With City Loans, Homeowners Go Green Now, Pay Later
By Julie Schmit
USA Today
February 24, 2010
Putting solar or other green upgrades on homes and businesses is getting less painful in more cities that are rapidly launching programs to enable owners to pay back upfront costs over years.
The programs let property owners borrow money for upgrades, then pay it back over up to 20 years as a special assessment on property tax bills.
The long payback removes a hurdle to going green: big initial costs, especially for solar panels, that can take years to recoup in lower energy bills.
By Erik Eckholm
The New York TImes
January 14, 2009
Until 1923, the only school in the largely black farm settlement of Pine Grove was the one hand-built by parents, a drafty wooden structure in the churchyard. Anyone who could read and write could serve as teacher. With no desks and paper scarce, teachers used painted wood for a blackboard, and an open fireplace provided flashes of warmth to the lucky students who sat close.
Saving Historic Schools This changed after a Chicago philanthropist named Julius Rosenwald, the president of Sears, Roebuck, took up the cause of long-neglected education for blacks at the urging of Booker T. Washington, the proponent of black self-help. By the late 1920s, one in three rural black pupils in 15 states were attending a new school built with seed money, architectural advice and supplies from the Rosenwald Fund.
“It was a big step up, going to a school that was painted and had a potbellied stove,” said Rubie Schumpert, 92, one of nine siblings who attended the Rosenwald school in Pine Grove — and one of three sisters who went on to college and careers as teachers.
By Charles Duhigg
The New York Times
December 16, 2009
The 35-year-old federal law regulating tap water is so out of date that the water Americans drink can pose what scientists say are serious health risks — and still be legal.
Only 91 contaminants are regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act, yet more than 60,000 chemicals are used within the United States, according to Environmental Protection Agency estimates. Government and independent scientists have scrutinized thousands of those chemicals in recent decades, and identified hundreds associated with a risk of cancer and other diseases at small concentrations in drinking water, according to an analysis of government records by The New York Times.
But not one chemical has been added to the list of those regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act since 2000.
At 7:56:59 on a Sunday night in November, a citizen known only as Steve called 911 to report a fire in the Curtis Park neighborhood. Flames were rising from the back porch of a handsome old house, burning so hot that the tall bamboo shoots in the backyard were popping like warning shots.
The alarm abruptly ended the light after-dinner conversation inside Station 6, propelling its firefighters into another race against a voracious opponent that doubles in size every minute. But their race tonight would not include their best weapon, the station’s water-bearing fire engine. To save money, it would remain idle.
This would turn out to be a routine house fire, if there is such a thing; no deaths, no injuries. But the fire occurred in Sacramento, the budget-challenged capital of budget-challenged California, where city officials have been forced at times to test the boundaries of a particular factor in their fiscal calculations: risk.
The nation's crumbling sidewalks have disabled residents taking their wheelchairs to the streets, a potentially dangerous practice that has cash-strapped cities and disability-rights advocates at odds over how to fix the problem.
Cities across the nation are dealing with eroding sidewalks that do not meet standards set by the Americans with Disabilities Act. Under the ADA, state and local governments cannot discriminate against the disabled in providing "services, programs or activities," including access to sidewalks.
Although there are no specific statistics on the number of accidents involving wheelchairs in streets, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation's Fatality Analysis Reporting System, disability was a factor in 617 pedestrian traffic fatalities last year.
Disabled residents here take their lives in their hands getting from point A to point B, says Scott Crawford, a disability-rights advocate.
