On May 16th, Assemblyman Matthew Harper (R-Huntington Beach) and Assemblyman Phillip Chen (R- Diamond Bar) announced the passage of their “American Dream” bill which increases the existing homeowners’ exemption on their property tax from $7,000 to $25,000, giving relief to homeowners, renters and those aspiring to own a home.

“Homeowners and renters in California are paying some of the highest overall taxes in the nation,” Assemblyman Harper said. “It’s about time that the size of the homeowner’s property tax exemption kept up with the increases in cost of living. Also, I want to thank Orange County Assessor Claude Parrish for working with me to bring this bill forward.”

“High property taxes are making it impossible for too many Californians, who spent their lifetime living and working here, to stay”, said Assemblyman Phillip Chen. This bill would provide immediate relief for millions of homeowners with an emphasis on helping those whose taxes far exceed their ability to pay.”

The homeowner’s exemption hasn’t been increased in 40 years. Meanwhile, the cost of a median priced house has increased from $21,000 to over $450,000, and represents a home that only 30 percent of Californians can afford to purchase. California has a housing crisis and providing tax relief for homeowners and renters will unquestionably lead to enhanced economic stability,” said David Wolfe, Legislative Director with the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

The “American Dream” bill will also adjust the renter’s credit by a corresponding amount.

The long list of non-profit organizations and the countless number children and their families who will benefit from your attendance at the annual Carmichael Kiwanis Club’s Taste of Carmichael event should be motivation enough.

But should you need further prodding, consider the fact that more than four dozen of the region’s restaurants and purveyors of fine wines and craft brews are on tap for this year’s event, and every penny raised goes right back into to the community via the Kiwanis Club’s long list of private and non-profit beneficiaries.

For $40, you can eat and drink an evening away, knowing that all that imbibing will serve to ensure, for example, that children in the San Juan Unified School District have access to performing and visual arts, as well as learning incentive programs through grants funded through Kiwanis.  Support for the event will also make it possible for parents of children admitted to the hospital to take up temporary residency in the Kiwanis Family House at UC Davis, where sliding-scale payments are made available in order to give parents in need of long-term housing an affordable alternative to hotels.

“Every dollar from we generate from the fundraiser goes to the Carmichael Kiwanis Club, which has a theme of ‘Serving the Children of the World,”’ said Linda Martin, President of Kiwanis Club of Carmichael. “We are 100 percent into service, so all the money goes to help the children in the community, whether that’s through arts programs, nature centers or donations to hospitals. It’s the community, children and families who are serviced.”

Funding also goes to support service organizations such as the Salvation Army, Loaves & Fishes, Boys Scouts of America, the Alzheimer’s Association, the American River Parkway, the Koobs Nature Area, The Red Cross of Sacramento and way too many more to list.

“A lot of people don’t know much about Kiwanis and what we do,” said Martin. “But the truth is we are one of the oldest service organizations out there providing funding for children and community programs, as well as support to many larger non-profits across the country and around the world. We do a great deal to promote and support community programs focused on providing opportunities for the betterment of children’s lives and the lives of their families.”

In fact, the Carmichael Kiwanis said Martin, is the largest club in the network of Kiwanis International, with 100 members.  Globally, Kiwanis has roughly 650,000 members in more than 80 nations and provides a combined $1 million in community funding to communities across the globe each year.

Newcomers to Taste of Carmichael this year include three from the new Milagro Centre, including Mesa Mercado, Fish Face Poke Bar and River City Brewing. Regulars will include Raleys/Bel Air and their widely anticipated seafood, wine and cheese fair, as well as Lido Café, Nothing Bundt Cakes, El Papagayo, Chocolate Fountains, Serritella’s, Terra d’Oro, Vino Noceto, Wreckless Blenders and more.

“Railey’s and Bel Air are amazing,” Martin said. “They have been one of our biggest supporters each year and I can’t say enough about how great they are.  Every year they bring out about 15 people with them, including team members from Pacific Seafood, and they do a seafood, wine and cheese booth that is just amazing.”

Sacramento’s Todd Morgan and the Emblems will be making a return appearance at Taste of Carmichael, belting out electrifying blues, rockabilly and pop originals.  Carmichael’s own Vintage Fare is also on the entertainment bill this year, bringing a nostalgic if not timely 1960s-era style repertoire of folk harmonies to the stage.  
There will also be a classic car show, a raffle and other giveaways at the event, as well as information and representation from some of the service groups served by Kiwanis. Tickets for this year’s festivities are $40.00 and may be purchased at the door or in advance.

Each year on the second Saturday in May, letter carriers across the country collect non-perishable food donations from our customers. These donations go directly to local food pantries to provide food to people who need our help.

Last year we collected over 80 million pounds of food nationally, feeding an estimated 64 million people. Over the course of its 24 year history the drive has collected 1.5 billion pounds of food thanks to a postal service universal delivery network that spans the entire Nation, including Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The need for food donations is great. Currently, 49 million Americans are unsure where their next meal is coming from. Thirteen million are children who feel hunger's impact on their overall health and ability to perform in school. More than 5 million seniors over age 60 are food insecure, with many who live on fixed incomes often too embarrassed to ask for help.

Our food drive timing is crucial. Food Banks and pantries often receive the majority of their donations during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday seasons. By springtime many pantries are depleted entering the summer low on supplies at a time when many school breakfast and lunch programs are not available to children in need.

Participating in this year's Letter carriers stamp out hunger Food Drive is easy. Just leave a non-perishable food donation in a bag by your mail box on Saturday, May 13th and your letter carrier will do the rest. With your help, letter carriers and the US postal service have collected over 1.5 billion pounds of food in the United States over our first 24 years as a national food drive. Please help us in our flight to end hunger as we celebrate our 25th anniversary year in America's great day of giving.

On behalf of their constituents whose lives and properties are continuously impacted by potential flooding, Senators Jim Nielsen (R-Tehama), Cathleen Galgiani (D-Stockton), Bill Dodd (D-Napa) and Dr. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento) requested $100 million for critical and serious levee repairs in the state budget.

Following is an excerpt from their letter to Senator Bob Wieckowski, Chairman of the Senate Budget SubCommittee No.2:

“The significant amount of rainfall received this year and the severe damage to the Oroville Dam spillways have caused substantial damage to flood control structures that need to be addressed as soon as possible. Furthermore, the need for a consistent and reliable source of funding to reduce flood-risk in our state is vital to the protection of human life and property.

“Our levees have suffered significant damage that could prevent them from functioning properly in the next high-water event unless emergency repairs are completed this year.

“This requested funding investment in our water infrastructure will save lives, protect property, and save the state billions in avoided emergency repairs.”

Standing firm in a teal suit and black glasses, attorney Paula Spano turned toward the crowd of roughly 1,000 Del Campo High School students seated behind her and delivered this stern admonishment: “You all look like very nice people, but I never want to see you in my courtroom,” she said.

Spano, who works for the Sacramento County Office of the Public Defender, is assigned to the first-offender and misdemeanor DUI Court in Schools Program, first launched in San Joaquin County in 2003 and then in Sacramento County in 2010. Funded through a grant from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the program brings actual DUI court cases to area high schools, and Ms. Spano was trying the tell the students in a round-about way she hopes they never need her services.

The DUI Court in Schools Program gives students a sobering opportunity to sit inside a court room where a real judge, a real defendant and a real prosecutor deliberate the sentencing phase in a DUI case and hand down the punishment, all in real time.

The intent is to expose young people to the actual legal and financial consequences of a DUI court conviction so that they may make better choices when they get behind the wheel. It also aims to remind them of the heart-wrenching impact on communities and families DUI cases involving injuries and fatalities can have.

“The hope is that we can affect at least one person today by showing the actual ramifications of driving under the influence,” said Deputy District Attorney Brian Morgan who prosecuted the April 28 case at Del Campo.

More than 6,000 DUI cases are assigned to the Sacramento County Superior Court each year, Spano told the students. Her program, however, involves only cases concerning first-time offenders and those where there have been no serious injuries or loss of life. In exchange for volunteering to participate in the program, Spano said, defendants may be offered a reduced sentence of some form.

The Del Campo hearing was preceded by a jarring, 10-minute video montage of reenactments of drunken driving accidents and their aftermaths involving mostly teens or young adults. Once in session, Morgan delivered the facts of his case against the 22-year old defendant seated next to his attorney, Ms. Spano, before Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Hon. Russell Hom.

The defendant, identified as “Mr. Wong,” was arrested in downtown Sacramento in January, explained Morgan. He’d been pulled over for speeding and charged with one count of driving under the influence of a controlled substance, and another for driving with more than twice the legal limit of alcohol in his body.

As some students fiddled clandestinely with their cell phones, Mr. Wong plead guilty to the charges against him and Judge Hom delivered the sentence: Five days in jail, fines and court fees likely to amount to as much as $12,000, three years of probation, a suspended driver’s license, and mandatory enrollment in a six-month program for defendants with high blood alcohol counts in their systems upon arrest.

When it was over, Judge Hom stepped down from the “bench” to speak to the students directly.

“What you just saw was real. This was an actual case,” Hom said. Then he gave Mr. Wong an opportunity to reflect and explain to students and the court what he was thinking the night he downed as many as three shots of hard liquor before getting behind the wheel of his 2000 Dodge Infinity and speeding through town at 3 a.m.

“I felt like I was good enough to drive,” Wong said, before admitting to having driven under the influence many times prior. “I guess I just had that mindset that kids do. That we are superior to everything,” he said.

Not all DUI sentencing cases end with fines, fees and jail time. It’s well known that a good number of them involve horrific accidents causing deaths and life-altering injuries that bring unspeakable loss to victims’ families and loved ones, a fact the deputy district attorney made clear during a post-trial Q&A with the students.

“You know the difference between that video you saw and Mr. Wong? Dumb luck. Dumb, damn luck,” Morgan said.

Mary Beth Long-Randall, a graduate of Del Campo High School also addressed the students as a friend held up a photo of her brother, Harrison and his twin sister, both also Del Campo graduates. Between sobs, she slowly walked the students and the members of the court through the day in 2012 when a drunken driver with an apparent history of DUI arrests, barreled through an intersection in their neighborhood not far from the school, leaving her brother, who was walking with his girlfriend at the time, so horrifically maimed he succumbed to his injuries 13 days later. He was 21.

Pleading with the students to think about their choices, Long-Randall reminded them of the irreparable damage caused to her family and countless others via the choices made by drunken or impaired drivers.

“Don’t make your community suffer. Don’t make your family or your parents suffer,” she said. Many students approached her afterward to offer hugs and support.

Judge Hom asked for a show of hands from those who’d had the experience of getting into a car with a driver they knew was impaired. Juliana Gordon, a senior at Del Campo raised her hand and explained she could identify and, although scared at the time, she got in the car anyway, something this program also tries to address. Young people must learn about the consequences of driving under the influence, but they also need to be given permission to tell friends or family members who’ve been drinking or getting high they won’t be getting in the car with them.

For Gordon, it was another case of dumb luck.

“I just got in the back seat and prayed,” she said.

The recent manual snow survey by the Department of Water Resources (DWR) at Phillips Station in the Sierra Nevada found a Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) of 27.8 inches, 190 percent of the May 1 long-term average there (14.6 inches).

Electronic measurements indicate the water content of the statewide snowpack today is 42.5 inches, 196 percent of the May 1 average. The SWE of the northern Sierra snowpack is 39.9 inches (199 percent of average); the central and southern Sierra readings are 47.1 inches (202 percent of average) and 37.6 inches (180 percent of average), respectively.

Today’s readings will help hydrologists forecast spring and summer snowmelt runoff into rivers and reservoirs. The melting snow supplies approximately one-third of the water used by Californians.

“California’s cities and farms can expect good water supplies this summer,” said DWR Acting Director Bill Croyle. “But this ample snowpack should not wash away memories of the intense drought of 2012-2016. California’s precipitation is the most variable in the nation, and we cannot afford to stop conserving water.”

Snowpack water content is measured manually on or near the first of the month from January to May. The Phillips snow course, near the intersection of Highway 50 and Sierra-at-Tahoe Road, is one of hundreds surveyed manually throughout the winter. Manual measurements augment the electronic readings from about 100 sensors in the state’s mountains that provide a current snapshot of the snowpack’s water content.

Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program, conducted DWR’s survey today at Phillips and said of his findings, 2017 has been “an extremely good year in terms of the snowpack.”

Gehrke said the snowpack is encouraging in terms of surface water supplies. “The thing we’re looking out for is primarily the southern Sierra, where we have full reservoirs and in some cases a huge snowpack,” he said. “We want to make sure that we prudently manage that so we don’t cause any downstream issues.”

California’s reservoirs are fed both by rain and snowpack runoff. A majority of the state’s major reservoirs are above normal storage levels.

Earlier this month, DWR increased its estimate of this year’s SWP supply to 100 percent of requests for contractors north of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and 85 percent of requests for other contractors, the highest since the 100-percent allocation in 2006.

On Monday, April 17, 2017 Carmichael Water District (CWD) was recognized by the Sacramento Environmental Commission (SEC) for demonstrating outstanding efforts to improve the environment through the American River Pipeline Project (Project).

Conceived in 2011, the Project puts into action Integrated Regional Water Management agreements and solutions that successfully solve water supply reliability issues at a local level. The Project was developed to provide a replacement water supply for Golden State Water Company’s (GSWC) customers in Gold River and parts of the City of Rancho Cordova where supplies were lost due to groundwater contamination. Utilizing existing treatment capacity at CWD’s Water Treatment Plant the project enables CWD to divert and deliver up to an additional 4.5 million gallons of water per day through a newly installed pipeline crossing 80 feet under the American River. The new water supply originates from the recovery of remediated Aerojet Rocketdyne (Aerojet) groundwater discharged to the American River at Buffalo Creek. Additionally, the project provides improved drought reliability for CWD.

Specifically recognized by the SEC was the Project’s environmental restoration component. This environmental restoration included the removal of 400 feet of 33-inch diameter exposed steel pipe dating back to the 1950s that had long been an unsightly presence in the river channel. In addition, three concrete intake and pump station structures, a failing riveted steel culvert, and large buried valves were demolished and removed. The restoration culminated with the reconnection of an upstream riparian habitat that had been separated from the primary American River channel by freefall discharge from a 65-year old culvert. This concerted effort in restoring vital environment assets contributes to CWD’s recognition among the environmental community as a leading steward of our natural habitat/resources.

“This is a great demonstration of Public and Private partnerships coming together to find solutions to achieve benefits for our community” said CWD’s General Manager Steve Nugent. The project, spearheaded by CWD stands as a testimony to the region’s commitment to working together in addressing both short-term drought response, long-term supply reliability planning, and environmental stewardship.

For additional information regarding the award winning American River Pipeline Project, please contact Carmichael Water District at (916) 483-2452.

(CWD) was recognized by the Sacramento Environmental Commission (SEC) for demonstrating outstanding efforts to improve the environment through the American River Pipeline Project (Project).

Conceived in 2011, the Project puts into action Integrated Regional Water Management agreements and solutions that successfully solve water supply reliability issues at a local level. The Project was developed to provide a replacement water supply for Golden State Water Company’s (GSWC) customers in Gold River and parts of the City of Rancho Cordova where supplies were lost due to groundwater contamination. Utilizing existing treatment capacity at CWD’s Water Treatment Plant the project enables CWD to divert and deliver up to an additional 4.5 million gallons of water per day through a newly installed pipeline crossing 80 feet under the American River. The new water supply originates from the recovery of remediated Aerojet Rocketdyne (Aerojet) groundwater discharged to the American River at Buffalo Creek. Additionally, the project provides improved drought reliability for CWD.

Specifically recognized by the SEC was the Project’s environmental restoration component. This environmental restoration included the removal of 400 feet of 33-inch diameter exposed steel pipe dating back to the 1950s that had long been an unsightly presence in the river channel. In addition, three concrete intake and pump station structures, a failing riveted steel culvert, and large buried valves were demolished and removed. The restoration culminated with the reconnection of an upstream riparian habitat that had been separated from the primary American River channel by freefall discharge from a 65-year old culvert. This concerted effort in restoring vital environment assets contributes to CWD’s recognition among the environmental community as a leading steward of our natural habitat/resources.

“This is a great demonstration of Public and Private partnerships coming together to find solutions to achieve benefits for our community” said CWD’s General Manager Steve Nugent. The project, spearheaded by CWD stands as a testimony to the region’s commitment to working together in addressing both short-term drought response, long-term supply reliability planning, and environmental stewardship.

For additional information regarding the award winning American River Pipeline Project, please contact Carmichael Water District at (916) 483-2452.