Amador County – A proactive Ione Police Department made an arrest of two people in a high-crime area of Ione Tuesday, which included a weapons charge, and narcotics charges for possession and possession for the purpose of sale.

Ione Police Chief Michael L. Johnson said in a release Wednesday that a “dangerous street encounter” by IPD narcotics officers resulted in two arrests on multiple charges.

Johnson said at about 10 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 25, “the Ione Police Department contacted three adult males loitering in the area of the 200 block of South Buena Vista Street in Ione. The consensual contact with the males quickly resulted in narcotics arrests of two of the subjects.”

“During the contact, the Ione Police Officer noted suspicious and evasive behavior,” Johnson said. “A failure to comply with the officers instructions resulted in the three individuals being held at gun point” and being ordered to lay prone on the street.

“The officer recovered a gun from the waistband of one of the subjects,” Johnsons said, and “several bindles of heroin, methamphetamine, and marijuana were also eventually seized from their persons.”

The two who were arrested were Kaleb Fillmore, 21, and Blaine Yarbrough, 20, both from the Pioneer area. Fillmore and Yarbrough were both booked into Amador County jail on possession narcotics and possession of narcotics for sale.

Johnson said this area of Ione “has become readily identifiable by both law enforcement and the general public” as a place “where identified gang members and associated criminals loiter.” He said in that area, the “Ione Police Department has increased patrols and stepped up their proactive enforcement efforts.”

He said: “This dangerous confrontation is an example of the criminal element that is attempting to move operations in, and about the Ione area.”

Ione Police Department has summoned the assistance of the Amador County Combined Narcotics Enforcement Team and coordinated with the Amador County Gang Task force to further investigate this and other related matters in the city, Johnson said. He said IPD “currently has two officers dedicated to the Gang Task Force efforts and is extremely active in gang intervention enforcement details.”

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Amador County – The Community Foundation of Amador County will salute its out-going Executive Director Shannon Lowery in a dinner tonight, which will also serve to welcome its new Executive Director Tina Hurley.

Lowery is retiring after eight years directing the Community Foundation, and achieved many milestones, including “expanding the donor base to achieve $1 million in grants awarded to Amador County nonprofit groups.”

Community Foundation Board President Stan Lucowicz said “Shannon has been an extraordinary leader and provided support to many Amador charities during her years at ACF.”

Lucowicz said: “This is a bittersweet time for the Foundation,” which “has achieved so much and is increasingly a vehicle for local people to support local projects, or know their bequests will be used in our own community.”

“We have Shannon to thank for taking us to this point and it’s hard to say goodbye,” he said. “At the same time, we very much appreciate Shannon’s guidance in helping us find Tina Hurley, who has the experience and skills to help us grow the donor base and expand the support we can provide to the local community.”

Hurley started working part-time in November, under Lowery, then full-time in December, and Lowery’s last day was Dec. 31. Lowery left after eight years, and takes much institutional knowledge with her, Hurley said. Working with her was helpful, and she still has contact with Lowery several times a day via e-mail.

Hurley has 20 years’ experience at all levels in the administration of not-for-profit organizations, and specifically worked in a “community foundation,” the San Francisco foundation for Legacy Society. She said community foundations “show through bequests and trusts, that people can really make a difference in their community.”

She said community foundations are hybrids, with the charitable aspect of a foundation, and the ability of a bank to distribute funds and financing to the community.

Hurley said this is Amador Community Foundation’s 10th anniversary year, and a celebration is in the works. The Foundation has received some larger gifts, and the board, with Lukowicz, President, Vice President Pat Crew and Treasurer Wayne Garibalidi, “are all great to work with and very supportive.”

Hurley said: “I think we are set to grow.”

She said Crew was good about getting her out to meet people in the community, and planned to take her to Jackson Rotary next week. She plans to attend Ione and Plymouth Rotary as well.

Hurley lives in Granite Bay with her husband, Jim. They are “empty nesters,” and plan to try to move to the Mother Lode area.

The farewell and welcome dinner is 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 27 at Thomi’s Banquet Room in Jackson.

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Amador County – The Pine Grove Civic Improvement Club announced the renovation of the Volcano Armory and Pine Grove Town Hall is starting this week.

The Town Hall project will provide remodeled bathrooms, an upgraded septic system, a reconstructed porch, and an accessibility lift at the front of the Town Hall. The Volcano Armory project will provide new bathrooms, storage areas, a kitchen, and a heating system.

The Pine Grove Civic Improvement people may notice demolition activities at both buildings, which will be closed to the public during the construction phase. The Club expects both buildings to be completed in three to four months.

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SAN DIEGO –The Sacramento office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced Monday the indictment of 10 people in Southern California for allegedly defrauding lenders of more that $20 million in a wide-ranging real estate scam.

U.S. Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner of the Sacramento office of the Department of Justice, announced the arrest of 10 people and who have been charged with a 56-count indictment with conspiracy to commit bank, mail and wire fraud, and with individual counts of mail fraud. Certain of the defendants were also charged with wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy to launder money.

The indictment was returned Jan. 13 by a federal grand jury in Fresno and unsealed today. The 10 were arrested Sunday and Monday in San Diego, Ventura County, Bakersfield, and Monterey.

Wagner said David Marshall Crisp and Carlyle Lee Cole, two of the arrested people, were owners of Crisp, Cole & Associates, also known as Crisp & Cole Real Estate. They also controlled Tower Lending as an “in-house mortgage broker business.” The others arrested this week worked for one or both of those companies.

“The indictment alleges that, from approximately January 2004 to September 2007, the defendants perpetrated a scheme to defraud mortgage lenders by submitting fraudulent loan applications with material misrepresentations,” including the “borrower’s income, assets, employment status, and intent to use the home as” a primary residence.

The indictment alleges the defendants perpetrated the scheme by “flipping” the homes, that is, by “selling a single home on multiple occasions” to the co-defendants, straw buyers, or others “in order to artificially inflate the prices of the residences.” Wagner said the “defendants typically increased the loan amounts, and used close to 100 percent financing in order to extract the inflated equity amounts from the properties ,on each financing transaction.”

The real estate and lending firm generally brokered the sales and mortgage financing, “generating substantial commissions and fees for the defendants,” Wagner said. “The scheme involved more than $20 million in losses to lenders.”

Wagner said the extensive investigation by the FBI was assisted by the Department of Housing & Urban Development, and the Bakersfield Police Department. The law enforcement action was part of the federal Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force established by President Barack Obama.

The task force is “working to improve efforts across the federal executive branch, and with state and local partners, to investigate and prosecute significant financial crimes.”

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Amador County – Ione Police, Amador County Sheriff’s Department, a SWAT team and a negotiator helped to forge a peaceful solution to a four-hour standoff in Ione Monday, during which a man was barricaded inside a home with his two children.

Ione Police Chief Michael Johnson in a release Monday said the incident began at approximately 11 a.m. Monday, when the Ione Police responded to a residence in the 900 block of Shakeley Lane in Ione, regarding a felony warrant suspect.

Johnson dictated the release by phone, and it was prepared by Ione City Manager Kim Kerr.

Johnson said Ione police “determined that the suspect was in a residence,” and “set up a perimeter around the residence, and discovered through that the suspect had two children, an 11 year old and 12 year old, in the residence with him.”

Johnson said IPD “requested assistance from the Amador County Sheriff’s Office, Special Weapons and Tactics Team (SWAT) and negotiators.”

Johnson said that at “about 3 p.m., the suspect surrendered peacefully through negotiations and released the children unharmed.

The Ione Police Department booked the suspect, Jeffrey Phillip Largent, 37 years of age and from Sacramento, into the Amador County Jail in Jackson on felony warrants and other miscellaneous charges.

Ione Police and the Sheriff’s SWAT team arrested Largent on a felony warrant after the standoff, which reportedly started when he barricaded the entry to the house, after authorities arrived with a warrant.

KCRA 3 TV in Sacramento showed a video of Largent later surrendering to about six camouflage-clad SWAT team members, one with a K-9, and a uniformed officer, after the end of the standoff.

The broadcast at about 7:45 p.m. Monday showed Largent walking out of the home with his hands raised in the air. Largent walked in the driveway of the home, in front of an Ione Police car. Largent turned around, hands still raised, then placed his hands on his head, and authorities advanced and took him into custody.

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Amador County – The city of Ione last week received a “draft cease and desist order and connection restriction” for its wastewater treatment facility, pending a state board’s approval in April.

The order would halt new sewer connections to the city’s system beginning on Jan. 1, the date of the notice of public hearing on the matter, with a response period closing Jan. 31.

A Jan. 21 letter from the California Regional Water Quality Control Board and its Compliance and Enforcement Supervisor Wendy Wyels said “due to the city’s violations of waste discharge requirements” and a previous Cease and Desist order from 2003, the “Central Valley Water Board’s prosecution team is proposing that the Board issue” the order at its April meeting.

“The proposed order sets forth a scope and schedule to plan, design and construct improvements to address groundwater degradation and seepage of degraded groundwater into Sutter Creek,” Wyels said. “The proposed order also prohibits new connections to the wastewater treatment facility” owned and operated by the city of Ione.

Wyels said the order would prohibit new connections because “the city has not complied with” a 2003 cease & desist order. She said another reason was that “current wastewater flows exceed or threaten to exceed the treatment facility’s current disposal capacity.” A third reason was that “any increase in influent flows would increase the level of pollutants discharged into Sutter Creek via groundwater seepage.”

She said “the proposed order includes new flow limits to reflect the actual treatment and disposal capacity of the wastewater treatment facility.”

City Manager Kim Kerr said an isotope study of samples from Sutter Creek and ponds should show whether or not there is seepage coming from the city’s storage ponds that is getting into the creek. The Regional Board has declared it as seepage, while the city wants proof that it is seepage, through the test.

The positive finding of seepage from the wastewater pond would mean the city would need to get a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit. A negative result would not require that.

Kerr said a draft report of the isotope study was out but she had not seen it, and she hoped to have the report findings available for the Feb. 1 meeting Tuesday of the city council. She plans to update the council on the status of the isotope test. She said the Regional Board will tell the city what it needs to do in reaction to the isotope test results.

She will be scheduling a meeting with the Regional Board in the next two weeks to see if the city can answer the question about confirming whether or not there is seepage leaking from the pond.

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Amador County – The Jackson Sewer Rate Committee earlier this month recommended beginning environmental work on alternatives to a discharge permit for the city wastewater treatment plant.

City Manager Mike Daly said the “Regional Water Quality Control Board is the driving force of all of this work to occur,” and the Jackson Sewer Rate Committee was formed to meet, and try to find cheaper alternatives. They meet when information comes available, and look at rate implications to find ways to fund those improvements.

Daly said the committee was formed from people who have been vocal about the issue, and are willing to come in to work and look for solutions. Members of the Jackson Sewer Rate Committee are Jackson City Council members Marilyn Lewis and Keith Sweet, and city residents Judy Jebian, Terry Watson, Joe Assereto, Thornton Consolo and Jack Georgette.

The committee has been meeting on Wednesday afternoons as needed, Daly said. They are looking for a solution for Jackson’s roughly 2,000 wastewater system customers.

The committee recommended that the city begin environmental work with alternatives, and the city council earlier this month agreed to look at some of the ideas.

One new idea is to build a dam, north of French Bar Road, between French Bar Road and Jackson Creek, to create a storage reservoir on vacant land. Daly said that was an alternative suggested by the public at a meeting, and it is something that would be looked into.

Another alternative that is still part of the mix is a regional project with Sutter Creek, Ione, and the Amador Water Agency. The AWA has money for a regional water reclamation study, and Daly said the key for the city’s participation in that study is getting some permit extensions from the Regional Board to relieve timing issues, associated with the discharge permit requirements coming due next year, for the city wastewater plant.

Daly said a regional project could take much more time, but it also could increase things that can be done by providing more options for Jackson. He said a “regional partnership might open up some additional grant opportunities not available to the city just going it alone.”

On July 12, 2010, the City Council looked at a study made by the company ECO:LOGIC, which has since been bought by Stantec.

The complete packet is available on the city’s website, usually the Friday before a meeting. Jackson City Council meets the second and fourth Monday of each month at 7 p.m.

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