a public comment period on the day’s separate topics. On Tuesday, March 24th, the agenda includes a presentation on the “UPlan;” and a discussion of “Optional Elements.” Grijalva said maps that have been developed to this point may be viewed and printed from the County’s Website, www.co.amador.ca.us. She said the Update process is on-going and the public can “continue to monitor the Website and watch for notices of future public hearings,” because “changes to the proposed General Plan can, and will, be made up until the last meeting.” The Meetings will be held in the Board Chambers, 810 Court Street in Jackson. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Amador County – Consultants inched the city of Ione closer to a new General Plan with about 50 people attending a workshop on the subject Wednesday night in Evalynn Bishop Hall. Those in attendance used hand-held electronic voting clickers to interact with Rancho Cordova consultant Daniel Hamilton of PMC. Hamilton said 250 people had responded to a survey on the General Plan, and he went through the survey results. More than half of respondents have lived in Ione for less than 10 years and the majority own their homes. Major community concerns were increased traffic, a lack of shopping, the disrepair of the downtown, development pressures and a lack of community resources. Hamilton said “what we heard from surveys is that people want somewhere to shop -- they want more job opportunities and they want more shopping opportunities.” After discussions in small groups, attendees voted on different issues, including picking Alternative 2 as the preferred scheme to work with. It included having housing in the area of Waterman and Highway 124, including low-density residential, plus 10 acres of affordable housing along the eastern edge of town. Commercial growth in Alternative 2 focused on expansion of the downtown district, while Q Ranch remained open space. On separate issues, the people voted to have a future growth area in the “Triangle” formed by Highways 124, 104 and 88. One attendee pointed out seemingly contradictory results in the voting. For Q Ranch, 50 percent voted for Rural Residential or “Ranchette Style” housing, and 43 percent voted for no development at all at Q Ranch. 58 percent voted to have low-density housing at Waterman and Highway 124 and 71 percent voted to have higher-density affordable housing apartments at Highway 124 on the east edge of town. 29 percent voted to have those apartments at the entrance to Mule Creek Prison and Highway 104. 64 percent of attendees voted to expand the downtown to be larger by adding side streets to it. City Planner Christopher Jordan said the Planning Commission will consider the General Plan at its December 9th meeting, and if approved by them, the General Plan would then be brought before the Ione City Council at its January 6th meeting. Story by Jim Reece (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

Amador County - Yet another grim statistic shows the dire condition of the local housing market. October marks the first month since April of 2002 that median home prices for new and existing homes combined dropped below 200,000 dollars in the Sacramento region, according to Dataquick statistics released Wednesday. Dataquick is a statistics company focused on real property and land data. Amador County’s median home prices dropped to 250,000, down 27.5 percent from the same month in 2007. Prices have fallen 41.2 percent from a May high of 425,000 dollars. Sacramento, Yuba and Placer County home prices are below 200,000. El Dorado County’s 388,000 median is down 7.1 percent from a year ago. El Dorado county's sales prices have slipped 27 percent from their March 2006 peak of 531,000. DataQuick reported 4,210 homes changed hands in Amador, El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties. That was down slightly from 4,369 sales in September. The bright side to the massive decline is that prices fueled another strong month of home sales throughout the region. Bank repos still account for the majority of home purchases. Story by Alex Lane (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

By Jim Reece -

Some of the 40 properties requested for Land Use changes were subject of appeal statements by their owners Wednesday in the second day of the Amador County General Plan update meeting. Eddie Oneto spoke for the Oneto Group’s power plant on Coal Mine Road, near Ione, which the group plans to operate as a biomass incineration power plant. He said the area was designated mining production, despite having been depleted of minerals. Among reasons given, he said, were that the area was not served by water or sewer, which he said was not a problem. Also, the plant might be offensive to casino patrons. Oneto said: “Who do you support, us or the casinos?” Edward Quinn, attorney for Howard Properties, which was denied a land use request, said “We’re not really sure why this has to be done so hastily?” He said the 17,000-acre development received less than a page of analysis. Quinn said it was not very encouraging getting a 24-hour notice to respond to a one-page response saying no to Howard Properties. Quinn said he thought it was too short a time for supervisors to “make a 30-year decision on a day’s notice.” Bill Bunce of Amador Ranch Associates said his company’s 16,000-acre property also received a negative response to a use change, at Rancho Arroyo Seco. Bunce’s company requested a Special Planning Area designation, but he said the response was inappropriate for the non-descriptive initial letter of the request. Amador County Transportation Commission Executive Director Charles Field said computer model “Blueprints” were used to develop the Land Use element for Amador County. He said as supervisors take input and appeals from parcel owners, as they exceed the time limit – 5 minutes each – or when questions become too technical, ACTC is willing to have a public workshop on the Blueprint modeling system. Field said the Blueprint term is a misnomer in that it is not telling people what to do, but rather, it shows which uses best fit each area.

Calaveras County - Calaveras County will host a workshop Thursday to inform the public of ongoing efforts to improve broadband access in the mother lode. The workshop begins Thursday at 10am in the Sequoia Room at the CalWorks building, 509 E. St. Charles St., San Andreas. Michelle Shelton with the Amador-Tuolumne Community Action Agency Central Sierra Connect program has been spearheading the effort to expand broadband access in the region. The federal government cited broadband expansion as a goal with the new stimulus package and set aside funding for rural areas, but so far progress in Calaveras County has been slow. Shelton expressed her frustration before the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors last week. She said residents are asking for broadband, but service providers and government agencies are not cooperating. She said that only 3 of the 25 “shovel-ready” projects created so far have come from Calaveras. Neighboring Amador and Tuolumne counties, on the other hand, have created projects such as creating public wireless Internet zones in libraries and government buildings. In total, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will send about $1 billion in infrastructure funding to California, Shelton said. Central Sierra Connect’s regional broadband project is so far funded with $250,000 in grant funds from the California Emerging Technology Fund Grant. The effort is geared toward Amador, Alpine, Calaveras, Mariposa and Tuolumne counties. The main goal of Thursday’s meeting is to bring providers to the table and create partnerships to put everyone on the same page, she said. Story by Alex Lane This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Amador County – The Amador Water Agency board last week heard how a Community Facilities District could fund expansion of the Tanner Water Treatment Plant. The agency has discussed increasing storage and treatment capacity there, and Dennis McGuire, of Piper Jaffray gave a presentation on funding such Capital Improvement Projects using formation of a Community Facilities District. McGuire’s estimate used 10,000 total customers as it basis, which would require 2,600 new units “to participate in the Community Facilities District.” AWA General Manager Jim Abercrombie said the study was “based on the 2007 Amador Water System financial Plan,” and was made to see if a CFD could “eliminate the need to charge customers for the increase of treatment capacities.” Abercrombie said “we are not proposing on implementing this tomorrow, because of the economy;” but simply to show possibilities. Abercrombie said the study was to see if the agency could fully fund a new water treatment plant, with full use of participation fees, and “without cost to existing customers.” McGuire said the numbers were 2 years old, and the study was meant “to show how the program would work,” but not to give “deep details.” McGuire said the “actual number of participants could actually be much smaller than 2,600.” Abercrombie said if it turns out the numbers are low, the agency “can resize the project.” The study was geared strictly for the Treatment Plant expansion, but a CFD could also be used to fund a “water reclamation system.” McGuire’s presentation included using the “Transmission Line Fee” to pay for the treatment plant at Tanner, and Board Member Bill Condrashoff said he thought that was misusing funds that should go toward paying for the Amador Transmission Pipeline. AWA Chairman Terence Moore said “we are going to borrow from that money to build a Water Treatment Plant.” Abercrombie said the agency can use “internal transfers of bond proceeds” and “buy-in money for anything we want.” Condrashoff said the numbers showed “you are collecting $16 Million Dollars for a $21 Million Dollar plant.” McGuire said the cost of the presentation model “was to support 10,000 units,” and “it was oversized.” He said it used the total impact fee of $8,139 dollars, “up front,” to get the $21 Million Dollars. He said if there was no future development, it would not be paid. Moore said “the reason we came up with the Community Facilities District estimate was so developers would pay 100 percent of the water treatment plant. We wouldn’t ask current customers to pay for it.” Abercrombie said the concept of the design is to build to serve the needs, with an expandable design, like the Buckhorn Water Treatment Plant, which brings in skids of new filters to expand capacity. Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Amador County - Amador County reported 24 home sales in February, staying true to an increasing regional trend of sales based on bank repos. But while sales continue to rise, home prices continue to fall. According to MDA Dataquick, a company that gathers statistical information on housing trends, Sacramento region median sales prices fell to $160,000 during February, down nearly 40 percent from $257,000 during the same month last year. Sales of existing homes and new homes were up 51 percent as a result. Amador County home sales are up 33.3 percent from last February. Dataquick says sales are being fueled by lower interest rates tipping towards 5 percent in many cases for 30 year loans. Special government financing requiring just 3.5 percent down payments also play a major factor. Neighboring El Dorado County reported 128 sales, up about 1 percent from last year. The median sales price there is $325,000, down 19.8 percent. Placer County reported 355 closed escrows, down 13.2 percent from the same time last year. The county's median sales price - where half cost more and half less - was $315,000, down 13.5 percent over the past year. Other interesting statistics show median prices in the Bay Area falling below $300,000 for the first time since Dec. 1999. Prices in the Los Angeles region, meanwhile, stabilized in February after eight months of declines, at $250,000. Story by Alex Lane This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.