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Wednesday, February 15, 2023
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development in Diamond Springs
Project gets 3 more years Eric Jaramishian Staff writer A housing development slated for the Diamond Springs area in the planning stages for decades is getting another three-year extension courtesy of the El Dorado County Planning Commission. Piedmont Oak Estates, which has a tentative subdivision map as well as rezoning and planned development permits, was approved by the Board of Supervisors in 2018. It is meant to supply Diamond Springs with 75 new homes north of Black Rice Road on 25.86 acres. Per county subdivision ordinance, the tentative subdivision map was set to expire March 20, 2021, but the project was granted an 18-month extension through Assembly Bill 1561, which gave housing entitlements extensions as a response to economic recession due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Piedmont Oak Estates project manager Jim Davies and his wife Terri Chang initially requested a six-year equivalent extension to finish conditions of approval required to complete a final subdivision map. The Planning Commission decided to grant a three-year extension for the subdivision map during a Feb. 9 meeting. Davies told the Planning Commission it would be economically viable to grant the project six years as opposed to repeated extensions. “Imagine if you had to come before the Planning Commission every year … you lose six months each time. So now we are down to five and a half years,” Davies noted. “On top of that, it takes six months at best to get the final map drawn out, so you would be one year still before we would even be able to get started. For a combination of logistics and n See Piedmont Project, page A6
Mountain Democrat photo by Odin Rasco
Lisa and Chris Scott sit with a picture of their son Travis on a bench dedicated to him on the El Dorado Trail. Travis died from a fentanyl overdose in 2019 and his parents are organizing a walk to raise funds and awareness of the dangers of the drug and addiction.
Fighting fentanyl
Community working to overcome addiction Odin Rasco Staff writer With fentanyl-related deaths, hospitalizations and arrests increasing as part of what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has labeled an opioid epidemic, the El Dorado County community is working together to fight back. The struggles against addiction
There were six fentanyl-related deaths between 2016 and 2019; in 2020 and 2021 there were 32. are made all the more difficult when fentanyl-laced drugs can skyrocket the chances of an accidental overdose. Travis Scott, whose parents live in Camino, died in 2019 when he took a drug that contained a lethal dose
of fentanyl. Travis’ mother Lisa Scott said Travis had navigated addiction issues in the past, though treatment was hard to come by. n See Fentanyl, page A8
Senior housing project gets $20M from state Odin Rasco Staff writer A development project that aims to provide more affordable housing units for seniors in El Dorado County received more than $20 million from the state Thursday, according to a press release from the Governor’s Office. The proposed El
Dorado Senior Village Apartments will consist of 72 total units, according to a representative from Kingdom Development Inc., one of the developers involved in the project. A tentative parcel map submitted to the county Planning and Building Department shows the apartments will be located approximately 600 feet west of
Koki Lane on Pleasant Valley Road in El Dorado. The project is one of the first to be awarded funds from a new, streamlined application process designed to accelerate the development of new affordable housing and climate-smart projects. The new process is the result of Gov. Gavin Newsom signing into
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law Assembly Bill 434, which allows multiple housing applications to be bundled into a single award process for what are being called Multifamily Finance Super Notice of Funding Availability (Super NOFA) requests. “State applications that were once redundant and overly bureaucratic are now streamlined to ensure projects are not
stalled in an endless bureaucracy that favored process over production,” Newsom states in a press release. Following years of undersubscription, the first wave of Super NOFA requests jumped to $3.5 billion; more than $825 million was awarded by Newsom last week, according to a press release. Another project in
El Dorado County also received Super NOFA funds with the Sugar Pine Village project in South Lake Tahoe given just shy of $3 million. The Sugar Pine Village project is set to be a 248-unit, multi-phase workforce affordable housing development and previously acquired more than $36 million in grant funds form various sources.
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