THE PASSING OF A RADIO LEGEND

Barry Stigers, Morning NEWS Host on KAHI Radio, passed away peacefully in his sleep yesterday morning.

KAHI General Manager, Jerry Henry stated aOur listeners will forever miss the professionalism and that familiar low voice Barry provided to the foothills for so many years.a

Stigers started on-air at KAHI as a volunteer reading news in 2000. In 2003 he was officially hired and took over hosting the KAHI Afternoon News. He was promoted to News Director and KAHI Morning News Anchor in 2005. After being a regular on-air presence for fourteen years he officially retired from KAHI in March of 2014. Frustrated with a series of short-lived replacements KAHI GM, Jerry Henry, asked Barry to return as a fill-in for two weeks in 2018 while another replacement was located and trained. As Henry puts it athat two weeks turned into five and a half years.a

Stigers started his radio career in 1957, the same year KAHI went on the air. His first job was a morning news reporter for his hometown station in Kane, Pennsylvania, WADP. Barry moved his career to New York State working for a group of stations as the Morning Host at WMNS, Olean; WRNY, Rome; and stations in Ticonderoga and Glens Falls, New York. Stigers moved to Pittsfield, Massachusetts as a Program Manager and started one of the earliest call-in aTalka shows in 1960. Stigers also worked in the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia markets.

Barry left the daily on air part of radio and joined the Cable Television Industry in 1964. He pioneered what in those days was called aLocal Originationa or local TV broadcasting on the local Cable TV system. He pioneered and built many local cable stations. His career took him to the level of Vice President of Operations for Warner Cable in New York City.

Stigers came to California in 1985 as an executive for CableData, a major service computer company serving the Cable and Telephone industries. He also served as a Senior Manager at MCI, the Long Distance Phone Company.

KAHI will provide any details of a service for Barry Stigers as they become available.

Placer County has completed the cleanup of the abandoned homeless area at F and 1^st street at the Dewitt center in North Auburn this past week. The area has been available to homeless people who have moved out or moved to the new camp area across the street under the operation of the Placer County Probation department. The county was required to maintain access to former homeless people who had established living at the former location for 90 days since it was closed to habitation in February. Terry Butrym, liability manager for Placer County released a video on the county operation that started to clean the area and has now returned it to open space, available to the county for re-use. (VIDEO)

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Just after 2 a.m. Sunday, deputies attempted to conduct a traffic stop on Penryn Rd near the 76-gas station, which turned into a pursuit. The suspect driver, a male adult, crashed near Penryn Estates Dr and was pronounced deceased at the scene. Traffic between Taylor Road and the I-80 intersection on Penryn Road was closed for several hours. Placer County Sheriffs are investigating. Additional information will be released later. 

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The American River is expected to be even more dangerous this week due to a larger amount of water being released from Folsom Lake. Waterways have already been flowing faster than usual due to Californiaas record snowfall melting, sending more water down the stateas waterways, prompting warnings from Northern California officials. With the releases increased to 15,000 cubic feet per second Monday and Tuesday, Sacramento Regional Parks is warning people to not enter the American River. 

The Placer County Sheriffas Office confirmed a body was found in Folsom Lake near Rattlesnake Bar on Friday.

Angela Musallam, public information officer for the Placer County Sheriffas Office, said the call reporting the body was received mid-morning on Friday.

One individual went missing on April 29 after he visited the American River. The second went missing on May 14 after he was recreating on the river. The Placer County Sheriffas Office confirmed a body was found in Folsom Lake near Rattlesnake Bar on Friday.

Placer Coroner officials have confirmed that the body found Friday at Folsom Lake is that of a 22-year-old man who was swept into the American River more than two weeks earlier near the confluence in Placer County. The victim has been identified as Victor Nguyen of Antelope, the Placer County Sheriffas Office said in a Monday social media post.

Deputies on April 29 were dispatched to the confluence of the Middle Fork and North Fork of the American River, near Auburn, where a group of friends reported one person in their group had been swept away in the water.

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The April 12 hearing by the Town Of Loomis on the Costco Project was rescheduled to last week, which appears to be a final step in hearings and local ordinance and regulation changes that have keep the project from going forward for several years.

The Loomis Town Council scheduled the required public hearing for April 12 but continued the hearing to the special meeting Tuesday because it wasn’t properly advertised beforehand in the newspaper therefore was not legal as dictated by Loomis Town rules.  officials said: The town of Loomis required many zoning changes and other actions to accommodate the project.

As proposed, the plan calls for a 155,000-square-foot Costco store and a 24-pump gas station on 17 acres at the southeast corner of Sierra College Boulevard and Brace Road. The town approved a use permit in 2020 but the project has been stalled in court until recently.

Officially, the council certified an addendum to the Environmental Impact Report, amended the town General Plan and zoning code, and approved a revised conditional use permit and design review. Town officials reiterated that these General Plan changes do not affect the rest of Loomis. Traffic has been an issue for several years as this project continued through the process. The new changes will accommodate the community issues of traffic, particularly truck traffic, which will be required to follow certain routes into the store and certain time restrictions such as late night activity. The measures were adopted with a 4-0 vote.

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Sacramento prosecutors have filed the first murder charges in the April 3 gang shootout downtown, charging brothers Smiley Martin and Dandrae Martin and fugitive Mtula Payton each with three counts stemming from the shooting deaths of three women killed in crossfire.

Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert and Sacramento Police Chief Kathy Lester announced the charges yesterday afternoon as prosecutors filed court documents outlining the precise details of the 2 a.m. shootout that killed six people and wounded 12 gathered near 10th and K streets. aThis was a gun battle between two rival gangs,a Schubert said. aThe evidence shows that the rival gang members armed themselves with weapons.a

The Martin brothers, held currently in Sacramento County Main Jail on weapons charges, and Payton, still being sought by police, are each charged with three counts of murder in the deaths of Yamile Martinez, 21; Johntaya Alexander, 21; and Melinda Davis, 57, who authorities believe were innocent bystanders cut down in a hail of bullets between two groups of shooters.

Schubertas office filed charges along with special circumstances that the suspects allegedly committed multiple murders, a filing that could lead to a death penalty prosecution if Schubertas office decides to pursue that. Payton also was charged separately with $45,000 in Employment Development Department fraud allegedly committed while he was in prison in 2020. No charges filed in the deaths of three men shot that night, with court papers saying they were involved in the gunfight or appeared to be armed. -0

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A storm is being forecast by the Sacramento Weather Bureau that is expected to drop heavy snow at the 4500-foot level in the Sierra between 5 a.m. and 8 p.m. on the west slope of the Lake Tahoe region. The advisory cautions mountain travelers to be prepared snow-covered slippery roads, reduced visibilities, chain controls and travel delays.

Forecast models indicate Mondayas weather system will deliver a foot of snow to the 7,000-foot elevation, and possibly 18 inches to the highest Sierra peaks. This will provide a much-needed boost of powder for ski resorts that are open for spring break.

Closer to sea level, the storm will deliver some rain showers, but precipitation totals will be unimpressive. The Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys will likely receive less than a tenth of an inch of rain, while the Sierra foothills could receive up to a half-inch. Isolated thunderstorms are possible, with wind gusts near 30 miles per hour around Sacramento and 45 miles per hour in the Sierra. Exposed Sierra ridgetops could see gusts near 60 miles per hour. Tuesday and wednesday look dry with another forecast of storm activity in the region Thursday.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, Friday proposed pouring tens of billions of dollars into Californiaas struggling economy as part of a record-setting state budget proposal that will play out as he defends himself in a recall election.

The $267.8 billion plan would direct billions in spending toward stimulus checks for Californians, give millions of children a start on college savings accounts and provide grants of up to $25,000 apiece to businesses set back by COVID-19. His plan, which proposes $196.8 billion in general fund spending, also includes massive efforts to modernize the stateas roads, bridges and broadband.

It would essentially create a new grade in California public schools called transitional kindergarten and expand childcare slots. It would also expand eligibility for Medi-Cal, the state-funded health program for low-income people, to undocumented people over age 60. In other words, illegal aliens. Does this impact the California citizens that have paid into this California system and possibly hurt thoes USA citizens who have contributed money into this system when the aliens have not?

And it would put $24.4 billion into reserve accounts, including the so-called Rainy-Day Fund that gives lawmakers a cushion when revenue falls.

Newsom said: This is our plan to get California not only back on its feet, but California roaring back, once again, to its rightful status as the most essential and dominant state, not only in the United States, but one of the most essential modern economies anywhere in the world.

It is a stark turnaround from a year ago when he and lawmakers slashed tens of billions of dollars in planned spending and cut public employeesa pay as they braced for a severe recession.

The Sacramento Regional Water Authority, just three days after the area was declared a aDrought Areaa by gov. Newsome, issued a 10% cut in water usage. They specifically pointed to water agencies that depend on Folsom Lake and the lower American River for local water customers. Officials said there is no official order, just a volunteer status at this time, but warned that they expect drought to get worse. What was not discussed is the process that the Bureau of Reclamation and other government agencies use in the decisions that determines how much water is released from the Folsom dam when it is known the weather forecast is for drought, and the amount of water in the snowpack in the sierra which feeds the reservoirs and river flow in the foothill communities and the valley water needs is below average. This is an ongoing question that is never answered, yet the obvious question is why we release all this needed water for food growth and drinking for the local population when we have the knowledge we will release away into the delta the needed supply. KAHI COMMENT: Start investigations to get cooperative discussions between all federal and local water customers and create a non-political plan that fairly distributes the precious life required commodity of fresh water.    

Placer County officials approved a $4.8 million contract to purchase body-worn cameras as part of a pilot program for county sheriffas deputies Tuesday.

The program will begin in January 2022 and last three years.

In a presentation to the board of supervisors, Capt. Jeff Swearingen said the sheriffas office had decided to purchase the Motorola Watchguard V-300 camera system after extensive testing. The system, unlike others, has an in-car camera that activates at the same time as an officeras body-camera to capture multiple angles for video evidence.