Signs of the Apocalypse

...now browsing by category

Signs Of The Apocalypse: #48 Cities Trade Trucks For Beasts Of Burden

Sunday, October 28th, 2012

Long before recycling became a household word, a Paris prefect called Eugene Poubelle, introduced three separate containers for household waste – glass and pottery, oyster and mussel shells, and the rest – and had horse-drawn carts empty them. Six years later, his surname entered the Academy dictionary as the word for “dustbin”. Now, over a century later, a growing number of French towns are returning to horse-drawn kerbside waste collection, as a better way to recycle.

For Jean Baptiste, mayor of medieval Peyrestortes, near Perpignan and one of 60 towns now using horses to collect waste, the benefit above all is practical. “You can’t turn a waste collection vehicle around here. We used to block streets to traffic and keep waste in open skips.” He sold off a dustbin lorry and acquired two Breton carthorses instead. Asked whether the changes are saving money, he says: “It’s too early. But money isn’t the only reason. The exhaust smells have gone, the noise has gone, and instead we have the clip-clop of horses’ hooves.”

In Saint Prix, however, in Greater Paris, Mayor Jean-Pierre Enjalbert is certain he is saving money as the novelty of the horses has increased recycling rates. “By using the horse for garden waste collection, we have raised awareness. People are composting more. Incineration used to cost us €107 a tonne, ridiculous for burning wet matter, now we only pay €37 to collect and compost the waste.”

Well-established horse-drawn collections also succeed in Trouville, and in Vendargues near Montpellier, but many ventures last only a few months. Sita, France’s second biggest waste management and recycling company, has now integrated the “collecte hippomobile” into three refuse collection circuits in the Aube département in central France.

Sita’s Alexandre Champion, who instigated the idea, points to several factors behind the failed ventures: unsuitable horses, untrained workers or inadequate terrain, poor equipment. Housing estates or old town centres with flat terrain work best, with a circuit of under 20 km a day, he says. But even terrain problems can be overcome, and this autumn Sita starts horse-drawn collection in hilly Verdun, with a pair of strong carthorses.

As for profitability, Champion fears that amateur draught horse associations, who offer the service to some towns under guidance from the National Stud, simply don’t have the means to invest, or the commercial know-how. “We are able to sign six-year contracts with municipalities; it means heavy initial investment costs can be spread out. That’s what makes the difference.”

Nonetheless, Pit Schlechter, president of FECTU, the European Federation for the Promotion of the Use of the Draught Horse, based in Luxemburg, is sceptical, arguing the use of horses is simply because people like the animals. “Horses are only profitable in places like the German island of Juist, where motor vehicles are banned, or Gaza, where donkey-carts are back because of the petrol shortage.”

In Sicily, another place bringing back four-hoofed transport, Mario Cicero, mayor of 14th-century town Castelbuono, disagrees. He pioneered glass and cardboard collection using two packsaddle donkeys in 2007. Three years on, Cicero has done his sums and calculated a cost saving of 34%, as well as winning over a sceptical population and putting more donkeys to work.

“Compared with €5,000–7,000 annual running costs for a diesel truck, an ass costs €1,000–1,500 and can live 25-30 years. A truck costs around €25,000, lasts around five years and can’t reproduce,” says Cicero, whose four asinelli have now produced 25 offspring, so he won’t even be buying any more.

Source: The Guardian

Posted in Signs of the Apocalypse | No Responses »

Signs Of The Apocalypse: #66 People Start Taking The Law Into Their Own Hands

Thursday, February 9th, 2012

The people of Detroit are taking no prisoners.

Justifiable homicide in the city shot up 79 percent in 2011 from the previous year, as citizens in the long-suffering city armed themselves and took matters into their own hands. The local rate of self-defense killings now stands 2,200 percent above the national average. Residents, unable to rely on a dwindling police force to keep them safe, are fighting back against the criminal scourge on their own. And they’re offering no apologies.

“We got to have a little Old West up here in Detroit. That’s what it’s gonna take,” Detroit resident Julia Brown told The Daily.

The last time Brown, 73, called the Detroit police, they didn’t show up until the next day. So she applied for a permit to carry a handgun and says she’s prepared to use it against the young thugs who have taken over her neighborhood, burglarizing entire blocks, opening fire at will and terrorizing the elderly with impunity.

“I don’t intend to be one of their victims,” said Brown, who has lived in Detroit since the late 1950s. “I’m planning on taking one out.”

How it got this bad in Detroit has become a point of national discussion. Violent crime settled into the city’s bones decades ago, but recently, as the numbers of police officers have plummeted and police response times have remained distressingly high, citizens have taken to dealing with things themselves.

In this city of about 700,000 people, the number of cops has steadily fallen, from about 5,000 a decade ago to fewer than 3,000 today. Detroit homicides — the second-highest per capita in the country last year, according to the FBI — rose by 10 percent in 2011 to 344 people.

On a bleak day in January, a group of funeral directors wearied by the violence drove a motorcade of hearses through the city streets in protest.

Average police response time for priority calls in the city, according to the latest data available, is 24 minutes. In comparable cities across the country, it is well under 10 minutes.

Citizens like Brown feel they have been left with little choice but to take the law into their own hands.

The number of justifiable homicides, in which residents use deadly force in self-defense, jumped from 19 in 2010 to 34 last year — a 79 percent rise — according to newly released city data.

Signs that vigilantism was taking hold in the city came earlier, around Memorial Day 2009, when former federal agent Alvin Davis decided he’d had enough of the break-ins at his mother’s home on the east side. She called the police again and again, but the brazen robberies continued. Davis, then a 32-year-old Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, snapped.

Prosecutors said he spent days chasing and harassing the teenagers who were allegedly robbing his mother, even shoving his federally issued firearm into one of their mouths. No one was killed, but by the time he was done, Davis had racked up charges of unlawful imprisonment and assault. In August 2010, he was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison.

But many residents in his mother’s Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood are sympathetic to Davis, whose case is on appeal.

“He basically did what a lot of us wished we could do,” said Ken Gray, 58, who lives down the street from Davis’ mother.

One high-ranking official in the county legal system, speaking to The Daily, said the rise in justifiable homicides mirrors a local court system that’s increasingly lenient of the practice.

“It’s a lot more acceptable now to get your own retribution,” the official said. “And the justice system in the city is a lot more understanding if people do that. It‘s becoming a part of the culture.”

Detroiters are arming themselves with shotguns and handguns and buying guard dogs. Anything to take care of their own. And privately, residents say neighborhood watch groups in Detroit are widely armed.

“It’s like the militiamen who stepped up way back when. That’s where the neighborhood folks are,” said James “Jackrabbit” Jackson, a 63-year-old retired Detroit cop who has patrolled the Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood for years.

“They’re ready to fight,” Jackson said. “We don’t hardly see police anymore.”

The city’s wealthier enclaves have hired private security firms. Intimidating men in armored trucks patrol streets lined with gracious old homes in a scene more likely seen in Mexico City than the United States.

That kind of paid protection can run residents anywhere from $10 to $200 per month, and companies say business is good.

“We’re booming,” said Dale Brown, the owner of Threat Management Group, which along with Recon Security patrols neighborhoods like Palmer Woods in black Hummers.

“We’re paramilitary, but we’re positive. I’m not a vigilante. I’m an agent of change.”

The Detroit Police Department, grappling with deep funding cuts in a city with a spiraling budget crisis, acknowledges that response times are high and says it is working on a plan to lower them. But a spokeswoman for the department insists the rise in justifiable homicides is unrelated.

“It’s not about police response time because often the act has already taken place by the time the police are called,” said Sgt. Eren Stephens. She said citizens have a right to defend themselves.

“Anytime a life is lost, we’re concerned,” she said. “But we can‘t be on every corner in front of every home. And we know that there are citizens who will do what they have to do to protect themselves.”

That’s the terrifying position in which Kevin Early found himself in November when he was held up at gunpoint outside his home in the upper-middle-class Rosedale Park area. Neighbors called the police, but it was 25 minutes before an officer arrived.

Early, the director of the criminal justice studies program at the University of Michigan’s Dearborn campus, reasoned with the men for more than 20 minutes before he sensed they were about to shoot him in the head — then he ran. As his attackers fled in the opposite direction, neighbors emerged from the street’s stately homes with shotguns.

“All I could think of was my daughter coming home,” Early said. “I didn’t want her to see me shot dead.”

Weeks later, Early packed up his home and left Detroit. He hired Threat Management to supervise the move.

“Where else do the police come to your house after you’ve been robbed and ask you, ‘Why did you call us?’ ”

Source: TheDaily.com

Posted in Signs of the Apocalypse | No Responses »

Signs Of The Apocalypse #34 Morgues Overflowing With Bodies

Sunday, January 15th, 2012

To the disgust of some staff, bodies are piling up at the office of the Cook County Medical Examiner, stacked atop each other in blue plastic tarps against a wall of the storage cooler because of ongoing financial woes, the Sun-Times has learned.

All the storage trays are full, and many have a second body on them, according to sources in the office. Some 400 adults and about 100 babies are currently being kept in the cooler designed for under 300, one source said.

“There are so many bodies in there now, they can’t keep it cool enough. The stench is like nothing I’ve ever seen,” another source in the office said. “I think it’s sacrilegious.”

Medical Examiner Nancy Jones said “yes, we do” have a larger than normal number of bodies at the office.

“What we currently have in our cooler is somewhere around 300 bodies,” she said. “There is not twice that number.”

Jones said there is a backup in burials of babies because of a change in a county ordinance. Last year, critics raised questions about the remains of babies and fetuses — many who had died at birth or as a result of miscarriage — being combined for burial. So county commissioners changed the ordinance requiring the remains of babies and fetuses be placed in separate compartments.

“We haven’t been able to do any infant or fetal burials because we are waiting for some special boxes to be designed and built,” Jones said.

“There are some [adult] bodies stacked on top of boxes right now in the cooler. They’re not going to be there much longer because some of them should be put in burial ‘shells’ [wooden coffins] because there’s [an indigent] burial coming up.”

Typically after examination or autopsy, bodies remain at the office for a few days until funeral directors pick them up for burial or cremation.

But when grieving families can’t afford a burial, the county takes over. Last fall, the medical examiner’s office revealed a controversial plan to donate to science the remains that go unclaimed after only two weeks unless families object. Others were still to be buried in the pauper’s graves in Homewood, for which the county previously paid $300 each. But a source said delivery of the “burial boxes” has stopped because the medical examiner’s office hasn’t paid the company that builds the them — another reason for the bodies piling up.

While Jones said there is no average for the number of bodies kept in the morgue, she said the increase in the number of bodies is the result, in part, of state aid to help pay for burials of those who die without any assets being slashed.

“That is really the big part of it,” Jones said.

The state last summer cut $13 million from the program. Last week, Jones said, the county received word that the state had reinstated funding.

Source: chicago.cbslocal.com

Posted in Signs of the Apocalypse | No Responses »

Sign Of The Apocalypse: #22 Squatting Becomes Commonplace

Tuesday, March 8th, 2011

Architects still call the 45-story skyscraper the Tower of David, after David Brillembourg, the brash financier who built it in the 1990s. The helicopter landing pad on its roof remains intact, a reminder of the airborne limousines that were once supposed to drop bankers off for work.

The office tower, one of Latin America’s tallest skyscrapers, was meant to be an emblem of Venezuela’s entrepreneurial mettle. But that era is gone. Now, with more than 2,500 squatters making it their home, the building symbolizes something else entirely in this city’s center.

The squatters live in the uncompleted high-rise, which lacks several basic amenities like an elevator. The smell of untreated sewage permeates the corridors. Children scale unlit stairways guided by the glow of cellphones. Some recent arrivals sleep in tents and hammocks.

The skyscraper, surrounded by billboards and murals proclaiming the advance of President Hugo Chávez’s “Bolivarian revolution,” is a symbol of the financial crisis that struck the country in the 1990s, the expanded state control over the economy that came after Mr. Chávez took office in 1999 and the housing shortage that has worsened since then, leading to widespread squatter takeovers in this city.

Few of the building’s terraces have guardrails. Even walls and windows are absent on many floors. Yet dozens of DirecTV satellite dishes dot the balconies. The tower commands some of the most stunning views of Caracas. It contains some of its worst squalor.

“I never let my child out of my sight,” said Yeaida Sosa, 29, who lives with her 1-year-old daughter, Dahasi, on the seventh floor overlooking a bustling artery, Avenida Andrés Bello. Ms. Sosa said residents were horrified after a young girl recently fell to her death from a high floor.

Some families have walled off their terraces with cinder blocks, blotting out the sun to avoid such tragedies. Others, aware of the risks, prefer to let in the breeze flowing off El Ávila, the emerald green mountain looming over Caracas. “God decides when we enter his kingdom,” said Enrique Zambrano, 22, an electrician who lives on the 19th floor.

Mr. Zambrano, like many of the other squatters in the skyscraper, says he is an evangelical Christian. Their pastor is Alexander Daza, 33, a former gang member who found religion in prison. Mr. Daza, commonly known as El Niño, or The Kid, led the occupation of the Tower of David in October 2007.

Back then, the building had already been vacant for more than a decade. Its developer, Mr. Brillembourg, a dashing horse breeder, died of cancer at age 56 in 1993, leaving behind hobbled companies. The government absorbed their assets, including the unfinished skyscraper, during a 1994 banking crisis.

Robert Neuwirth of New York, the author of “Shadow Cities,” a book about squatter settlements on four continents, said the Tower of David may be the world’s highest squatter building.

Once one of Latin America’s most developed cities, Caracas now grapples with an acute housing shortage of about 400,000 units, breeding building invasions. In the area around the Tower of David, squatters have occupied 20 other properties, including the Viasa and Radio Continente towers. White elephants occupying the cityscape, like the Sambil shopping mall close to the Tower of David and seized by the government, now house flood victims.

Private construction of housing here has virtually ground to a halt because of fears of government expropriation. The government, hobbled by inefficiency, has built little housing of its own for the poor. The policies toward squatters are also unclear and in flux, effectively allowing many to stay in once empty properties.

On occasion, Mr. Chávez has called for squatters to be dislodged. But in January, he urged the poor to occupy unused land in well-heeled parts of Caracas. Then he qualified these remarks by asking them to have “patience” as officials tried to build low-income housing.

Many here refuse to wait. The Tower of David stands as a parable of hope for some and of dread for others.

“That building is a symbol of Venezuela’s decline,” said Benedicto Vera, 55, an activist in downtown Caracas. “What’s our future if our people are living like animals in unsafe skyscrapers?”

Yet squatters, who live on 28 stories and plan to go higher, have created a semblance of order within the skyscraper they now call their own. Sentries with walkie-talkies guard entrances. Each inhabited floor has electricity, jury-rigged to the grid, and water is transported up from the ground floor.

Strivers abound in the skyscraper. They chafe at being called “invaders,” the term here for squatters, preferring the less contentious word “neighbor.” A beauty salon operates on one floor. On another, an unlicensed dentist applies the brightly colored braces that are the rage in Caracas street fashion. Almost every floor has a small bodega.

Julieth Tilano, 26, lives inside a small shop on the seventh floor with her husband and in-laws. They sell everything from plantains to Pepsi and Belmont cigarettes. Her husband, Humberto Hidalgo, 23, has a side business in which he charges children from the skyscraper 50 cents per half-hour to play PlayStation games on the four television sets in the family’s living room.

“There’s opportunity in this tower,” said Mr. Hidalgo, who immigrated here last year from Valledupar, Colombia.

Some residents own cars parked in the building’s garage. Others sanguinely point to their trim physiques, a result of going up and down the stairs each day. For others, any roof over one’s head is better than none.

That is the view of Jordon Moore, 37, a squatter on the seventh floor whom everyone simply calls “the American.” Mr. Moore, who speaks English with a hint of the West Indies, regales visitors with tales of the “gang life” in Brooklyn, where he says he lived for years, and of an attempt to break into the Venezuelan hip-hop scene that went awry.

“I ended up living on the street in this city, and this is better than the street,” he said.

A neighbor, José Hernández, 30, agreed. Still, he said he wanted to leave the skyscraper one day. For now, he sleeps with his wife and daughter in one bed under mosquito netting, protection from dengue fever.

In his apartment, once meant to be a banker’s corner office, he showed the view, which included a mosque’s minaret and, in the distance, Petare, the patchwork of hillside slums where he grew up. Now Mr. Hernández dons a tie and jacket each day and goes to work at, of all places, a bank.

“They call me an invader and I work in the credit department of Banco de Venezuela,” said Mr. Hernández, referring to the state-owned institution that he says employs him. “Society hates us, and the government doesn’t know what to do with us. Do they really think we want to be living in the Tower of David?”

Source: New York Times

Posted in Signs of the Apocalypse | No Responses »

Signs Of The Apocalypse: #44 Counties Filing For Bankruptcy

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011

In a move rare in the United States and perhaps unprecedented in Idaho, Boise County is filing for federal protection against a multimillion dollar judgment.

“This was not our first option. This was our last option,” said Jamie Anderson, chairwoman of the three-member Boise County Board of Commissioners. “This protects us so we can continue to operate.”

Chapter 9 protection, from a section of federal code expressly for financially distressed municipalities, means that creditors can’t collect while the county is developing a plan for reorganizing its debts.

Dan Chadwick, an attorney and executive director of the Idaho Association of Counties, said he is not aware of any other county, city or taxing district in Idaho ever filing for bankruptcy. He’s been with the association for 20 years and before that was at the Attorney General’s Office for 10 years, he said.

Bill Nichols, McCall’s city attorney, said he is not aware of any other Chapter 9 filings in Idaho, either.

“I don’t think there has been anyone in the Northwest that has used this, other than an irrigation district in the state of Washington,” Nichols said.

Nichols’ firm began representing McCall after a federal jury determined it owed a contractor $6.2 million. McCall officials considered bankruptcy but opted against it, Mayor Don Bailey told the Idaho Statesman in December.

The mayor said city services were not curtailed during the financial ordeal, but residents are paying off the city’s debt over a 20-year period. Their sewer/water fees went up by $5 to $6 a month, Bailey said.

JUST EIGHT CHAPTER 9 FILINGSPER YEAR IN U.S.

James Spiotto, an expert on Chapter 9 bankruptcies, told The Bond Buyer in a Tuesday article that there have been about eight municipal bankruptcies per year in the U.S. for the past four decades. Among the most famous cases: Orange County, Calif., in 1994 and Vallejo, Calif., in 2008.

Spiotto said one reason they are rare is because Chapter 9 provides no financing.

“If you can’t pay for your municipal services because of illiquidity, Chapter 9 doesn’t provide any more money to you,” Spiotto told The Bond Buyer.

Most local governments that have filed bankruptcy have done so because of massive bond debt, of which Anderson said Boise County has none.

BANKRUPTCY COMES ON HEELS OF JUDGMENT

A federal jury in December found that Boise County violated the federal Fair Housing Act in its handling of a developer’s proposal to build a 72-bed residential treatment facility for teens.

The jury awarded the development firm Oaas Laney $4 million, plus attorneys’ fees, which the county says total about $1.4 million. Boise County has an operating budget of about $9.4 million.

In January, the county appealed the decision in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Anderson and the county attorneys also met several times with Oaas Laney’s attorneys, but were unable to reach an agreement on the payment of the judgment.

Boise County now has several law firms representing it: Brassey Wetherell & Crawford is handling the Alamar Ranch litigation; Moore Smith Buxton & Turcke is counseling commissioners on public financing; and D. Blair Clark is advising the county on Chapter 9.

The county sought, but did not receive, benefits from its insurer, the Idaho Counties Risk Management Program. When the county sued, claiming breach of contract and damages in excess of $10,000 for attorneys’ fees, ICRMP won. The county appealed that decision to the Idaho Supreme Court.

PLAINTIFF’S ATTORNEY: FILING IN ‘BAD FAITH’

Anderson declined to discuss the county’s finances in detail, including if there are any reserve, emergency or other funds that could go toward paying the judgment.

“We have dedicated funds to meet statutory requirements,” she said of county services for the indigent, road maintenance, jail and court operations, and solid waste programs.

“We have a duty to the citizens to protect ourselves,” Anderson said.

Wade Woodard, an attorney with the Boise law firm representing Laney, said the firm would be filing a motion to dismiss.

“We believe it was filed in bad faith,” Woodard said. He declined to elaborate.
Source: Idaho Statesman

Posted in Signs of the Apocalypse | No Responses »

New York Publishes Legal Guide To The End Times

Wednesday, February 16th, 2011

Major disasters like terrorist attacks and mass epidemics raise confounding issues for rescuers, doctors and government officials. They also pose bewildering legal questions, including some that may be painful to consider, like how the courts would decide who gets life-saving medicine if there are more victims than supplies.

But courts, like fire departments and homicide detectives, exist in part for gruesome what-ifs. So this month, an official state legal manual was published in New York to serve as a guide for judges and lawyers who could face grim questions in another terrorist attack, a major radiological or chemical contamination or a widespread epidemic.

Quarantines. The closing of businesses. Mass evacuations. Warrantless searches of homes. The slaughter of infected animals and the seizing of property. When laws can be suspended and whether infectious people can be isolated against their will or subjected to mandatory treatment. It is all there, in dry legalese, in the manual, published by the state court system and the state bar association.

The most startling legal realities are handled with lawyerly understatement. It notes that the government has broad power to declare a state of emergency. “Once having done so,” it continues, “local authorities may establish curfews, quarantine wide areas, close businesses, restrict public assemblies and, under certain circumstances, suspend local ordinances.”

Signs Of The Apocalypse: #47 Cities Halting Garbage Pickup

Tuesday, December 14th, 2010

Detroit Is Halting Garbage Pickup, Police Patrols In 20% Of City: Expect Bankruptcy In 2011

Detroit has been bankrupt for years. It simply refuses to admit it. Detroit’s schools are bankrupt as well. A mere 25% of students graduate from high school.

Yet, in spite of hints and threats from mayors and budget commissions, and in spite of common sense talk of bankruptcy, Detroit has not pulled the bankruptcy trigger.

In a futile attempt to stave off the inevitable one last time, Mayor Bing’s latest plan is to cutoff city services including road repairs, police patrols, street lights, and garbage collection in 20% of Detroit.

Bing to Cede 20% of Detroit to Gangs and Homeless

City officials suggest this will not shrink the size of the city. Perhaps it won’t shrink Detroit on Google Maps. However, Bing’s plan would effectively surrender 20% of the city to gangs and the homeless.

Would you want to live in one of the gang war-zones that his plan would create? Would you want to live in a bordering neighborhood or in a bordering city?

Regardless of your answer, Bing’s plan cannot and will not work and I believe Detroit will, sometime in 2011, file for bankruptcy. If so, expect massive turmoil in municipal bonds.

Less Than a Full-Service City

The Wall Street Journal discusses Bing’s plan in Less Than a Full-Service City

More than 20% of Detroit’s 139 square miles could go without key municipal services under a new plan being developed for the city, with as few as seven neighborhoods seen as meriting the city’s full resources.

Those details, outlined by Detroit planning officials this week, offer the clearest picture yet of how Mayor Dave Bing intends to execute what has become his signature program: reconfiguring Detroit to reflect its declining population and fiscal health. Yet the blueprint still leaves large legal and financial questions unresolved.

Mr. Bing’s staff wants to concentrate Detroit’s remaining population—expected to be less than 900,000 after this year’s Census count—and limited local, state and federal dollars in the most viable swaths of the city, while other sectors could go without such services as garbage pickup, police patrols, road repair and street lights.

Karla Henderson, a city planning official leading the mayor’s campaign, said in an interview Thursday that her staff had deemed just seven to nine sections of Detroit worthy of receiving the city’s full resources. She declined to identify the areas, but said the final plan could include a greater number.

“What we have found is that even some of our stronger neighborhoods are at a tipping point with vacancy,” Ms. Henderson said. “Vacancy adds to blight and blight is a disease that takes over the whole neighborhood. So the sooner we can get those homes occupied, the better for the city.”

Officials bristle when their efforts are described as downsizing, saying their aim is to repurpose portions of the city, not redraw its borders. “We will not be shrinking the city,” Ms. Henderson said. “We are 139 [square] miles and we’ll stay that way.”

Repurpose or Abandon?

Of course the Mayor’s office did not say they would abandon sections of the city to gangs. But how the hell can repurposing as described above possibly mean anything else?

What’s next? Barbed wire? Oh wait a minute, Detroit already has tried that. Razor-wire too. Here’s a picture of Detroit’s clearly abandoned repurposed Michigan Central Train Depot.

Read the rest of the story at: Business Insider

Posted in Economic Indicators, Signs of the Apocalypse | No Responses »

Signs Of The Apocalypse: #46 Cities Lay Off Police To Stay Afloat

Friday, December 3rd, 2010

CAMDEN, NJ (CBS) – Camden City Council, as expected, voted Thursday to lay off almost 400 workers, half of them police officers and firefighters, to bridge a $26.5 million deficit.

That’s about a quarter of the city’s entire work force.

Five members of City Council voted unanimously to approve the layoff plan — two other members were absent. The cuts take effect in mid-January.

Exactly how many city workers will be affected is still an open question, although nearly half the city’s police and a third of the firefighters are slated to go.

Karl Walco (right) is with the union that represents non-uniformed Camden city workers.

“If we agreed to everything that the city proposed in concessions, it would only have a minor impact on the number of layoffs,” Walco told the council members.

No argument from Council. They sat impassively as workers and residents alike voiced their frustration.

When it was over, Council president Frank Moran suggested they’re not to blame.

“We didn’t put a price tag on public safety. Unfortunately, the governor of the State of New Jersey put that price tag on it,” he said at the packed Council meeting.

That price tag is $69 million, in transitional aid. Moran suggested that Camden residents should vent to Governor Chris Christie.

After the vote, council members and Camden Mayor Dana Redd avoided reporters by going into their offices.

Posted in Economic Indicators, Signs of the Apocalypse | No Responses »

Signs Of The Apocalypse: #33 Cities Give Away Land To Build Tax Base

Friday, July 30th, 2010

Cities View Homesteads as a Source of Income

Give away land to make money?

It hardly sounds like a prudent scheme. But in a bit of déjà vu, that is exactly what this small Nebraska city aims to do.

Beatrice was a starting point for the Homestead Act of 1862, the federal law that handed land to pioneering farmers. Back then, the goal was to settle the West. The goal of Beatrice’s “Homestead Act of 2010,” is, in part, to replenish city coffers.

The calculus is simple, if counterintuitive: hand out city land now to ensure property tax revenues in the future.

“There are only so many ball fields a place can build,” Tobias J. Tempelmeyer, the city attorney, said the other day as he stared out at grassy lots, planted with lonely mailboxes, that the city is working to get rid of. “It really hurts having all this stuff off the tax rolls.”

Around the nation, cities and towns facing grim budget circumstances are grasping at unlikely — some would say desperate — means to bolster their shrunken tax bases. Like Beatrice, places like Dayton, Ohio, and Grafton, Ill., are giving away land for nominal fees or for nothing in the hope that it will boost the tax rolls and cut the lawn-mowing bills.

In Boca Raton, Fla., which faces a budget gap of more than $7 million, leaders are thinking about expanding the city’s size and annexing neighborhoods as an antidote. Sure, more residents would cost more in services, but officials hope the added tax revenues will more than make up for it.

And leaders in Manchester, N.H., and Concord, Mass., are taking an approach that might have once seemed politically unthinkable. They are re-examining whether their communities’ nonprofit organizations really deserve to be tax-free.

“The stress of the past couple years is causing us to look absolutely everywhere,” said Anthony Logalbo, the finance director in Concord, where officials realized that 15 percent of the town’s property value had become tax exempt and sent letters to nonprofit groups asking whether they would consider paying something to the town.

“Private schools and nonprofit museums and community organizations benefit the town in lots of ways,” Mr. Logalbo said, “except that they don’t contribute to the cost of running the town.”

Analysts say that this year and next, city budgets will reach their most dismal points of the recession, largely because of lag time inherent in the way taxes are collected and distributed.

Despite signs of a recovery, if a slow one, in other elements of the economy, it may be years away for many municipalities. Between now and 2012, America’s cities are likely to experience shortfalls totaling $55 billion to $85 billion, according to a survey by the National League of Cities, because of slumping revenues from property taxes and sales taxes and reduced support from state governments.

And even in places like Concord and Beatrice, where officials say budget strains are not severe enough to lead to layoffs or major cuts, a slow chafing has still taken a toll.

Beatrice (pronounced bee-AT-russ), which sits about 40 miles south of Lincoln down a highway called the Homestead Expressway, is recognized as home to the first Homestead Act application nearly 150 years ago. That law ultimately granted 270 million acres of land in 30 states to nearly anyone who could survive on it and pay a minimal fee.

Daniel Freeman, who came from Ohio, is said to have filed his claim for 160 acres near Beatrice just after midnight on Jan. 1, 1863, the day the law took effect. There were others who filed claims in other places on the same day (some say they were actually first), but Mr. Freeman captured a place in history. The government paid to take back his Nebraska homestead decades later to turn it into a national monument that honors the Homestead Act and how it transformed the nation’s population.

Beatrice’s new Homestead Act is not the first to revive the land giveaway. Some tiny towns, particularly in the Great Plains, have made such offers before, mainly as a way to increase dwindling populations. But disappearing is not the fear in Beatrice, which is home to several lawn-mowing equipment manufacturers and where the population has held steady at around 12,000 for decades.

Instead, city officials are hoping to return some of the many lots the city has accumulated, because of unpaid taxes or flooding risks from the Big Blue River, and return them to the tax rolls. The city has not suffered gaping budget shortfalls or the property tax declines seen in some larger cities, but some large purchases and road reconstruction have been delayed, waiting for a return to flusher times. Click to continue »

Posted in Signs of the Apocalypse | No Responses »

Signs Of The Apocalypse: #21 Shrinking Cities

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

Wrecking crews are preparing to tear down a landmark 5,000-square-foot house in the posh neighborhood of Palmer Woods in the coming weeks, a sign that Detroit is finally getting serious about razing thousands of vacant and abandoned structures across the city.

In leveling 1860 Balmoral Drive, the boyhood home of one-time presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Detroit is losing a small piece of its history. But the project is part of a demolition effort that is just now gaining momentum and could help define the city’s future.

Detroit is finally chipping away at a glut of abandoned homes that has been piling up for decades, and intends to take advantage of warm weather and new federal funding to demolish some 3,000 buildings by the end of September.

Mayor Dave Bing has pledged to knock down 10,000 structures in his first term as part of a nascent plan to “right-size” Detroit, or reconfigure the city to reflect its shrinking population.

When it’s all over, said Karla Henderson, director of the Detroit Building Department, “There’s going to be a lot of empty space.”

Mr. Bing hasn’t yet fully articulated his ultimate vision for what comes after demolition, but he has said entire areas will have to be rebuilt from the ground up. For now, his plan calls for the tracts to be converted to other uses, such as parks or farms.

Even when the demolitions are complete, Detroit will still have a huge problem on its hands. The city has roughly 90,000 abandoned or vacant homes and residential lots, according to Data Driven Detroit, a nonprofit that tracks demographic data for the city.

After a stuttering start, caused by a dispute over the disposal of asbestos from demolished homes, the program is just now gaining pace.

City officials say they aren’t sure how many structures ultimately need to be torn down. The mortgage crisis compounded Detroit’s economic decline, leaving nearly 30% of the city’s housing stock vacant, according to Data Driven Detroit.

“Neighborhoods that are considered stable are now at 20% vacancy,” said Deborah Younger, a development consultant involved in the demolition effort.

Until recently, the city didn’t have the funds to tackle its growing list of houses slated for demolition. But $20 million in federal funds, primarily stimulus dollars has helped to kick-start the effort.

Demolition, particularly of historic buildings, is a sensitive issue in Detroit, often leading to wrenching battles between developers, residents, city officials and preservationists. But many residents are now pleading with the city to tear down decaying structures that are attracting crime and repelling home buyers. However, some still worry that the sort of large-scale bulldozing that the city is now talking about will forcibly dislocate longtime homeowners and preclude any chance of a comeback for Detroit.

“The city has never done this before,” says Ms. Henderson, the Building Department chief. “We had to make a culture change.”

The demolition of the Romney family home is the first of its kind in Palmer Woods, a high-end enclave in northwest Detroit that was developed at the dawn of the U.S. auto industry and housed many of its pioneers. Palmer Woods has just a handful of vacant properties among its 292 homes, according to residents. It’s one of the anchor neighborhoods that is critical to the success of Mayor Bing’s right-sizing effort.

The house was owned by Mr. Romney’s parents, George and Lenore Romney, from 1941 until 1953, when the family moved to the northern suburbs. The elder Mr. Romney would go on to become head of American Motors Corp., then governor of Michigan and U.S. secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

As recently as 2002, the house sold for $645,000. But it has had a troubled history since then, lapsing into foreclosure more than once, bouncing between lenders and falling into disrepair. Last year, following years of complaints from neighbors, Wayne County declared it “a public nuisance and blight” and ordered it demolished.

The younger Mr. Romney, who is considered a leading GOP presidential candidate for 2012, said “it’s sad” that his childhood home is being razed, “but sadder still to consider what has happened to the city of Detroit, which has been left hollow by fleeing jobs and liberal social policies.”

Residents of Palmer Woods take pride in their tradition of historic preservation. But they’re happy to see this house go. “This is an eyesore, and it makes no economic sense to fix it,” said Joel Pitcoff, a retiree who lives around the block. “Who wants to spend $1 million on a house so it will be worth $400,000?”

Source: Wall St. Journal

Posted in Signs of the Apocalypse | No Responses »