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jamesgierach · 5 years

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Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s

“State of the City” Address, 2019)

(Excerpt) (Draft prepared by James E. Gierach)

Mayor Lightfoot’s “2019 State of the City” Observations and Aims re Violence, Gangs, Guns, Drugs, Immigration, Healthcare, Policing, Racism and Corruption

[CHICAGO_. Marking her FIRST 100 days in office as Chicago’s mayor, just a few days before Labor Day 2019, the following comments are taken from a SUGGESTED DRAFT of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s first “STATE OF THE CITY” address.]

‘My fellow Chicagoans —

Though we have made progress in reducing the number of HOMICIDES and SHOOTINGS in Chicago, violent crime remains all too prevalent in too many Chicago neighborhoods, increasingly leeching even onto “the Magnificent Mile,” into our best neighborhoods, and onto Chicago expressways.

VIOLENCE can erupt anywhere in today’s climate.

Though the number of ILLEGAL GUNS recovered by Chicago Police has increased, likely to reach 10,000 illegal guns by year’s end, and despite numerous anti-violence initiatives and strategies put in place over three, Chicago mayoral administrations spanning decades, I am convinced that so long as DRUG PROHIBITION remains “the Law of the Land,” Chicago will continue to be plagued by painful, unrelenting gang and gun violence.

DRUG PROHIBITION PROFITS ARE THE LIFEBLOOD OF CHICAGO GANGS. And Chicago gangs are the center core of our gun and violence crises.

Under the new leadership of Gov. JB Pritzker, effective January 1st, Illinois has LEGALIZED RECREATIONAL MARIJUANA, and soon will have largely removed marijuana from drug-dealer shelves, the drug substance most commonly used by Chicagoans, Americans and people around the world.

This great accomplishment was achieved by thoughtful LEGISLATIVE ACT and by stoke of the GOVERNOR’S PEN — not by action of a drug task force, paid-informant, or raiding police SWAT team.

I hasten to add: By delivering this “State of the City Address,” I AM NOT RECOMMENDING THAT PEOPLE USE MARIJUANA.

Individual freedom to choose whether or not to use marijuana, because recreational marijuana use has now been legalized in Illinois for persons 21 years-of-age or older, does not mean individuals should choose to use it.

But I do applaud the removal of marijuana from the REVENUE STREAM of Chicago GANGS and UNLICENSED DRUG DEALERS, who use those revenues to buy weapons of mass destruction — ASSAULT WEAPONS and HANDGUNS. Those weapons in the hands of drug gangsters are used to intimidate witnesses, acquire turf, and lure kids with aspirations to succeed in life by passing through a “GOLDEN PROHIBITION GATEWAY” that purportedly offers easy money and the accumulation of great wealth without need of formal education or hard work.

But MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION IS NOT ANSWER ENOUGH to right today’s wrongs, resulting from society’s return to the sorry Al Capone-chapter of Chicago prohibition history.

I say, DRUG PROHIBITION IS WORSE than a hundred alcohol Prohibitions in terms of unintended and unforeseen bad consequences.

AL CAPONE needed to buy trucks and warehouses to move and store bulky liquor, a big capital outlay limiting entry into the business. In contrast, drug prohibition invites every smart, disadvantaged, or aspiring kid into the powdered, drug-concentrate business without need of startup capital. A plastic baggy containing heroin, fentanyl, cocaine or other powdered drug worth $1,000 on the street won’t even bulge a youngster’s bluejeans pocket.

All that is required to go into Chicago’s, drug-prohibition business is a gun to compete and a pair of gym shoes to get away.

The illicit drug business attracts not only the young and ambitious, but also experienced and disparate parolees. For many thousands of “ex-cons” released back into communities on Chicago’s West and South Sides, and elsewhere, drugs are often the EMPLOYER OF LAST RESORT.

These ill-conceived societal rules have instilled in the minds of many people living on the fringe of society the notion that “It’s them or us,” “Kill or be killed,” “I’m not going back to prison.” This desperate and unforgiving thought must end. But how?

Dr. Gary Slutkin, founder of CEASEFIRE, a violence-interrupter nonprofit organization that has received funding from the City of Chicago, among other governments, was nearly correct 30 years ago when he first suggested that we should treat violence as a disease.

More correctly, he should have said, that DRUG PROHIBITION is a disease that causes unending violence, and many other systemic diseases; and that all are without cure or significant remediation, UNLESS WE RETREAT from counterproductive drug-prohibition policy.

I believe that so long as we have drug users unable to access a legal, labeled and reasonably affordable supply of the substances to which many users are addicted, the myriad horrors of drug prohibition will continue to fowl the Chicago landscape. Those DRUG PROHIBITION horrors, implicitly built into all drug prohibition policies, include the following UNENDING and INSURMOUNTABLE CHALLENGES:

• ACCIDENTAL DRUG OVERDOSE DEATHS, caused by users’ voluntary consumption of unlabeled, untested and unregulated illegal drugs;

• drug warriors and innocent crossfire victims left dead or wounded in unending, Chicago TURF WARS, including street-settled drug business disputes and RETALIATORY SHOOTINGS;

• gang members needfully armed with ever more POWERFUL GUNS to meet rival competitors in a free-for-all fight for CONTROL OF DRUG MARKETS, customers and gang members;

• UNAFFORDABLE, BULLET-HOLE HEALTHCARE;

• the need for MORE POLICE, metal detectors, cameras and MORE TECHNOLOGY in the public way;

• the need for MORE SCHOOL SOCIAL WORKERS, counselors and trauma centers;

The list of drug-prohibition horrors is much longer, and without exhaustion includes:

• RACIALLY-DISPARATE and HEAVY-HANDED POLICING;

• MONEY JUDGMENTS in the hundreds of millions of dollars expended to settle ABUSIVE POLICING LAWSUITS and fund DOJ CONSENT DECREE COMPLIANCE;

• CRIMINAL COURT INJUSTICES;

• FAMILY SEPARATION and BREAKDOWN, caused by MASS INCARCERATION of nonviolent (disproportionately Black and Brown) drug users, and dealers-dealers trying to survive and make a living;

• communities filled with unemployed and often UNEMPLOYABLE WORKERS needlessly saddled with drug-conviction backgrounds;

• and TERRORIZED IMMIGRANTS, DRUG-WAR REFUGEES really, flocking to the U.S.-Mexican border, and eventually to friendly cities like Chicago, to escape the violent consequences of UNITED NATIONS-MANDATED and U.S.-SUPPORTED drug prohibition policies adversely impacting many people from Central America and Latin America.

Of course, DRUG POLICY REFORM ALONE IS NOT ENOUGH.

We must continue and accelerate our “WEED AND SEED” INITIATIVES with enhanced job opportunities, infrastructure improvements, and government and private investment and cooperation—all essential ingredients to address these problems, as long-recognized by all.

But what we have all been much slower to recognize or callout is the UNINTENDED DAMAGE caused by DRUG-PROHIBITION POLICIES enacted and enforced at the LOCAL, STATE, NATIONAL and INTERNATIONAL LEVELS.

ZERO TOLERANCE OF DRUGS has been the watchword and commonly-supported public policy endorsed by the masses, political and religious leaders, and honorable members of the press for too long — OVER HALF A CENTURY.

This mainstream intolerance, and implicit and explicit endorsement of drug prohibition governmental polices, has preceded successive Chicago, and American, DRUG CRISES with marijuana, LSD, cocaine, crack cocaine, PCP, heroin, ecstasy, methamphetamines, fentanyl and 803 newly invented synthetic mind-altering substances, the latter over just the past decade.

The “SHADOW REPORT” — prepared by the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), based in the United Kingdom, a collective of over 100 nonprofit organizations — authoritatively documents GLOBAL DRUG POLICY FAILURES, including DRAMATICALLY INCREASED PRODUCTION OF OPIATES, COCAINE and SYNTHETIC DRUGS over the past decade. I refer all Chicagoans to the 138-page IDPC report available in five languages. https://idpc.net/publications/2018/10/taking-stock-a-decade-of-drug-policy-a-civil-society-shadow-report

Finally, I acknowledge that, alone, Chicago cannot untie the DRUG-PROHIBITION GORDIAN KNOT, cinched so tightly to so many of our Chicago problems for so long.

It will require the cooperation of the CHICAGO CITY COUNCIL, COOK COUNTY BOARD, the ILLINOIS GENERAL ASSEMBLY, the u.S. CONGRESS, the UNITED NATIONS COMMISSION ON NARCOTIC DRUGS, the INTERNATIONAL NARCOTICS CONTROL BOARD, ECOSOC, the UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY, the WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION and approximately 186 NATIONS OF THE WORLD who have heretofore agreed to support and execute disastrous, UN drug-prohibition CONVENTIONS and POLICIES.

Alone, no one can solve this gargantuan, monolithic, global and Chicago drug prohibition policy conundrum with poisonous tentacles reaching everywhere.

But I intend to dismantle the illicit drug business in Chicago by fighting for EXPERIMENTAL DRUG POLICY REFORM IDEAS, including programs and initiatives embracing drug decriminalization and drug legalization.

And of course, Chicago will also be supporting drug treatment on demand, clean needles, naloxone for all, methadone, suboxone, buprenorphine clinics, mobile drug dispensaries for on-site consumption, safe injection sites, and other HARM-REDUCTION INITIATIVES.

TOGETHER, WE CAN DO THIS. WE CAN AGAIN MAKES DRUG POLICY A MEDICAL PROBLEM, NOT A RAINFALL OF SOCIETAL PROHIBITION CRISES.

We can do it by supporting drug-tolerant ideas aimed to eliminate prohibition drug markets and undercut gang revenues, ideas that simply “TAKE THE PROFIT OUT OF DRUGS.” Because armed gangs will not give up their core, addicted user-base without a fight, I will deploy Chicago police to protect drug users and drug dispensaries at every location and in every legal drug venue.

Now, I’d like to turn to Chicago’s financial problems, including our billion dollar budget shortfall, our budget-busting contractual pension obligations, school contract negotiations and the failed soda tax….’

[Draft prepared for the Honorable Mayor Lori Lightfoot by James E. Gierach, a supporter and admirer of Mayor Lightfoot.]

James E. Gierach

Palos Park, Illinois

Originally drafted, Tuesday, August 27, 2019

Edited, Friday, March 5, 2021

[Mayor Lightfoot’s Thursday address now about 48 hours out.]

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orbemnews · 3 years

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At Last, Aid for Senior Nutrition That Offers More Than Crumbs Long before the coronavirus hit, nutrition programs that served the nation’s older adults struggled to keep up with a growing demand. Often, they could not. In Charlotte, N.C., and nine surrounding counties, for example, the waiting list for Meals on Wheels averaged about 1,200 people. But Linda Miller, director of the Centralina Area Agency on Aging, which coordinates the program, always assumed the actual need was higher. She knew some clients skipped meals because they couldn’t travel to a senior center for a hot lunch every weekday; some divided a single home-delivered meal to serve as both lunch and dinner. Some never applied for help. “Just like with food stamps, which are underused,” Ms. Miller said, “people are embarrassed: ‘I worked hard all my life; I don’t want charity.’” In Northern Arizona, state budget cuts coupled with only modest increases in federal dollars through the Older Americans Act also produced waiting lists. “We get flat funding and say: ‘Thank you! We didn’t get cut!’” said Mary Beals-Luedtka, director of the Area Agency on Aging that serves four largely rural counties there. “But flat funding is like a decrease. It’s not adequate.” Covid-19 made the task immeasurably harder. Across the country, it shut down the senior centers and church halls that served meals to healthier, more mobile seniors. Then those closures, plus shelter-in-place policies and fears of exposure, drastically boosted the number of older people who needed meals delivered. Many volunteers, also at risk because of age, stayed away. Sometimes, so did family members who had pitched in with shopping and cooking, now worried about infecting their elders. The Arizona team scrambled to distribute 150 percent more meals at home last year than the year before. “My staff was reeling,” Ms. Beals-Luedtka said. “It was crazy.” She still has about 70 people on a waiting list. Help has come, however. To the relief of administrators and advocates, the first three federal Covid recovery packages included substantial increases in funding for the Older Americans Act, which supports both congregant, or group, meals (which serve the majority of participants) and Meals on Wheels. The fourth infusion and the largest by far, $750 million, will come from the American Rescue Plan that President Biden signed last month. It brings the total increase for senior nutrition services to $1.6 billion. In fiscal 2019, they received $907 million. “It’s a victory and a validation of the value of this program,” said Bob Blancato, executive director of the National Association of Nutrition and Aging Services Programs. “Older adult malnutrition is an ongoing problem.” Separately, a 15 percent increase for everyone who qualifies for food stamps, more formally the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, will benefit an estimated 5.4 million older recipients. For years, advocates for older adults have lobbied Congress for more significant federal help. Although the Older Americans Act has enjoyed bipartisan support, small annual upticks in appropriations left 5,000 local organizations constantly lagging in their ability to feed seniors. From 2001 to 2019, funding for the Older Americans Act rose an average of 1.1 percent annually — a 22 percent increase over almost two decades, according to an analysis by the AARP Public Policy Institute. But adjusted for inflation, the funding for nutrition services actually fell 8 percent. State and local matching funds, foundation grants and private donations helped keep kitchens open and drivers delivering, but many programs still could not bridge their budget gaps. At the same time, the number of Americans over 60 — the age of eligibility for O.A.A. nutrition and other services — grew by 63 percent. About one-quarter of low-income seniors were “food insecure,” meaning they had limited or uncertain access to adequate food. And that shortfall was before the pandemic. Once programs hastily closed congregant settings last spring, a Meals on Wheels America survey found that nearly 80 percent of the programs reported that new requests for home-delivered meals had at least doubled; waiting lists grew by 26 percent. Along with money, the Covid relief legislation gave these local programs needed flexibility. Normally, to qualify for Meals on Wheels, homebound clients must require assistance with activities of daily living. The emergency appropriations allowed administrators to serve less frail seniors who were following stay-at-home orders, and to transfer money freely from congregant centers to home delivery. Even so, the increased caseloads, with people who had never applied before seeking meals, left some administrators facing dire decisions. In Northern Arizona, about 800 clients were receiving home-delivered meals in February 2020. By June, that number had ballooned to 1,265, including new applicants as well as those who had previously eaten at the program’s 18 now-shuttered senior centers. Clients were receiving 14 meals each week. By summer, despite federal relief funds, “I was out of money,” Ms. Beals-Luedtka said. She faced the grim task of telling 342 seniors, who had been added to the rolls for three emergency months, that she had to remove them. “People were crying on the phone,” she recalled. “I literally had a man say he was going to commit suicide.” (She reinstated him.) Even those who remained started receiving five meals a week instead of 14. Now, Ms. Beals-Luedtka awaits an estimated $1.34 million from the rescue plan, which will largely eliminate the waiting list, increase the number of meals for each recipient and help local providers acquire and repair kitchen equipment as senior centers reopen. In North Carolina last month, the Centralina agency, working with a food bank, started delivering grocery boxes — containing produce, canned food and other staples — to low-income seniors, using federal money from last year’s CARES Act. “They’re a huge hit,” Ms. Miller said. “I could never do that before.” It may seem unnecessary for senior nutrition programs to accomplish anything beyond feeding hungry older people, but research has demonstrated their broader impact. “Addressing nutritional needs isn’t good only for people’s quality of life,” said Kali Thomas, a researcher at Brown University whose studies have demonstrated multiple benefits to Meals on Wheels. “It improves their health.” These programs diminish loneliness and help keep seniors out of expensive nursing homes. They also may help reduce falls, although those findings were based on a small sample and did not achieve statistical significance. Interestingly, Dr. Thomas’s research found daily meal deliveries had greater effects than weekly or twice-monthly drop-offs of frozen meals, a practice many local organizations have adopted to save money. Frail or forgetful clients may have trouble storing, preparing and remembering to eat frozen meals. But the primary reason daily deliveries pay off, her study shows, is the regular chats with drivers. “They build relationships with their clients,” Dr. Thomas said. “They might come back later to fix a rickety handrail. If they’re worried about a client’s health, they let the program know. The drivers are often the only people they see all day, so these relationships are very important.” Congregant meals contribute to participants’ well-being, too, staving off food insecurity and providing socialization and healthier diets, a prepandemic evaluation found. So while program administrators relish a rare opportunity to expand their reach, they worry that if Congress doesn’t sustain this higher level of appropriations, the relief money will be spent and waiting lists will reappear. “There’s going to be a cliff,” Ms. Beals-Luedtka said. “What’s going to happen next time? I don’t want to have to call people and say, ‘We’re done with you now.’ These are our grandparents.” Source link Orbem News #Aid #Crumbs #Nutrition #Offers #senior

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raymondcastleberry · 4 years

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Indian Point Closure Puts Pressure on Natural Gas Supplies in New York

At a time when the coronavirus pandemic is putting added pressure on our medical system and equipment, which is highly dependent on the electric grid, the state of New York is shuttering the Indian Point nuclear power plant—a source of reliable and resilient electricity. By the end of this month, one of the two reactors at the 2,069-megawatt facility will stop producing power and the remaining reactor will be shuttered next April. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), New York will become more dependent on natural gas and renewable energy to replace that power. Natural gas generation would need to increase from a 40 percent share in 2019 to a 46 percent share in 2020, while non-hydroelectric renewables would need to increase their combined share from 4.7 percent to 5 percent, according to EIA’s Short Term Energy Outlook. Hydroelectricity would also need to pitch in to help alleviate the hole left by Indian Point, but the major burden would apparently fall on natural gas.

With the future of the state’s generation in the hands of natural gas, it is incredible that Governor Cuomo has banned hydraulic fracturing, which would allow the state to produce its own natural gas from the Marcellus shale basin, and is holding up the construction of pipelines that could bring the natural gas from neighboring Pennsylvania. National Grid, N.Y.’s natural gas utility, has already indicated that it expects a supply shortage of natural gas and had placed moratoria on new natural gas hookups that were overturned by the state. Governor Cuomo is most likely expecting renewable energy to make up the shortfall and is calling the construction of wind and solar farms in the state essential if they are on-line by September 30, 2020, despite indicating most construction not essential because of coronavirus.

Natural gas is flexible, abundant and consumed in many sectors of the economy. It is used as a heating and cooking fuel in the buildings sector, as a feedstock and fuel in the industrial sector, and a generator fuel in the electricity sector. Like oil, natural gas is being affected by the coronavirus pandemic with very low prices and an industry in financial trouble. This is not a time for Governor Cuomo to be putting more demands on natural gas when the state is prohibiting its production and blocking its already limited infrastructure.

EIA’s Forecast

EIA expects natural gas to mainly make up for the loss of Indian Point’s nuclear power this year and next with some minimal help from renewable energy. While electricity generation from non-hydroelectric renewables is expected to increase by 51 percent between 2019 and 2021 in New York and natural gas generation is expected to increase by less—29 percent. The graph below shows that natural gas will be making up for most of Indian Point’s loss of power, according to EIA’s forecasts. That is, of course, if the state can obtain enough natural gas for the nuclear plant’s replacement as well as meeting normal uses for the fuel given the state’s bans on hydraulic fracturing and new gas pipeline construction.

Source: Energy Information Administration

New Yorks’s Ban on Hydraulic Fracturing

The New York Legislature codified a ban of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in New York State’s 2021 state budget. Previously, Governor Cuomo and his predecessor had instituted a ban by gubernatorial initiative. The codification of such a ban into law means it would take an act of the State Legislature to reverse it—a much tougher process than reversing a gubernatorial ban. As a result, New York’s Southern Tier counties of Broome and Chemung cannot produce their shale gas deposits that could bolster their economy.

New York’s Block on Gas Pipelines

Using a little known section of the Federal Clean Water Act called the Section 401 Clean Streams Certification, Governor Cuomo blocked the construction of interstate gas pipelines preciously approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Not only does this action hurt New York City’s metropolitan area, but it hurts New England as well since pipelines are the cleanest and most efficient means of transporting natural gas. The ban on pipelines in New York means that natural gas cannot reach New England through the most direct route possible and that there may be insufficient natural gas to replace the power lost at Indian Point.

To try to limit future natural gas use given the ban on pipelines, New York’s two largest utilities, Consolidated Edison and National Grid, declared moratoria on future gas hookups for new customers, only to have Governor Cuomo reverse the moratoria by threatening to revoke the utility’s operating license. The utilities were concerned that placing new demands on a system already running close to its limits would require shutting off customers during high demand periods. Similar to New England, New York may be forced to rely on natural gas from Russia if a very cold winter should hit or if the state cannot replace the power lost from Indian Point, which currently provides about 25 percent of New York City’s electricity.

Background on Indian Point

In January 2017, Entergy Nuclear and the state of New York reached an agreement to retire the two nuclear reactors at Indian Point, located in Buchanan, New York, about 25 miles north of New York City. Indian Point is one of four nuclear power plants in New York state and accounts for about 12 percent of total electricity generated from all NY electricity sources. Under the agreement, Entergy will retire one reactor in April 2020 and the other in April 2021.

Entergy had been seeking a 20-year license renewal for both reactor units from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission since 2007. Because New York State challenged the renewals as a result of environmental and safety concerns due to the facility’s proximity to New York City, the license renewal was not approved. The announced closure dates could be postponed by four years given a mutual agreement between Entergy and the New York state government if electricity reliability in the region is significantly affected or if other emergency circumstances should occur.

Conclusion

Without Indian Point providing nuclear power and without new natural gas pipelines or in-state fracking providing natural gas, New York could be faced with some very expensive future energy bills and reliance on foreign energy because there is no way to get enough solar and wind capacity to replace Indian Point in time, as the EIA forecasts show. As the United States is now the world’s top energy producer, there is no reason for a power or fuel shortage in New York. Consolidated Edison and National Grid moratoria are merely a taste of what may be coming. New York politicians need to take action before another crisis should hit, such as a second wave of the coronavirus, or even a very cold winter. New York is becoming even more ill-prepared for a potential energy delivery problem with the closure of Indian Point.

The post Indian Point Closure Puts Pressure on Natural Gas Supplies in New York appeared first on IER.

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years

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Home Cooks Trapped by Coronavirus Are Flocking to Meal Kits

HelloFresh ingredients and recipe card | Bridget Halenar / Optimistic Kitchen

Blue Apron and HelloFresh have seen surges in demand and investor interest over the last few weeks, as home cooks avoid grocery stores

Heather Kaufman recently took over her parents’ apartment in New York while they ride out the coronavirus pandemic in New Jersey. To stock the fridge, “I had to go to the local grocery store, which has very narrow aisles. It was a little tense,” she says. “It reminded me of avoiding the ghosts in Pac-Man, but with other people.” The options at the store were limited — just some pork and “beef chuck, sirloin steak, and ribeye, which is weird but I guess people are still watching their cholesterol,” she jokes. So she signed up for an account with Blue Apron, one of a number of meal kit delivery services that predate the novel coronavirus outbreak, but which seem particularly suited to a customer base wary of grocery runs. Kaufman cooked her first meal and says she loved it.

Until recently, services like Blue Apron and HelloFresh provided guidance to novice home cooks or just simple convenience to everyone else — but the industry has historically had trouble maintaining customers. During the crisis, though, the services have taken on renewed significance for customers staying at home to follow social-distancing recommendations or shelter-in-place orders. What was once a perk of the direct-to-consumer lifestyle has become a lifeline for those avoiding grocery stores, and a chance to learn a new recipe or practice an old skill in the kitchen. “We believe home cooking is an opportunity to find some comfort and joy in this rather uncertain time,” a representative for Blue Apron tells Eater.

Bridget Halenar / Optimistic Kitchen

A meal from HelloFresh

Blue Apron and HelloFresh both witnessed surges in demand in recent weeks, and investors took notice immediately. On March 18, while markets fell so fast they triggered circuit breakers, Blue Apron shares were up 140 percent in midday trading. Meanwhile, according to Google Finance, HelloFresh’s stock price was also on the rise, from $20 on March 16 to $26.50 two days later, before continuing on to nearly $30 by March 25. While HelloFresh’s stock price has been consistently rising since late 2019, the increased business is especially good news for Blue Apron. After a rocky IPO in 2017, Blue Apron’s stock declined from $10 per share down to under a dollar in December 2018. According to a representative, Blue Apron is capitalizing on renewed consumer interest with a bevy of social media engagement opportunities, including instructional videos on cooking with pantry staples, a Q&A with head chef John Adler, a primer on throwing a virtual pizza party for kids, and digital wine tastings.

For many, meal kits serve as part of a larger diet, accounting for just a few meals each week. Even when they don’t entirely obviate the need for groceries, they can still help reduce reliance on overburdened, overpopulated grocery stores. Curt Abercrombie, a compliance analyst in Spring Valley, Nevada, and a new customer for health-minded Sun Basket, says meal kits help him do his part to maintain social distance. “I signed up recently because of the high demand at the grocery stores. I try to eat healthy, and I was having trouble putting healthy meals together with what was left on the shelves,” he says. While he’s not too fearful personally about infection, he adds, “I figure with Sun Basket, it will save me one to two trips a week. I’m trying to help flatten the curve.”

When Saqi Mehta, a global recruiting diversity lead at Cloudera in San Francisco, signed up for Blue Apron, the novel coronavirus didn’t yet concern her, but she says she appreciates the variety of meals and fresh ingredients now more than ever. Still, she remains careful with deliveries, explaining, “I’m trying to wait an hour before taking anything out if I can, using gloves and wipes, and throwing away the box as soon as possible.”

Mehta has used Blue Apron on and off, canceling past memberships because she just “couldn’t get into it.” Extra time at home, though, has helped her stick to the routine. Meal kits now represent a quarter of meals for her and her husband.

Kaufman, who tried the service for a week in 2018 while studying for the bar exam, echoes that sentiment, adding, “What better time to try it than right now? I’m in an apartment by myself and my boyfriend is on the other side of the city. There’s only so much FaceTime you can do to occupy your time. TV is great, but at some point even TV gets old and boring.” One of her friends has taken up embroidery, she says, but she’s decided to use her time indoors to improve her cooking skills, which before this were limited to boiling water and microwaving.

Cost has long been a barrier to entry to meal kits for many customers. Blue Apron, for instance, starts at $9.99 per portion, with a minimum of four portions (two meals for two people) per week. For a family of four, the weekly cost quickly mounts to hundreds of dollars.

Mehta is accustomed to high prices for delivery in San Francisco, so pricey meal kits don’t worry her. She even feels it’s worth it to spring for Blue Apron’s premium meals, which bump up the price by $10 per portion, but give customers higher-end options, like chicken wrapped in prosciutto with sage.

Bridget Halenar / Optimistic Kitchen

HelloFresh recipe cards

The grocery math doesn’t add up for everyone, though. Bridget Halenar, food photographer, blogger, and creator of Optimistic Kitchen, lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania, where Gov. Tom Wolf has issued a stay-at-home order. While the order doesn’t prevent her from going out to buy essential goods, she signed up for HelloFresh (one of a number of meal kits she intends to try out for an ongoing project). As a regular cook, Halenar says, “The cost is quite a bit more than I’m used to paying to feed my family and still have the cooking and dishes to do. … Budget-wise it only really helps if it keeps you from eating out.” Still, she has to admit the kits have benefits. “It gives me a break from a couple of meals per week [because] I can have my husband and son make dinner ... the kit has everything they need and they can handle it on their own while I walk the dogs, or [do] yoga, or have some tub time.”

Rachel Duncan, a receptionist in the Scottish Borders, is another recent HelloFresh customer, but she doesn’t intend to remain one permanently. She lives with a partner and her two daughters, and she says she can’t afford meal kits all the time. Duncan picked up a HelloFresh discount code from a friend, which dropped the price on her first box of food, and then shared her own code on Instagram, which netted her another 80 pounds to put toward future deliveries. “I will keep using HelloFresh until my credit runs out, because at full price it does not make financial sense to us,” she says. “I also did this up until last week with a Gousto subscription.”

Other customers have complained about supply. The sudden spike in demand has caused shortfalls in supply chains for a number of companies. On the r/mealkits subreddit, customers of several companies share stories about last-minute meal switches, missing ingredients, delayed deliveries, and reduced selection.

A representative for HelloFresh tells Eater there have been “no major disruptions” to service and that the team is working with suppliers to keep it that way. A Blue Apron representative shared a similar statement, saying the company made substitutions in a small portion of boxes last week and “expects to meet increased demand by the next available weekly cycle, starting on 3/30.” The company is bringing on more help, hoping to hire workers who have lost jobs in the hospitality industry.

Mehta and Kaufman didn’t experience much supply disruption, and both appreciated Blue Apron’s transparent messaging about the situation. They both said they would consider continuing their subscriptions after the pandemic subsides, especially since social distancing helped cement their habit of cooking with meal kits.

It’s unclear whether other customers will stick with them, and the unlikely boon from the novel coronavirus may prove short lived for the meal kit industry. “I think I would pay full price these few weeks if I had to, but not when things are back to normal and I’m able to source things myself and for less money,” Duncan says. “When this is over I’ll use my HelloFresh and Gousto recipe cards, and shop myself.”

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2wIe4sB https://ift.tt/39tID2t

HelloFresh ingredients and recipe card | Bridget Halenar / Optimistic Kitchen

Blue Apron and HelloFresh have seen surges in demand and investor interest over the last few weeks, as home cooks avoid grocery stores

Bridget Halenar / Optimistic Kitchen

A meal from HelloFresh

Bridget Halenar / Optimistic Kitchen

HelloFresh recipe cards

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2wIe4sB via Blogger https://ift.tt/2w6nu0A

#Blogger #cooking #Eater #food #recipes

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instantdeerlover · 4 years

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Home Cooks Trapped by Coronavirus Are Flocking to Meal Kits (2) added to Google Docs

Home Cooks Trapped by Coronavirus Are Flocking to Meal Kits (2)

HelloFresh ingredients and recipe card | Bridget Halenar / Optimistic Kitchen

Blue Apron and HelloFresh have seen surges in demand and investor interest over the last few weeks, as home cooks avoid grocery stores

Bridget Halenar / Optimistic Kitchen A meal from HelloFresh

Bridget Halenar / Optimistic Kitchen HelloFresh recipe cards

via Eater - All https://www.eater.com/2020/3/31/21199913/home-cooks-pivot-to-meal-kits-blue-apron-hello-fresh-coronavirus-covid-19-impact

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Sanguine snowman, iguana invasion, Chicken Dinner Road: News from around our 50 states

Alabama

Reeltown: The baptism of high school football players on the 50-yard line in their football stadium has drawn complaints from a group that pushes for separation of church and state. After more than two dozen Reeltown High School players were baptized on the field in November, the Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation demanded an investigation. “There is a strong relationship between conservative Protestantism and football at the high school and college level,” said Michael Altman, a religious studies professor at the University of Alabama. Altman said the Wisconsin group “is doing its best to call attention to a practice it finds unconstitutional by trying to take a local story national.” Tallapoosa County Schools Superintendent Joe Windle told Al.com he found no wrongdoing. The baptism was not conducted by the school, he said.

Alaska

Anchorage: Smoke has risen miles above a volcano on one of the Aleutian Islands, the Alaska Volcano Observatory says. Lava flowed down the side of Shishaldin Volcano on Unimak Island on Saturday, and smoke rose more than 5 miles high Sunday, Anchorage Daily News reports. The National Weather Service issued an alert for pilots Sunday, as plumes were recorded 30,000 feet in elevation and extending up to 90 miles east. The volcano observatory tweeted late Sunday that the ash emissions ended about 8:30 p.m. The largest island on the Aleutian chain, Unimak is 120 miles northeast of Unalaska Island and about 700 miles west of Anchorage. The same volcano erupted two weeks ago, officials say. The volcano was quiet until seismic activity increased Friday, says geologist Tim Orr of the volcano observatory.

Arizona

Phoenix: The state has agreed to pay $100,000 to settle a lawsuit by a former corrections officer who alleged his coworkers and supervisors repeatedly harassed him over his status as a transgender man. The lawsuit, which was tentatively settled Thursday, alleged colleagues used derogatory terms to refer to the officer and put his safety at risk by revealing to inmates that he had undergone a gender transition. The officer, who filed the lawsuit under a pseudonym due to safety and privacy concerns, alleged that the Department of Corrections responded inadequately to his complaints and that the harassment continued after he was transferred to another facility. Unable to tolerate the harassment, the officer resigned in 2016 after working nearly 11 years in state prisons in Florence and Douglas, according to the suit.

Arkansas

Fayetteville: CLL16 – a new high-yield, long-grain Clearfield rice variety developed by the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture – will be available to rice growers from Horizon Ag in 2021. Karen Moldenhauer, professor and rice breeder for the Division of Agriculture’s Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, says CLL16 has excellent rough rice yields, averaging 205 bushels per acre, slightly better than Diamond, which averages 204 bushels per acre. CLL16 is resistant to blast in Arkansas growing conditions, Moldenhauer says. It has demonstrated good milling yields, averaging 63% whole kernel and 69% total milled rice for samples from Arkansas Rice Performance Trials across the state.

California

Oakland: Homeless mothers who were evicted last week from a house where they were squatting plan to move back after speculators agreed to sell the property to a nonprofit organization, it was announced Monday. Wedgewood Inc. will sell the home to the Oakland Community Land Trust, which buys and fixes up property for affordable housing. The group plans to allow women from the group Moms 4 Housing to return, Mayor Libby Schaaf announced. The city helped negotiate the agreement with the land trust and Wedgewood after a public outcry following the evictions. “This is what happens when we organize, when people come together to build the beloved community,” Dominique Walker of Moms 4 Housing said in a statement on the holiday honoring civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. “Today we honor Dr. King’s radical legacy by taking Oakland back from banks and corporations.” Wedgewood also agreed to work with the city to negotiate a right-of-first-refusal program for all its other Oakland properties, a city statement said.

Colorado

Denver: A sheriff’s deputy who was pulled over by state troopers while driving three prisoners in a transport van has been charged with traffic offenses including reckless endangerment, authorities said Monday. Denver Sheriff Department Deputy James Grimes was charged following an investigation into the alleged aggressive driving incident, the Colorado State Patrol said. Grimes and the driver of a second vehicle were allegedly racing in and out of traffic as they traveled northbound on Interstate 25 on Thursday while under observation by a state patrol aircraft. Grimes faces additional charges of reckless driving and speeding in a construction zone. Grimes and another deputy who was with him in the prisoner van have been reassigned and placed on leave pending an internal investigation, the Denver Sheriff Department said in a statement.

Connecticut

Hartford: State lawmakers plan to resurrect a bipartisan proposal that attempts to help older workers who often face age discrimination when seeking employment. The bill would prohibit employers from requiring a job applicant to list their date of birth and school graduation years, information that reveals a worker’s age even though prospective employers are not allowed to ask about age during interviews. Supporters said the legislation is aimed at addressing the discrimination older online job applicants often face. West Hartford Sen. Derek Slap, a Democrat, said this move could level the playing field for older workers in Connecticut and “give them a chance once they get into the application process to get that interview and make a case.” Slap said Connecticut has the sixth-oldest workforce in the U.S. Recent U.S. Census Bureau data show more than a quarter of the state’s workforce is over age 54.

Delaware

Dover: Legislation aimed at settling a minor controversy involving dogs and eating establishments has passed the state House of Representatives without a dissenting vote and now goes to the Senate for consideration. The bill has broad bipartisan support, with more than a third of the General Assembly sponsoring or co-sponsoring the measure. House Bill 275 specifies that the owner of a food establishment may permit leashed dogs in the business’ outdoor patio area or beer garden, regardless of any state regulation to the contrary. The Delaware Division of Public Health inadvertently sparked controversy last summer when it took a renewed interest in an existing state regulation that prohibits pets in food establishments, including in outdoor areas. The ban does not apply to service animals.

District of Columbia

Washington: A local startup is betting the skies are the future of food delivery with no delivery fees, no tips, and no worries for rumbling stomachs hoping to avoid getting so hungry that the sensation turns to anger, WUSA-TV reports. Shehan Weeraman and Nick Adimi named their company Hangry after becoming annoyed and exasperated by homemade food. “We got really lazy to cook, and we just decided to order a lot,” Weeraman says. “We realized we were paying like $10, sometimes more, for delivery that would take us sometimes over an hour to arrive.” The engine that drives this enterprise is a drone with a basket attached by a rope to the bottom. Hangry plans to partner with area restaurants and other establishments to deliver its products. Users would be able to meet the pilotless aircraft at a designated drop site, then scan a QR code to pick up their food.

Florida

West Palm Beach: Invasive iguanas burrowing into the soft dirt around an aging dam have cost the city $1.8 million in emergency repairs. Employees noticed last year that water was seeping around the edges of a decades-old weir that controls water delivery in West Palm Beach, the Palm Beach Post reports. South Florida’s green iguana population has exploded since the last prolonged cold spell in 2010 reduced their numbers. They’ve become infamous for nuisance pool pooping and munching on ornamental landscapes, giving rise to a cottage industry of iguana-removal experts. They are also becoming an issue for agencies in charge of managing the hundreds of miles of canals that channel water throughout South Florida, says William Kern, an associate professor in the entomology and nematology department at the University of Florida’s Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center.

Georgia

Atlanta: One of Republican Brian Kemp’s first acts as governor involved revamping the state’s handling of sexual harassment complaints and placing State Inspector General Deborah Wallace in charge of the issue. Kemp now wants to expand Wallace’s office, adding $435,182 to fund five new positions in his proposed fiscal 2021 budget, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Kemp’s budget proposal must be approved by lawmakers. The expansion, which would represent a 43% budget increase for the small agency, comes as other state agencies are being asked to trim their budgets amid a revenue shortfall. Kemp also proposed an additional $250,000 in the current year’s budget, as the agency already brought on new staff to handle complaints.

Hawaii

Honolulu: A man suspected of stabbing a woman and killing two police officers last weekend wandered his neighborhood recording people with a camera mounted on his hat and rigged a barbecue grill to blow thick smoke directly into neighbors’ windows, a lawyer for residents said. Jaroslav “Jerry” Hanel, a handyman who lived in the home in exchange for his work and faced eviction, stabbed a woman in the leg Sunday before he fired on responding authorities, killing Honolulu Police Officers Tiffany Enriquez and Kaulike Kalama, police said. A fire at Hanel’s residence then spread through a normally peaceful neighborhood at the far end of the famed Waikiki Beach neighborhood. “It was pretty clear he was out of control,” said attorney David Hayakawa, who represented three neighbors in obtaining restraining orders against Hanel. Police have said Hanel is missing, and they’re almost certain he’s inside the burned house.

Idaho

Boise: A lawmaker says that Chicken Dinner Road in southwestern Idaho is a historic name and that he is opposed to an animal protection group’s request to rename it. Republican Rep. Scott Syme on Monday introduced a concurrent resolution urging fellow lawmakers to support the existing name. Concurrent resolutions do not need the signature of the governor and don’t have the force of law. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in July asked Caldwell officials to change the name to what it said is the kinder and simpler Chicken Road. Syme said the original name stems from a 1930s resident famous for her chicken dinners who helped persuade then-Democratic Gov. C. Ben Ross to improve the road in Canyon County.

Illinois

Springfield: Gov. J.B. Pritzker has signed a law that eliminates driver’s license suspensions for most non-moving violations. The Democrat signed the “License to Work Act” last week. It takes effect in July. Pritzker says it will allow tens of thousands of motorists to have driving privileges reinstated. That means more people will be able to work. “Illinois now recognizes the fact that suspending licenses for having too many unpaid tickets, fines and fees doesn’t necessarily make a person pay the bill, but it does mean that people don’t have a way to pay,” Pritzker said. He said license suspensions are too harsh a penalty for “a practice that reinforces cycles of instability.” Each year authorities suspend more than 50,000 licenses belonging to people who can’t afford to pay tickets, fines and fees. According to Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a study shows 42% of those who had their licenses suspended lost their jobs.

Indiana

Indianapolis: Hoosiers’ electricity bills could rise and several state utilities may face obstacles in their plans to phase out coal-based power generation in the coming years under politically charged legislation that would help a struggling Indiana industry. House Bill 1414, filed last week by state Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, would require Indiana utilities to prove that any plans to shut down a power plant are either required by a federal mandate or otherwise in the public interest. Though the word “coal” does not appear in the language of the bill, advocates and analysts say the legislation specifically targets coal-burning plants. The proposed regulatory requirement follows similar but unsuccessful legislation last year and is raising concerns among not only environmentalists but also some conservatives who see it as heavy-handed favoritism.

Iowa

Davenport: City leaders are condemning a homeowner’s snow display depicting a figure gunning down a snowman wearing a Bernie Sanders shirt and another adorned with a Democratic Party hat. Mayor Mike Matson said he’s asked the police chief to investigate the display. “My personal reaction is that it’s terribly wrong and an embarrassment to our city,” Matson told the Quad-City Times. Homeowner Donald Hesseltine laughed off such concerns, saying he created the display to “mess with” friends who support Sanders, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president. “It’s just to make people cry I guess,” Hesseltine said. “They’re crying, so I win.” The display includes a mannequin topped with a military helmet that’s holding a rifle and chainsaw, as well as a can of beer. The rifle is pointed toward the Sanders snowman, which has red-dyed snow near its head.

Kansas

Lawrence: The University of Kansas will close its School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, but departments within the school will remain open, and students will not be affected, according to a school official. The closing at the end of the academic year will change only the administrative structure for languages at Kansas, said John Colombo, interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The degree offerings and curriculum will not be affected, he said. Budget problems prompted the closing, The Lawrence Journal-World reports. One staff position will be lost because of the closing. The director and co-director of the school will return to their respective positions within their academic units, Colombo said in an email. The creation of the school about five years ago did not increase enrollment for language departments or raise substantial private support to sustain the language programs as anticipated, he said.

Kentucky

Henderson: Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear have teamed up on an effort to expand the new Green River National Wildlife Refuge in western Kentucky. The two leaders on Tuesday announced the approval of federal Duck Stamp funding for land acquisition to expand the wildlife refuge. Duck Stamps can be purchased by hunters, conservationists and stamp collectors. The stamps provide revenue to support federal conservation and outdoor recreation. Last November, federal and state officials announced the wildlife refuge’s establishment with the acquisition of the first tract – a 10-acre parcel donated by the Southern Conservation Corp. McConnell and Beshear discussed the issue before the new governor took office. Beshear has since given his approval so “Duck Stamp” funding can be used to support land acquisition from willing property sellers to expand the refuge.

Louisiana

New Orleans: Revenue from food and drinks has increased from a new $1 billion terminal at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, according to a recent report, which could mean more flights are added in the future. There was a 32% increase in food and beverage revenue in November 2019, compared to November 2018, The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate reports. The new terminal opened Nov. 6. A 46% revenue increase from drinking and dining options was recorded in December 2019, compared to the year before. The numbers were included in a report to the New Orleans Aviation Board last week, airport spokeswoman Erin Burns said. More non-airline revenue means it’s cheaper for carriers to fly in and out of the airport, and thus the airport is more attractive for airlines considering adding flights, the newspaper reports.

Maine

Yarmouth: A massive elm tree nicknamed Herbie is long gone, but it will live on, thanks to cloned trees being made available to the public. At 110 feet and more than 200 years, Herbie was the tallest and oldest elm in New England and survived 14 bouts of Dutch elm disease thanks to the devotion of his centenarian caretaker, Frank Knight, the late tree warden of Yarmouth. The duo became famous after Knight spent half of his life caring for the tree, which he referred to as “an old friend.” Knight realized he couldn’t save the town’s elms as they succumbed by the hundreds to Dutch elm disease. So he focused his efforts on Herbie. Over five decades, Knight oversaw selective pruning of Herbie’s diseased limbs, plus applications of insecticides and fungicides. The tree was cut down Jan. 19, 2010, as the 101-year-old Knight looked on. Knight died two years later. But before Herbie was chopped down, the Elm Research Institute in New Hampshire worked with Knight to collect some cuttings from Herbie to preserve the tree’s legacy with clones. The hope is that Herbie’s descendants will have some resistance to Dutch elm disease.

Maryland

Salisbury: As rising seas drive saltwater farther inland, state officials are urging local governments, drinking water suppliers, farmers and others to start preparing now for a saltier future. Gov. Larry Hogan’s administration in December released the state’s first plan to combat saltwater intrusion. The 76-page report doesn’t forecast how widely impacts will be felt, citing a lack of existing research, but it identifies the resources facing the highest risk, ranking agriculture at the top. Wetlands, coastal forests, freshwater streams and aquifers also are in danger of turning salty, according to the report. Melting ice at the poles and the ocean’s thermal expansion – both triggered by climate change – are causing seas to rise across the globe, carrying salt into new places above and below ground. Saltwater intrusion is of even greater concern in the Chesapeake Bay region, climate scientists say, because the area’s land surface is sinking.

Massachusetts

Boston: No Charlie Card required to board these MBTA trains – just about $500 cash. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is auctioning off seven vintage subway cars. To make room for hundreds of news cars coming in the years ahead and to comply with safety laws, the MBTA removes salvageable parts from inoperable trains, then puts the cars up for auction. “The old cars are sold to the highest bidder, usually for the scrap metal,” MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo told The Boston Globe. “Old cars are retired after they are no longer capable of providing safe and reliable passenger service.” Made by Boeing and Kinkisharyo in the early 1970s and ’80s, the cars have sat idle for at least three years, according to the auction posting. Bidding for the lot of seven cars – Orange Line subway cars and Green Line trolley cars – starts at $500. The auction ends Jan. 28.

Michigan

Detroit: A national competition is underway that seeks artists’ proposals for a planned public sculpture outside the main entrance to the TCF Center downtown. The Detroit Regional Convention Facility Authority and its Art Foundation say the proposals for the permanent sculpture cannot be taller than 30 feet and no more than 8 feet in diameter. Artists must register for the competition and are encouraged to consider physical placement, material and size in their proposals. Themes may reflect positive changes and growth in Detroit and southeastern Michigan, the area’s strong spirit of innovation and design, the global impact of Detroit, and the region’s renaissance. Proposals will be reviewed by a jury of expert panelists. The winning proposal will be awarded a budget of $250,000 to support the sculpture’s conceptualization, fabrication and installment. An additional $50,000 will go to the winning artist.

Minnesota

St. Cloud: State troopers will be carrying more than 600 kits to give to homeless people who need clothes, food and toiletries. The Department of Public Safety collected donations and assembled them into “Care and Go” kits. “A lot of times people will think it’s just a metro issue,” said Booker Hodges, assistant commissioner of law enforcement in the Department of Public Safety. “In greater Minnesota, our troopers do encounter quite a few people who are homeless.” Hodges said he wanted to start the program in the Department of Public Safety after seeing a similar initiative used in Ramsey County for recently released inmates. Hodges said he hopes to have kits in place by Feb. 1. He said the “goal is that every state trooper will have one in his or her squad car.” The kits include socks, T-shirts, toothpaste, conditioners, hand wipes and feminine products. They also include protein bars and water.

Mississippi

Meridian: The state will pay $3 million for a fence to keep wild animals off the runways of a military base. A Navy official said the state’s job-creation agency, Mississippi Development Authority, has offered a grant to pay for the barrier at Naval Air Station Meridian. The new chain-link fence would be built inside an existing fence surrounding the base, and the bottom of the new fence will be buried deep, the Meridian Star reports. Deer, cattle, hogs and coyotes have reached the property in recent years, and a farmer reported that a hunter killed a sow near the fence last month, said Jim Copeland, community planning and liaison officer for the base. Pigs have a low center of gravity and can cause a plane to lose control if they are hit by the nose wheel, Copeland said.

Missouri

Jefferson City: The state Supreme Court on Tuesday gutted a voter ID law that has been called “a solution in search of a problem.” In a 5-2 decision, the court cleared the way for Missourians to vote with non-photo IDs like current utility bills and bank statements, as well as Missouri college IDs, without having to swear they are who they say they are on penalty of perjury. Republican politicians had said the law combats voter fraud. Studies say the kind of fraud voter ID detects is practically nonexistent. Judge Mary R. Russell wrote for the majority Tuesday that the sworn statement requirement was “misleading,” “contradictory” and ultimately unconstitutional. Two dissenting judges, both appointed by Republicans, argued that the court could fix the issue by editing out “contradictory” language or prohibiting voting with non-photo ID entirely. Russell called both ideas “nonsensical.”

Montana

Billings: Federal environmental regulators say the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs violated an order to repair a public water supply system serving about 1,300 people on the Crow Indian Reservation. Environmental Protection Agency officials said in a letter that the bureau has repeatedly missed deadlines to complete repairs following concerns last spring about potential water contamination. Last March, a main line on the Crow Agency water system broke, prompting an advisory for users to boil water or use alternate supplies as a precaution. The concern was that loss of pressure because of the line break could have allowed contaminated water to seep into the system through cracks and joints. EPA spokeswoman Lisa McClain-Vanderpool says the Bureau of Indian Affairs has completed enough required work that there is no longer an imminent public health danger.

Nebraska

Waverly: A woman who fell off a bridge while stargazing has been transferred from a Lincoln hospital to one in Omaha, authorities said. Lindsay Kroger, 37, of rural Lincoln, had gone with five other people to the bridge about 2 miles southeast of Waverly to look at the sky early Sunday morning. She leaned back, thinking there was a support piece behind her, but instead fell 27 feet to the ice below, the Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office said. She was flown to a Lincoln hospital and then sent Monday to the Omaha facility.

Nevada

Las Vegas: Organizers of a protest of new city ordinances affecting the homeless say 12 demonstrators were taken into custody. About 100 protesters blocked a downtown street Monday to voice their opposition to two laws that ban camping. They had tents, sleeping bags and cardboard boxes. One ordinance prohibits camping on sidewalks if there are available beds at a shelter. The second bans sitting or camping on city sidewalks during street cleaning hours. Violation of either law could result in a misdemeanor. Police Lt. Jeff Stuart says about a dozen people were arrested after they refused to move from the road. It was not immediately known Tuesday what charges they might face. Opponents of the ordinances have been protesting since the first ordinance was passed in November. Supporters of the measures say they are necessary for public safety and sanitation.

New Hampshire

Concord: The state is holding a weeklong celebration of wine. New Hampshire Wine Week includes the 17th annual Winter Wine Spectacular, which benefits EasterSeals New Hampshire. The event, on Thursday, attracts more than 1,500 guests who get to sample more than 1,800 wines. A new event, “Cellar Notes: An Evening of Wine and Music,” will be held Wednesday evening at the Rex Theater in Manchester. It will feature a panel discussion and tasting.

New Jersey

Jackson: An ad in the Waze navigation app is misdirecting motorists headed to Atlantic City’s Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa into the wilderness of New Jersey’s Pine Barrens, police said. Jackson Township police posted on Facebook that officers in recent weeks have had to help motorists who followed the directions into the Colliers Mills Wildlife Management Area, where they became stuck on unpaved roads. “The wildlife area is comprised of more than 12,000 acres, mainly located in Jackson and Plumsted townships, which is about 45 miles away from the actual Borgata Casino in Atlantic City,” police said. The Borgata is off the Atlantic City Expressway. According to police, the problem stems from an orange ad logo in the Waze app. The address on the ad is correct, police said, but the location pinned with the ad is actually in the Colliers Mills wildlife area, police said. Waze was working to fix the problem, police said.

New Mexico

Santa Fe: The Democrat-led Legislature is looking for new ways to bolster a lagging public education system and open up new economic opportunities by legalizing recreational marijuana and providing tuition-free college education, as a 30-day legislative session begins Tuesday. Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is pushing for new investments in public education that include $74 million in new annual general fund spending on early childhood programs. She’s also calling for the state to underwrite tuition-free college education for residents. A state scholarship fund from lottery proceeds already covers 60% of in-state tuition, and at least $35 million is needed to cover the remainder plus fees. Record-setting oil production is producing an economic windfall for state government, with state economists forecasting an $800 million budget surplus.

New York

Battenville: The state is planning restoration work on the early childhood home of women’s rights advocate Susan B. Anthony. The house Anthony’s father built in 1833 in Battenville is water-damaged and in rough shape. The state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation bought the foreclosed property in 2006 but has done little to preserve it. The Albany Times-Union reports the agency now plans to invest $700,000 this year on the Greek Revival-style house where Anthony lived from age 6 to 19 when her father managed a nearby cotton mill. The official Susan B. Anthony Museum and House is in Rochester, where she lived for 40 years while she was a national figure in the women’s rights and suffrage movement. No plans have been developed yet for the Battenville house, beyond preserving it. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution giving women the right to vote, as well as the 200th anniversary of Anthony’s birth.

North Carolina

Raleigh: An appeals court on Tuesday upheld the legality of a legislative session Republicans quickly called in December 2016 to push through laws that weakened the power of incoming Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. The unanimous decision of three judges on the intermediate-level Court of Appeals affirmed a 2018 trial-court ruling that declined to declare as unconstitutional the procedures used in calling and passing legislation during the three-day session. The group Common Cause and several citizens who sued in 2017 argued that the rushed session – announced and convened mere hours after another legislative session on Hurricane Matthew relief – violated their right in the North Carolina Constitution to “instruct their representatives.” The GOP-dominated General Assembly used it to pass laws that in part diluted the governor’s powers.

North Dakota

Bismarck: A new agreement between the state and Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation means bighorn sheep could be roaming the reservation in the next couple weeks. North Dakota Game and Fish director Terry Steinwand says 30 to 40 bighorns will be brought to North Dakota once they are captured on a Montana reservation. They’ll be released in the Mandaree and Twin Buttes areas. The Bismarck Tribune says the state-tribal agreement includes a provision for a ram hunting season. Williams says that will depend on how well the animals do in their new habitat. The pact is the third such agreement between the state and the tribal nation. The others are twin agreements with MHA Nation in 2008 related to hunting and fishing access issues and a 2017 pact with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe for an elk hunting season.

Ohio

Columbus: The state Supreme Court has rejected a recommendation that tools used to measure offenders’ suitability for being released after an arrest be made available to all judges as they make bail decisions. Requiring the availability of so-called risk assessment tools was the top recommendation of a task force commissioned by the court last year to examine Ohio’s bail system. The tools – there are several nationally – look at a variety of factors, including defendants’ age, criminal history and past failures to appear, when analyzing what type of bond conditions should be set. More than 70 courts in Ohio already use them. Supporters say the tools are a more accurate way to examine the two most important factors that judges consider when setting bond: Will the offender skip out, and will they pose a public safety risk if released? Detractors say the tools can be racially biased, are costly to smaller courts and improperly override judges’ own experiences in setting bond.

Oklahoma

Oklahoma City: A lawmaker is seeking to repeal the state’s controversial permitless carry law that took effect last year. Rep. Jason Lowe, D-Oklahoma City, who tried to prevent permitless carry from taking effect, filed legislation to repeal the law that allows most Oklahomans to carry a firearm without a permit. The legislation faces unfavorable odds in Oklahoma’s Republican-controlled Legislature, where majorities in both the House and Senate overwhelmingly approved of permitless carry last year. The Legislature also passed similar legislation in 2018, which was vetoed by then-Gov. Mary Fallin. House Bill 3357 would repeal the permitless carry law dubbed by supporters as “constitutional carry.”

Oregon

Salem: A beloved but decaying piece of artwork created from an industrial eyesore faces limited, costly options, according to an action plan from the city. Restoring Eco-Earth, the massive mosaic tile sculpture at Riverfront Park, would cost an estimated $475,000, and removing what was once an acid ball and repurposing the site would ring in at $680,000. “What would that say about Salem if they scrapped it?” said former Mayor Roger Gertenrich, who chaired the Eco-Earth project 20 years ago. The community turned the 25-foot-diameter black tank from the long-gone Boise Cascade paper mill into a colorful, one-of-a-kind globe. It once held liquid and chemical gases used to cook wood chips into pulp and has been a fixture of the riverfront since 1960, when the tank was floated up the Willamette River from Portland. Volunteers logged more than 30,000 hours to transform it, but more than 86,000 tiles have failed, and asbestos has been revealed underneath. Eco-Earth’s fate lies with the Salem Public Art Commission.

Pennsylvania

Greensburg: A defense attorney says he expects to appeal the murder conviction of a man who asserts that his now-deceased twin brother was the shooter. Jurors in Westmoreland County deliberated for about two hours Friday before convicting 30-year-old Darrelle Tolbert-McGhee of first-degree murder in the shooting death of 32-year-old Michael Wilson. McGhee had asserted that he was in Florida at the time of the April 2017 slaying in downtown Jeannette. He said the shooter was his twin brother, Dwayne, who was killed in a shooting 13 months later in Wilkinsburg. The Tribune-Review reports that defense attorney Tim Dawson said he was surprised by the speed of the verdict. “Apparently, they convinced the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that one identical twin committed the murder rather than the other,” Dawson said.

Rhode Island

Pawtucket: A woman is taking legal action against the city for handcuffing and arresting her 13-year-old daughter after a fight with another student, the American Civil Liberties Union says. Tre’sur Johnson, an honors student who had no prior disciplinary infractions, was charged with disorderly conduct and kept in a police station holding cell for about an hour last June, ACLU lawyer Shannah Kurland said at a news conference Monday. The ACLU is representing the girl’s mother, Tiqua Johnson, who is seeking $100,000 for physical pain, emotional distress and other damages. The school and police violated state law that bars the arrest of someone on misdemeanor charges, Kurland said. The brief confrontation at Goff Middle School involved physical contact, Kurland said, but neither student was hurt, and it was quickly broken up.

South Carolina

Greenville: Twenty-four years ago, the Greenville County Council passed a resolution, with three members opposed, condemning homosexuality as incompatible with their community values. Today, an Upstate group representing members of county’s LGBTQ community says it is time for the current County Council to reverse that action. Terena Starks, the diversity officer for Upstate Pride, together with the board of her organization sent an open letter Thursday to every member of the council. The letter, which is posted on the organization’s website, also links to a change.org petition, which by late Friday had drawn more than 1,200 signatures. Upstate Pride has gotten more active over the past year, most notably with the Upstate Pride Festival last summer.

South Dakota

Sioux Falls: Prisoners at the South Dakota State Penitentiary are trying to raise money and awareness about Native American women who are crime victims. The nonprofit organization Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women says Native American women are more than twice as likely to experience violence as any other demographic. The inmates made 200 pairs of earrings and raised $5,000, which they donated to Urban Indian and Health of Sioux Falls and Rapid City. Connie Hopkins, vice president of prisoner support, tells KELO-TV the money will be used in a variety of ways to bring awareness to what some say is an epidemic when it comes to Native American women. “It’s going to help them get more media out there or pay for fliers or to help people travel to go look for these women,” Hopkins said.

Tennessee

Memphis: The state’s college athletes could financially benefit from the use of their names, images and likenesses under legislation introduced by a pair of lawmakers from the city. The bill would allow athletes to sign contracts to advertise for local businesses or other companies and would also prohibit schools from “discriminating against players based on donations by coaches to universities.” “It’s time we treat college athletes like everyone else in America and allow them to earn money in the free market,” Sen. Brian Kelsey, R-Germantown, said in a statement. Kelsey and Rep. Antonio Parkinson, D-Memphis, each brought the legislation to their respective chambers months after a University of Memphis basketball player, James Wiseman, was suspended by the NCAA.

Texas

Austin: The number of foster care children who slept in state offices, hotels and other temporary housing spiked last year, as the child welfare system continues to grapple with recruiting and retaining specialized foster homes. Last year, the monthly count of foster care children who did not have a home for at least two nights totaled 678, a 49% increase from 2018, according to data from Child Protective Services. Many of them were teens, and most slept in state offices. The number of foster children without placements has increased every year but two since 2011. The problem became particularly acute last year amid the loss of 197 foster beds across the state, lengthier discharges from residential treatment centers, and an uptick over the summer in foster youth who rejected the placements assigned to them.

Utah

St. George: A new survey has found that in the Beehive State more than anywhere else in the nation, divorce doesn’t necessarily mean contention. USAWillGuru.com, which provides will and testament information, surveyed 5,000 divorcees across the country and asked if the divorce ended on good terms. Utah has the highest percentage of amicable breakups at 79%. Neighboring Nevada ranked the lowest, with only 15% saying their marriage ended amicably. The survey also looked at what percentage of divorcees include their ex in their will. According to the survey’s findings, 12% of divorced Utahans include former spouses in their will. Loni Stookey, a licensed marriage and family therapist in St. George, said there’s a “strong family element” in Utah that may contribute to why parents try to split on good terms.

Vermont

Montpelier: The state House on Tuesday unanimously approved a proposed constitutional amendment to make clear that Vermont prohibits slavery. The Senate passed the proposal last session. Vermont was the first state to abolish adult slavery. The state Constitution currently says no person 21 or older should serve as a slave unless bound by their own consent or “by law for the payment of debts, damages, fines, costs, or the like.” The amendment would remove that language and add that slavery and indentured servitude in any form are prohibited. The proposed constitutional amendment must be considered by the 2021-2022 Legislature. If it passes, the question will be go before Vermont voters in 2022.

Virginia

Richmond: The state Senate has advanced legislation to scrap the state’s Lee-Jackson holiday celebrating two Confederate generals. The Democratic-led Senate voted largely along party lines Tuesday to pass legislation that would make Election Day a state holiday instead of Lee-Jackson Day. The legislation now goes to the House for consideration. Lee-Jackson Day, established more than 100 years ago, is observed annually on the Friday preceding the third Monday in January. It honors Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, both native Virginians. Critics of the Lee-Jackson holiday view it as a celebration of the state’s slaveholding history that’s offensive to African Americans. Many cities and counties have opted not to observe it.

Washington

Seattle: State Attorney General Bob Ferguson is challenging the lavish personal spending of bankrupt anti-tax activist and candidate for governor Tim Eyman, saying Eyman’s assets must be preserved so he can pay his debts to the state. Eyman’s been spending an average of nearly $24,000 a month over the past year, The Seattle Times reports, citing his bankruptcy filings. At the same time, the state is seeking more than $3 million from Eyman, including $230,000 in contempt-of-court sanctions for failing to cooperate with Ferguson’s campaign-finance case against him. Eyman’s expenses include legal fees, a vacation to Orlando, rent on a Bellevue condo, $4,000 a month in unspecified business spending and at least $2,400 to buy 97 Starbucks gift cards during a 10-month span. The first month after filing for bankruptcy, he ate out on 20 days. Last February, he made 74 restaurant purchases. Last month, Eyman reported meals at three separate restaurants to celebrate his birthday.

West Virginia

Charleston: People interested in portraying historical figures for the West Virginia Humanities Council’s History Alive program can submit proposals through Feb. 1. The council is seeking proposals for portrayals of influential people who have made important contributions to state, national or international history. The roster of characters now includes Gabriel Arthur, Nellie Bly, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Ostenaco, Theodore Roosevelt, Sacagawea, Charles Schulz, Harriet Tubman and Mark Twain, The Herald-Dispatch reports. The council will consider portrayals of historically significant people who are no longer living, from any period in history.

Wisconsin

Madison: All day care centers, child care providers and children’s camps would have to test their water for lead under a bill the state Senate approved Tuesday. Current state law requires anyone who cares for at least four children under age 7 less than 24 hours a day to obtain a license from the state Department of Children and Families. The state agriculture department licenses recreational and educational camps. Under the bill, child care center operators, child care providers, group home operators and camp runners would have to test water from every source in their facilities for lead contamination to obtain or renew their licenses. If the water is contaminated, the applicant would have two options: They could stop all access to the water, come up with a remediation plan and supply drinkable water in the interim. Or they could come up with a plan for supplying drinkable water on a permanent basis.

Wyoming

Cheyenne: A second Democrat has entered the race for an open U.S. Senate seat. University of Wyoming ecology professor Merav Ben-David, of Laramie, announced her candidacy Saturday at the annual Women’s March in downtown Cheyenne. A native of Israel, Ben-David has lived in Wyoming for 20 years. She says she decided to get involved in politics to get more involved in decisions affecting ecosystems worldwide. She says her goal in Washington, D.C., would be to develop new sources of income and industries in Wyoming, where fossil-fuel extraction is a critical part of the economy. Another Laramie resident, community organizer Yana Ludwig, announced her candidacy in June, the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle reports. Three Republicans including former U.S. Rep. Cynthia Lummis are running to replace U.S. Sen Mike Enzi, who plans to retire in 2021 after four terms.

From USA TODAY Network and wire reports

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biofunmy · 5 years

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Austerity Has Ravaged U.K. Communities. It Has Also Spurred Reinvention.

PRESTON, England — In communities across Britain, funding from London was shrinking to nothing — the central equation of national austerity. But here in the fading industrial belt of northwestern England, the city of Preston took the crisis of budget-cutting as impetus for a basic refashioning.

In what has come to be known as the Preston model, the local government and other institutions began directing government spending toward local businesses. The city raised salaries for municipal employees, ensuring that they earned a living wage.

Local leaders replaced an aborted shopping mall construction project with a retro-chic market that has become a magnet for new businesses. They have aided cooperative businesses, including a farm-to-table-cafe that aims to boost the market for local produce while training people for jobs in the hospitality industry.

In short, Preston has exploited austerity as a catalyst for self-sufficiency.

Preston is not the only local council to adapt to austerity through radical experiments in governance. Other communities have doubled down on capitalism, venturing into real estate speculation in pursuit of revenues — a story not guaranteed to end in joy.

“It doesn’t look very wise at the scale that some councils have done it,” says Tony Travers, an expert on local government at the London School of Economics. “I am slightly amazed that the government has been content to sit and watch this.”

The architects of austerity, the Conservative-led coalition government that took power in 2010, championed it as the unavoidable reckoning with debts left by a global financial crisis. They described their budget-cutting as courageous and even transformative: Decreased public largess would force innovation in government, while spurring entrepreneurialism in place of an unhealthy reliance on the public sphere.

Spending on local services in England has plunged by more than one-fifth on average over the past decade, the Institute for Fiscal Studies calculated in a recent study, while especially troubled areas like the north of England have seen much deeper cuts.

Given statutory imperatives to maintain programs like care for older people and children, local councils have made sharper cuts where they have discretion. Spending has dropped by more than 60 percent on youth centers, by more than half on housing programs and by more than 40 percent on highways, transportation and cultural programs.

Some councils are running perilously close to exhausting their reserves, and a few have veered toward bankruptcy. Evidence of change is palpable and pervasive: Older people wait for volunteer-driven buses that have replaced discontinued public routes; patients sit for hours in hospitals before they can see an overwhelmed doctor; school administrators struggle to furnish basic items like winter coats and tampons to students.

Most of Britain now finds itself at an uncomfortable crossroads: Either taxes go up, or local services will almost certainly continue to decline.

In Preston, a city of 140,000 people, leaders have sought a route around that unpalatable choice. They have refocused public spending on area businesses, aiming to keep more money in the community rather than sending it away to global banks and international retail giants.

This refashioning began with the demise of the previous approach to economic development, a failed effort more than a decade ago to reinvigorate the forlorn downtown with a new shopping center.

The end came in 2009, just as austerity was beginning to force cuts to mental health and youth services, and just as the city was overwhelmed with joblessness, homelessness and despair.

“It was horrific,” recalls Matthew Brown, the leader of the Preston City Council, and an unabashedly left-wing member of the Labour Party. “We were totally constrained in our capacity to help people.”

One night in March 2012, Mr. Brown went to a local pub to meet an expert from a research institution focused on reviving the fortunes of local communities. Their conversation yielded the blueprint for the Preston model.

The model operates not with force of law, but as a social pact. In return for a reliable stream of public money, local institutions pledge to consider more than the bottom line in building new facilities, hiring and paying workers, and contracting for services.

At first, some of Mr. Brown’s council peers resisted his ideas as idiosyncratic flights of fancy. But as austerity tore at the fabric of life, basic ideological assumptions came up for reconsideration.

“It’s about systemic change,” says Neil McInroy, chief executive officer of the research institution, the Center for Local Economic Strategies, and the man Mr. Brown met in the pub. “There was a general aura of people searching for austerity answers.”

When the Preston model began, participating local institutions were directing only 5 percent of their spending within Preston and 39 percent within Lancashire County, according to an analysis by the center. By 2017, those shares had swelled to 18 percent and 78 percent respectively.

“There’s a correlation between deprivation and crime,” says Clive Grunshaw, the Lancashire police and crime commissioner. “If you can invest in these communities, then clearly they will benefit.”

On a chilly afternoon in January, a representative from the Preston Council left town hall and walked across the street to a boarded-up coffee shop owned by the local government. There, he handed the keys to Kay Johnson, founder of a local cooperative called the Larder.

Ms. Johnson’s company is devoted to boosting reliance on locally grown produce. It runs a culinary school and a catering operation. It offers free cooking classes at public housing complexes, giving low-income people strategies to eat healthier while staying within their budgets.

The coffee shop represents the Larder’s next phase. It will outfit the space as a farm-to-table cafe, serving as a place for graduates of its culinary classes to gain work experience. The council is supporting the effort with a discounted lease.

If austerity was the catalyst for moving toward self-sufficiency, the renovated 19th-century market is physical proof of the transformation.

“It forced us to start to looking inward,” says John Bridge, a Preston-born architect who helped design the new market as a partner at a local firm, and has since begun his own practice. “Because of austerity, we have had to think differently.”

Here is an irony of austerity’s consequences. Championed as a spur to rugged individualism, it has prompted communities like Preston to intensify government’s role in economic life.

“There was a culture shift,” Mr. Brown said, occupying a stool in a pub as a man with a banjo crooned Bob Dylan’s countercultural anthem “Maggie’s Farm.” “We’re trying to find alternatives to the capitalist model.”

Yet, in other communities contending with shortfalls, austerity has reinforced support for capitalism. Local leaders have adopted the mien of real estate magnates, using borrowed money.

Over the past two years, councils in England have raised purchases of land and buildings from 2.8 billion pounds annually (about $3.5 billion) to £4 billion (about $5 billion), according to government data. At the same time, total borrowing by English councils has risen to £10 billion, around $10.3 billion, from £4.4 billion.

The body that sets standards for the management of government funds, the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, warned recently that tethering council finances to the swings of real estate investment portfolios was perhaps a less-than-fantastic idea.

“Council services are then linked directly to the success or otherwise of the property market, which can be volatile,” says Don Peebles, the institute’s head of policy. “The more services are funded through these returns on investment, the more that increases the risk.”

Tell that to Gerry Clarkson, who leads the Ashford borough council in the southeast of England. Austerity has lopped 40 percent from his council’s budget, yielding increased fees for trash and recycling, cuts to public sports centers and a surplus of lamentation.

“I said, ‘Stop moaning, and stop crying in your beer,’ ” Mr. Clarkson recalls. “‘We don’t need government funding. We are going to behave like a business.’ ”

A retired London fire chief and an unrepentant pounder of tables, Mr. Clarkson revels in telling stories that end with his dressing down some functionary whose doubts, arithmetic or ardor for regulation has impeded his grand visions.

He is intent on turning Ashford — home to 127,000 people, its downtown pockmarked with empty shops, tattoo parlors and liquor stores — into a thriving hub of commerce.

Thanks to high-speed rail links, the borough is but 38 minutes from London and two hours from Paris. “This is a sleeping giant right here,” he says.

Mr. Clarkson fancies himself a maestro of wealth-generating expansion. In 2013, his council bought a block of 30 apartments and some shops on the edges of town, paying a mere £1 million, or $1.3 million. The following year, the council purchased a 12-story office tower next to the train station, paying £7.8 million, or about $10 million, all of it borrowed.

Then the council bought a forsaken shopping center, the Park Mall, to inject life into the town center. Finally, it developed Elwick Place, a six-screen cinema plus restaurants, a hotel and a parking lot. That cost the council £42 million, or $53 million, 95 percent of it borrowed, though at an interest rate of about 1 percent.

All told, Ashford has sunk more than £50 million, around $65 million, into real estate ventures over the past six years. As Mr. Clarkson happily recounts, these investments have produced revenues expected to exceed £3 million, or about $4 million, this year. The office tower alone is yielding a 13 percent profit margin. The Park Mall is increasingly full of shoppers.

All this has cushioned the blow as Ashford’s grant from the central government has shrunk to £125,000 ($160,000) last year from £8 million ($10 million) in 2010, on its way to zero for 2019. Ashford has managed to largely maintain its public services along with some of the lowest property tax rates in the county.

But what happens if the economy turns down, or if property prices fall? To run a government as a business is to run it in a way that makes failure a possibility.

“You wouldn’t want to stop local governments from being entrepreneurial,” says Laurence Ferry, a public finance expert at Durham University. “At the same time, councils have to be careful. There has to be concern if they are stepping into areas outside their expertise.”

Governments may fail to properly assess the risks of industries like retail, now being swiftly refashioned by e-commerce.

Mr. Clarkson hears this and grins the grin of a man unwilling to be defeated by small-minded concerns. “You can’t get your nails done online,” he says. “You can’t get a cup of coffee online.”

Ashford will be fine, he insists, because its economy is built on housing — a commodity that, as he tells it, is somehow impervious to risk. “There’s nothing safer than houses,” he says.

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punalavaflow · 6 years

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GET surcharge fails; County now faces daunting task of finding funds to cover $5M budget shortfall

Close swimming pools on weekends. Shutter gyms and other county facilities two days a week. Suspend the county recycling program. Stop funding community events such as the Cherry Blossom Festival.

Those are among county administration recommendations to plug a $5 million volcano-blasted hole in the budget as the County Council on Tuesday voted against instituting a temporary quarter-percent general excise tax surcharge that would have expired Dec. 31, 2020.

The council voted 4-5 on Bill 159, a compromise after a half-percent measure seemed doomed to failure. Some council members voted no because they wanted the full half-percent allowed by the state Legislature, with a 2030 expiration date.

“This was never intended to be some stopgap measure, which it has become,” said Hilo Councilman Aaron Chung, a consistent supporter who voted yes.

Others voted no because they think the county can find the money without raising taxes. And some wanted more details on how the money would be spent.

The $5 million shortfall is attributed to a loss of property tax revenues in Puna, where lava has swallowed almost 6,000 acres and more than 500 homes.

Finance Director Deanna Sako said she’d soon be submitting an amended budget to cover the shortfall. Much of the budget is out of county control, such as salaries and wages, which account for more than 60 percent of operating revenues; retirement programs dictated by the state; and payments of outstanding debts.

That means the cuts must come from expenditures not mandated by law, such as $270,000 from council members’ contingency funds, $500,000 from grants to nonprofits, $254,917 by unfunding vacant positions and $240,000 by suspending summer fun programs.

Managing Director Wil Okabe said the council needs to show leadership.

“This is not a game; this is a situation that we’re asking for leadership in this county,” Okabe said. “It is time for government to increase services and especially for those who need it most.”

Sako also urged the council to pass the tax increase, saying Mayor Harry Kim even called her from his hospital bed to remind her of several important points. Kim is recovering from his sixth heart attack. Doctors are expected to decide today when he will be able to be released.

“We’ll have to meet with each and every department again,” Sako said. “To cut $5 million is not going to be easy.”

Suspending recycling programs such as for cardboard, glass, plastic and paper, will save $1.4 million; operating pools just three days a week would save $218,000; and closing gyms and other county facilities two days a week will save $336,000, according to a Finance Department list.

The vote came despite warnings from two Puna state lawmakers that it’s unlikely the Legislature will give the county another chance if it continues to reject the surcharge. Currently, all of the general excise tax goes into state coffers. A surcharge would give the county a piece of taxes collected within its borders.

“Our county was facing a financial crisis before the Puna lava flow,” said Sen. Russell Ruderman, D-Puna. “If this were a family facing this budget, we’d have to take granny off her medications. … We’d have to tell junior to quit playing soccer.”

Ruderman and Rep. Joy San Buenaventura, D-Puna, said the county needs to also help itself when asking the Legislature for assistance.

“We’re giving you folks an opportunity to help your constituents by doing this,” said San Buenaventura. “It’s highly unlikely we’re going to give you this opportunity again. … We are facing an unprecedented disaster and before this you were already broke.”

The county does get one more chance to pass a GET surcharge, but if passed, it won’t go into effect until Jan. 1, 2020, too late for the current budget crisis. That’s if the council passes a bill by March 31, 2019.

Puna Councilwoman Jen Ruggles and Kona Councilman Dru Kanuha have been the two consistent no votes during all iterations of the GET surcharge issue. Others voting no Tuesday were Hilo Councilwoman Sue Lee Loy, Puna Councilwoman Eileen O’Hara and Kohala Councilman Tim Richards.

Lee Loy and O’Hara previously supported a GET surcharge.

“I had asked from day 1 for a plan for how the money was being spent for the taxpayers and it never materialized,” Lee Loy said after the meeting.

O’Hara pushed for the full tax, saying the surcharge is a good way to diversify revenue streams.

Ruggles said the county has other options, such as borrowing from the geothermal fund and the Public Access, Open Space and Natural Resources Preservation fund. The county also can raise property taxes on the second homes of the wealthy, she said.

“We will not help the poorest of the poor by taxing them,” Ruggles said. “We have great wealth on this island and amazing wealth disparity. … tax those who can afford it, (such as those) competing for who can put the most helicopter pads on their yacht … let’s tax them.”

Ruggles said even a small GET surcharge would hurt the poor the most.

Because the tax is itself taxed, the tax on a $100 purchase would have increased by 26 cents, raising the purchase from $104.17 to $104.43, once the 4 percent state GET is also taken into account.

Kanuha said his district already pays some of the highest taxes on the island.

“Previous to the eruption, I was against the GET. … During it, I was against the GET. … I’m still against it,” Kanuha said. “A lot of my constituents are saying they’re overtaxed.”

Email Nancy Cook Lauer at [email protected].

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newstfionline · 6 years

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In Jordan, an empowering solution for UN-run refugee camps

Taylor Luck, CS Monitor, December 5, 2017

ZAATARI, JORDAN--Facing dwindling funds and a humanitarian disaster stretching into its sixth year, the United Nations and Syrian refugees reached for the sun.

In Jordan, the UN and its partners have hooked up the first solar-powered refugee camps in the world--a test as to whether the international aid community can step beyond the emergency relief approach and provide sustainable solutions that benefit refugees, host communities, and the environment long after each crisis ends.

Jordan, which imports 98 percent of its energy needs, has struggled to manage the cost of the country’s 1.3 million Syrian refugees. The Zaatari camp, established in 2012 at the edge of Jordan’s northern desert, a few miles from the Syrian border, houses 80,000 Syrian refugees and has become Jordan’s fourth biggest population center; Azraq, home to 32,000 refugees, is in the middle of the country’s eastern desert.

Zaatari residents took UN-supplied power from camp street lamps, causing constant shortages in the camp and the surrounding area, and forcing the UN to cut electricity to eight hours a day; Azraq remained without electricity.

With funds for Syrian refugees drying up as donors shift their focus to new humanitarian crises, the UN looked for a way to ease the financial burden of maintaining the camps until it saw the light: solar.

In May, the Azraq camp became the first solar-powered refugee camp in the world, with a 2.5 megawatt photovoltaic plant funded by the IKEA Foundation providing electricity to 20,000 refugees for the very first time. The UN is currently working on a project to expand the plant’s capacity to provide electricity to the entire camp by the end of the year.

In November, Zaatari followed suit, with a 12.9 megawatt solar farm funded by the German government providing 14 hours of electricity per day to more than 80,000 Syrian refugees.

For the refugees themselves, the solar power is literally giving them a new lease on life.

Since Azraq’s establishment in 2014, families in the camp had been unable to refrigerate food, turn on lights after sunset, charge their mobile phones, or run a simple electric fan during sweltering summer days. In Zaatari, electricity had been limited to 8 hours a night and often was cut due to power outages caused by overuse; most families could barely get enough electricity to charge their phones.

Now, children can do their homework at night, and residents can move about the camp freely in the evenings. Families can stay inside their shelters during dust storms, cooled by electric fans. A trip to the bathroom in the evening is no longer a perilous journey into the dark desert night.

“We used to splash water on our faces to keep ourselves cool--we would be in a daze during the day and fall asleep at sunset,” says Ahmed Mohammed, a 25-year-old Azraq camp resident from Daraa, Syria.

“We didn’t know what a power outage was until we came to Jordan,” says Mohammed Ahmed, a 49-year-old Zaatari resident from the southern Syrian town of Tafas.

“Thanks to solar energy, we now feel like we have rejoined the 21st century.”

The introduction of solar is saving scarce resources for the UN in Jordan, which was paying up to $10 million per year for electricity. The solar plant in Zaatari will save the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) $5.5 million annually, and the Azraq plant $1.5 million, funds that will now go back into other lifesaving services for the 650,000 Syrian refugees registered with the UN--78 percent of whom live outside the camps--and the 75,000 non-Syrian refugees in Jordan.

Only 11 percent of the 8.7 million refugees and displaced living in formal camps worldwide had access to reliable energy source as of 2015; 7 million refugees and displaced had access to less than 4 hours of electricity per day, according to a 2015 report by the Chatham House, a UK-based think tank.”

The vast majority of refugees are forced to rely on firewood, coal, and liquid gas for cooking, heating, and light, often at their own expense--and paying well over the market price.

“There are ongoing discussions on how to use this as a model, and there are many camps that could benefit,” Mr. Severe says.

The UNHCR admits that a critical requirement for refugee camps to go green is the private sector.

The Zaatari camp solar farm cost $17.7 million, while the Azraq power plant cost $9.6 million. Moving from one budget shortfall to another, the UNHCR and other UN agencies can barely sustain their activities, let alone put up the up-front investment required in such renewable energy projects.

“Basically, the humanitarian system finds it difficult to fund this type of project,” says Glada Lahn, a senior research fellow at Chatham House who has researched renewable energy solutions to refugee crises.

“Their budgets run for a year, and they cannot justify investments in capital costs that pay off more than a year later,” says Ms. Lahn. “They cannot look at the payback. That is the real problem.”

When UNHCR decided to establish the plant in Azraq, it found immediate interest from the IKEA Foundation, the charitable arm of the Swedish furniture giant, and its Brighter Lives for Refugees Campaign.

When the UN agency looked to cut its costs in Zaatari, it approached the German government and the KfW, the German development bank, which finances environment conservation, solar energy, and international development projects. In Jordan, the KfW saw a unique opportunity to promote all three while aiding a host country under an increasing strain.

The power plants have a lasting impact on Syrian refugees. The construction of the solar plants has employed more than 125 refugees, many of whom are staying on as full-time staff managing and maintaining the power stations.

Qasim Thiab was an electrician in his hometown of Daraa, before he fled to Jordan in 2013 with his young family.

After a year of doing odd-jobs outside Zaatari, the 31-year-old was selected to help run the plant due to his technical skills. For months, Thiab learned net-metering, how to operate switchgear for solar plants, and how to maximize power conversion efficiency of solar cells.

Now Thiab helps manage the Zaatari solar power plant, earning a monthly salary with health insurance for him and his family. He hopes to share his new skills in renewable energy once he returns to Syria, providing solar solutions for the country’s eventual reconstruction.

The projects also go far in helping the environment in the host county, Jordan. The Zaatari plant will cut carbon dioxide emissions from the camp by 13,000 tons per year--the equivalent to 30,000 barrels of oil--while the plant in Azraq brings a CO2 emissions savings of 2,370 tons.

Thiab says he and his colleagues are already planning ways to adapt the technology they are using in Zaatari to green projects in Syria, such as solar-powered farms, factories, and dairies. For him, and many others, it is a silver lining in a crisis that has given few reasons to celebrate.

“If a refugee camp can go solar, anything can,” Thiab says.

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raymondcastleberry · 4 years

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Indian Point Closure Puts Pressure on Natural Gas Supplies in New York

EIA’s Forecast

Source: Energy Information Administration

New Yorks’s Ban on Hydraulic Fracturing

New York’s Block on Gas Pipelines

Background on Indian Point

Conclusion

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years

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HelloFresh ingredients and recipe card | Bridget Halenar / Optimistic Kitchen Blue Apron and HelloFresh have seen surges in demand and investor interest over the last few weeks, as home cooks avoid grocery stores Heather Kaufman recently took over her parents’ apartment in New York while they ride out the coronavirus pandemic in New Jersey. To stock the fridge, “I had to go to the local grocery store, which has very narrow aisles. It was a little tense,” she says. “It reminded me of avoiding the ghosts in Pac-Man, but with other people.” The options at the store were limited — just some pork and “beef chuck, sirloin steak, and ribeye, which is weird but I guess people are still watching their cholesterol,” she jokes. So she signed up for an account with Blue Apron, one of a number of meal kit delivery services that predate the novel coronavirus outbreak, but which seem particularly suited to a customer base wary of grocery runs. Kaufman cooked her first meal and says she loved it. Until recently, services like Blue Apron and HelloFresh provided guidance to novice home cooks or just simple convenience to everyone else — but the industry has historically had trouble maintaining customers. During the crisis, though, the services have taken on renewed significance for customers staying at home to follow social-distancing recommendations or shelter-in-place orders. What was once a perk of the direct-to-consumer lifestyle has become a lifeline for those avoiding grocery stores, and a chance to learn a new recipe or practice an old skill in the kitchen. “We believe home cooking is an opportunity to find some comfort and joy in this rather uncertain time,” a representative for Blue Apron tells Eater. Bridget Halenar / Optimistic Kitchen A meal from HelloFresh Blue Apron and HelloFresh both witnessed surges in demand in recent weeks, and investors took notice immediately. On March 18, while markets fell so fast they triggered circuit breakers, Blue Apron shares were up 140 percent in midday trading. Meanwhile, according to Google Finance, HelloFresh’s stock price was also on the rise, from $20 on March 16 to $26.50 two days later, before continuing on to nearly $30 by March 25. While HelloFresh’s stock price has been consistently rising since late 2019, the increased business is especially good news for Blue Apron. After a rocky IPO in 2017, Blue Apron’s stock declined from $10 per share down to under a dollar in December 2018. According to a representative, Blue Apron is capitalizing on renewed consumer interest with a bevy of social media engagement opportunities, including instructional videos on cooking with pantry staples, a Q&A with head chef John Adler, a primer on throwing a virtual pizza party for kids, and digital wine tastings. For many, meal kits serve as part of a larger diet, accounting for just a few meals each week. Even when they don’t entirely obviate the need for groceries, they can still help reduce reliance on overburdened, overpopulated grocery stores. Curt Abercrombie, a compliance analyst in Spring Valley, Nevada, and a new customer for health-minded Sun Basket, says meal kits help him do his part to maintain social distance. “I signed up recently because of the high demand at the grocery stores. I try to eat healthy, and I was having trouble putting healthy meals together with what was left on the shelves,” he says. While he’s not too fearful personally about infection, he adds, “I figure with Sun Basket, it will save me one to two trips a week. I’m trying to help flatten the curve.” When Saqi Mehta, a global recruiting diversity lead at Cloudera in San Francisco, signed up for Blue Apron, the novel coronavirus didn’t yet concern her, but she says she appreciates the variety of meals and fresh ingredients now more than ever. Still, she remains careful with deliveries, explaining, “I’m trying to wait an hour before taking anything out if I can, using gloves and wipes, and throwing away the box as soon as possible.” Mehta has used Blue Apron on and off, canceling past memberships because she just “couldn’t get into it.” Extra time at home, though, has helped her stick to the routine. Meal kits now represent a quarter of meals for her and her husband. Kaufman, who tried the service for a week in 2018 while studying for the bar exam, echoes that sentiment, adding, “What better time to try it than right now? I’m in an apartment by myself and my boyfriend is on the other side of the city. There’s only so much FaceTime you can do to occupy your time. TV is great, but at some point even TV gets old and boring.” One of her friends has taken up embroidery, she says, but she’s decided to use her time indoors to improve her cooking skills, which before this were limited to boiling water and microwaving. Cost has long been a barrier to entry to meal kits for many customers. Blue Apron, for instance, starts at $9.99 per portion, with a minimum of four portions (two meals for two people) per week. For a family of four, the weekly cost quickly mounts to hundreds of dollars. Mehta is accustomed to high prices for delivery in San Francisco, so pricey meal kits don’t worry her. She even feels it’s worth it to spring for Blue Apron’s premium meals, which bump up the price by $10 per portion, but give customers higher-end options, like chicken wrapped in prosciutto with sage. Bridget Halenar / Optimistic Kitchen HelloFresh recipe cards The grocery math doesn’t add up for everyone, though. Bridget Halenar, food photographer, blogger, and creator of Optimistic Kitchen, lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania, where Gov. Tom Wolf has issued a stay-at-home order. While the order doesn’t prevent her from going out to buy essential goods, she signed up for HelloFresh (one of a number of meal kits she intends to try out for an ongoing project). As a regular cook, Halenar says, “The cost is quite a bit more than I’m used to paying to feed my family and still have the cooking and dishes to do. … Budget-wise it only really helps if it keeps you from eating out.” Still, she has to admit the kits have benefits. “It gives me a break from a couple of meals per week [because] I can have my husband and son make dinner ... the kit has everything they need and they can handle it on their own while I walk the dogs, or [do] yoga, or have some tub time.” Rachel Duncan, a receptionist in the Scottish Borders, is another recent HelloFresh customer, but she doesn’t intend to remain one permanently. She lives with a partner and her two daughters, and she says she can’t afford meal kits all the time. Duncan picked up a HelloFresh discount code from a friend, which dropped the price on her first box of food, and then shared her own code on Instagram, which netted her another 80 pounds to put toward future deliveries. “I will keep using HelloFresh until my credit runs out, because at full price it does not make financial sense to us,” she says. “I also did this up until last week with a Gousto subscription.” Other customers have complained about supply. The sudden spike in demand has caused shortfalls in supply chains for a number of companies. On the r/mealkits subreddit, customers of several companies share stories about last-minute meal switches, missing ingredients, delayed deliveries, and reduced selection. A representative for HelloFresh tells Eater there have been “no major disruptions” to service and that the team is working with suppliers to keep it that way. A Blue Apron representative shared a similar statement, saying the company made substitutions in a small portion of boxes last week and “expects to meet increased demand by the next available weekly cycle, starting on 3/30.” The company is bringing on more help, hoping to hire workers who have lost jobs in the hospitality industry. Mehta and Kaufman didn’t experience much supply disruption, and both appreciated Blue Apron’s transparent messaging about the situation. They both said they would consider continuing their subscriptions after the pandemic subsides, especially since social distancing helped cement their habit of cooking with meal kits. It’s unclear whether other customers will stick with them, and the unlikely boon from the novel coronavirus may prove short lived for the meal kit industry. “I think I would pay full price these few weeks if I had to, but not when things are back to normal and I’m able to source things myself and for less money,” Duncan says. “When this is over I’ll use my HelloFresh and Gousto recipe cards, and shop myself.” from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2wIe4sB

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