How not to install plywood to protect windows

What's Happening With Housing East of Broadway

Monday, March 24th: Update on East of Broadway Plan.

Last year Lemay Housing Partnership staff lead residents, public officials and other representatives through a planning process for the East of Broadway portion of Lemay.  The process was anchored by a 4-day public design charrette.  Now, one year later, Lemay Housing Partnership is inviting residents and others back for an update and to seek additional input. 

Please join us on Monday, March 24 2014 at 6:00 p.m. at 336 E. Ripa in the Maria Center on the School Sisters of Notre Dame campus.  RSVP by calling (314) 631-9905.

Is Your Neighborhood Full of Cheaters?

AshleyMadison.com — a computer dating website specifically for married people looking for affairs — has released information about which areas of STL are looking the most.

The not-in-the-least-bit-cynical folks at AshleyMadison took their membership data, about 61,000 users in the St. Louis area, and grouped it by neighborhood, thereby compiling a Top 10 list of STL neighborhoods belonging to the website.

(The cartographically challenged folks at AshleyMadison have also produced a map of these neighborhoods, with most of the metropolitan area inexplicably squeezed to fit inside the St. Louis city limits.)

The list:

   1.       Oakville (8.2 percent of St. Louis-area website members come from this area)

2.       Maryland Heights (7.8)

3.       Creve Coeur (7.6)

4.       Clayton (7.4)

5.       Affton (7.1)

6.       Overland (6.6)

7.       Kirkwood (6.3)

8.      St. Louis Hills (5.7)

9.       North Hampton (5.4)

10.   Princeton Heights (4.8)

Site founder Noel Biderman said affluence is a common element found on most cities' top ten lists. "Those with discretionary income and freedom to travel are even more likely to stray," he said.

Other factoids offered by the website are:

• Oakville site members have the most children

• St. Louis Hills members have the most affair partners

• Forty-four percent of STL's potentially wayward ones are women, with an average age of 36.

 

Dumb and Dumber, But We Keep Voting Them In

Can’t you hear students telling their teachers they want to be welfare recipients when they grow up?

 Note that Calif is $18.50 an hour.

THE WORK ETHIC WE INHERITED GROWING UP HAS FALLEN PREY TO THE 'WELFARE' SYSTEM

The Cato Institute released an updated 2013 study (original study in 1955) showing that welfare benefits pay more than a minimum wage job in 33 states and the District of Columbia. Even worse, welfare pays more than $15 per hour in 13 states. According to the study, welfare benefits have increased faster than minimum wage. It’s now more profitable to sit at home than it is to earn an honest day’s pay.

Hawaii is the biggest offender, where welfare recipients earn $29.13 per hour, or a $60,590 yearly salary, all for doing nothing.

Here is the list of the states where the pre-tax equivalent “salary” that welfare recipients receive is higher than having a job:

1. Hawaii : $60,590

2. District of Columbia : $50,820

3. Massachusetts : $50,540

4. Connecticut : $44,370

5. New York : $43,700

6. New Jersey : $43,450

7. Rhode Island : $43,330

8. Vermont : $42,350

9. New Hampshire : $39,750

10. Maryland : $38,160

11. California : $37,160

12. Oregon : $34,300

13. Wyoming : $32,620

14. Nevada : $29,820

15. Minnesota : $29,350

16. Delaware : $29,220

17. Washington : $28,840

18. North Dakota : $28,830

19. Pennsylvania : $28,670

20. New Mexico : $27,900

21. Montana : $26,930

22. South Dakota : $26,610

23. Kansas : $26,490

24. Michigan : $26,430

25. Alaska : $26,400

26. Ohio : $26,200

27. North Carolina : $25,760

28. West Virginia : $24,900

29. Alabama : $23,310

30. Indiana : $22,900

31. Missouri : $22,800

32. Oklahoma : $22,480

33. Louisiana : $22,250

34. South Carolina : $21,910

As a point of reference the average Middle Class annual income today is $50,000, down from $54,000 at the beginning of the Great Recession. Hawaii, DC, and Massachusetts pay more in welfare than the average working folks earn there. Is it any wonder that they stay home rather than look for a job. Time for a drastic change. America is virtually bankrupt.

 

 Are we Nuts or what? How do we un-do this type of stupidity on the part of Americans? 

This is crazy!

Salary of retired US Presidents
$180,000 FOR LIFE

Salary of House/Senate....$174,000 FOR LIFE
This is stupid.

Salary of Speaker of the House ....$223,500
FOR LIFE!
This is really stupid. 

Salary of Majority/Minority Leader $193,400
FOR LIFE!
Ditto last line.

Average Salary of a teacher .. $40,065

Average Salary of Soldier DEPLOYED IN
AFGHANISTAN .. $38,000

Think about this.

Nancy Pelosi will retire as a Congress Person
at $174,000 Dollars a year for LIFE.
She has retired as SPEAKER at $223,500
a year. 

PLUS she will receive an additional $193,400 a
year as Minority Leader.
That's $803,700

Dollars a year for LIFE including FREE medicalwhich is not available to us .... the taxpayers

She is just one of the hundreds of Senators
and Congress that float in and out every
year!

I think we found where the cuts should be made!

Free Trees for Common Grounds!

Forest ReLeaf of Missouri is a small nonprofit organization that has been giving away trees for the past twenty years - nearly 150,000 to date!  With a mission to restore our urban forests, this dedicated group has made a huge impact on the area. Their trees are everywhere from schools and churches to Forest Park and out in Joplin. In fact, they just received a national award from the Arbor Day Foundation for their Excellence in Urban Forest Leadership.

Trees are available to groups for planting through two different programs with the provision they must be planted on public or nonprofit land.  For neighborhood associations and subdivisions, common grounds also qualify.  The first program, Project ReLeaf, provides balled and burlapped trees, typically 5-12’ tall, which are sold at a greatly reduced price. These trees must be ordered in advance and can be done so by going to the Project ReLeaf link on their website. This will also connect you to the Tree Catalog so you can see the species selection.  The deadline for ordering trees will be sometime in March but is yet to be determined given the recent unusual weather. 

The second program, which provides free trees, is Project CommuniTree.  These are 3-gallon trees, typically 4-6’ in height, distributed on a first-come first-served basis. Applications are required and can be printed and faxed or mailed in. 

Forest ReLeaf grows about 20,000 trees at their CommuniTree Gardens Nursery in Creve Coeur Park which is also the pickup site for trees. The work to grow and maintain these trees is done largely by volunteers. 

Each spring, groups, families and individuals volunteer at the nursery and pot up thousands of seedlings that will be distributed back out to the region. People from age 6 to 86 come to help out and find that this is a great way to have fun and give back to the community. Forest ReLeaf also gives frequent classes and lectures including their free, 7 week TreeKeepers class. 

To learn more about these programs, available species, deadlines and other opportunities within Forest ReLeaf, visit their website at  http://moreleaf.org  To make sure you receive notification of deadlines and the latest developments, email info@moreleaf.org to have them add your name to their email list.

The Death of the PC

Research firm IDC believes that the market for traditional PCs has nearly bottomed, a good sign for PC-dependent tech giants like Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT ) and Intel (NASDAQ: INTC ) .

 

Although the firm expects 2014 to be another year of contraction, it is looking for a return to growth in the years ahead, with a floor of about 300 million annual PC shipments for the foreseeable future.

IDC has overestimated the PC in the past, and is likely doing so again. So far, 2013 has been the worst year on record for the traditional PC, but its death is only beginning. In the years ahead, competition from devices running Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG  ) mobile operating system will prove overwhelming.

 

Underestimating the rise of mobile

In 2010, IDC was projecting PC shipments to slow in 2011, but then rebound to double-digit growth in 2012 and beyond. By 2015, IDC was expecting PC shipments to exceed 500 million, and grow by an annual rate of 10-15% -- projections that seem absolutely absurd today. IDC had thought that tablets like the (then recently unveiled) iPad would take a slight toll on PCs in 2011, but the firm seems to have underestimated their long-term effects, most notably, the rise of cheaper alternatives running Google's mobile operating system.

 

While the demand for traditional PCs running Microsoft's Windows has dried up, the tablet market continues to grow. Gartner expects tablet shipments to total 184 million this year, up 53.4%, and even IDC admits that tablet sales should surpass PCs by the end of 2015. Most of these tablets will run Google's mobile operating system. Although Apple continues to be the single-largest tablet maker, Android-powered tablets have overtaken the iPad. Apple's tablet operation may remain immensely profitable, but the far cheaper price points, and widely divergent form factors, should give Google the market-share edge.

Going 64-bit

One of the advantages traditional PCs have always had over mobile devices is raw computing power -- when you need a lot of it, there's no substitute for a PC. But in the years ahead, mobile devices are likely to become far more powerful. Next year, chips will be capable of powering devices running the 64-bit version Google's Android (including Intel's Bay Trail). In contrast to 32-bit Android, 64-bit will allow devices to access more than 4 GB of RAM.

 

Right now, this limitation is superfluous -- the iPad Air, for example, only has 1 GB of RAM, while Samsung's beefy Note 10.1 still only has 3 GB -- but in time, it will allow for much more powerful mobile devices. Consider that, just four years ago, it was debatable whether or not desktops running Microsoft's Windows needed 4GB of RAM. Today, even the cheapest of PCs ship with at least 4GB, and many come with 12GB or even 16GB.

 

Larger tablets will make more work possible

One major trend in mobile computing that is likely to play out in 2014 is the emergence of larger tablets. Mobile devices have been criticized for their inability to serve as true work stations -- even full-size, 10-inch screens are ill-suited for doing productive work. But as tablets have gotten lighter and thinner, larger screens have become possible, and the ability for 12-inch (or larger tablets) to cannibalize a larger chunk of the laptop market seems likely. The most popular laptop screen sizes are 14- and 15-inches, with 13-inch screens accounting for a sizable chunk.

 

Samsung is expected to roll out a 12-inch tablet running Google's mobile operating system next year, and if the form factor is successful, it isn't hard to imagine Google's other hardware partners emulating the idea, as they did with Samsung's phablets.

 

The demise of Wintel

For years, Microsoft and Intel jointly dominated the PC market. Intel provided the chips; Microsoft provided the operating systems. The rise of mobile computing has proven quite challenging for both companies, with Microsoft's hybrid Windows 8 operating system seeing sluggish adoption, while Intel has provided the processors for only a minority of mobile computing devices.

 

If the traditional PC market stabilizes around 300 million, as IDC is expecting, then both companies should have a sort of cushion. Even if they never really break into mobile, there will always be a sizable market for traditional PCs, one where both Microsoft and Intel face little competition.

But mobile computing is still evolving rapidly. Larger form factors, and more powerful 64-bit processors, will make mobile devices, mostly powered by Google's Android, far more enticing to a larger group of traditional PC users. As mobile devices become more capable, the traditional PC's worst days still lie ahead.

Three display homes robbed in St. Louis County

Police are investigating after appliances were stolen from display homes in St. Louis County on three separate occasions in Feb.

According to St. Louis County police, thieves on Feb. 1 took appliances from a home in the 1000 block of Bridlerridge Crossing Spur.

Another appliance theft happened on Feb. 11 at a home in the 1000 block of Bridlewood Valley Pt.

A house in the 13000 block of Wynston Trace Ct. had its appliances taken on Feb. 19.

St. Louis County police say they are working with detectives in several local jurisdictions to help identify

St. Louis Unite: Slay, Dooley Call for Open Minds at City/County Merger Symposium

Are St. Louis City and St. Louis County ready to hug it out and become one entity to benefit the region? That was the big question at Friday's public merger discussion at the Saint Louis University School of Law.

Panels of community leaders, regional historians and policy experts spoke about the pros and cons of merging completely or partially, but civic activists primarily cared about the ideas from St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay and St. Louis County Executive Charley Dooley. We followed the discussion on Twitter through the #MergeSTL hashtag (with host @SLULAW doing the heavy lifting) and learned that while local leaders are heavily involved in the merger conversation, they've still got plenty of issues to address.

 Check out the symposium & go to Storify for a much longer tweet recap.

Elections are coming

 

Meth in Your Subdivision?

There is probably no drug more vilified these days than meth, and Missouri is often said to be the capital of meth production. That's not something to be proud of considering many people think the average meth user smokes bathtub cleaner chemicals before arrested for biting -- with their last two good teeth -- the face of a convenience store worker in a botched attempt to steal a carton of Marlboro Reds.

Lemay Streetscape Open House

 

Mark Your Calendar

Click on Photo to Enlarge



$5 Million and Growing for St. Louis County Trash Program

In his most recent “You Paid For It,”  Fox 2 News Investigative Reporter Elliott Davis reports on St. Louis County’s intentional noncompliance with a state statute that has the potential to cost county taxpayers $5.9 million, or even more.

The trash haulers lawsuit that originated in 2008 has worked its way all the way up to the Missouri Supreme Court where the trash haulers won in 2013.  The case was remanded back to the Circuit Court to settle the only remaining issue, which is just how much the county will have to pay the three victorious haulers (American Eagle, Meridian and Waste

Charlie Dooley



 Management).  The county appealed the money judgment and thinks that it can also appeal the merits of the original case again.  However, Jane Dueker, the winning attorney for the trash haulers says that “the (Missouri) Supreme Court has determined that they (the county) did not give the proper notice, then in fact the only issue left is how much money they owe the trash haulers for wrongfully displacing them.”

When Elliott Davis asked St. Louis County Counselor Pat Redington why the county did not send the notice certified mail as required by state statute before taking away the trash haulers customers, she replied, “They all got it.  There’s no question that they got it.”  And, she added, “The only question is whether a letter telling the trash haulers about the program should have been sent by certified mail instead of regular mail.”

Dueker countered by stating that the whole issue could have been easily avoided if the county would have just complied with the law.  Dueker said, “Very easily.  They could have just given the notice.  It would have been real easy to just comply with the law.  They (the county) just said, oh, we don’t have to.”  I mean, that’s what they’ve always said, they’ve had that level of arrogance that they don’t have to comply with the law.” 

With regard to the pending judgment, Redington says that the taxpayers would only have to absorb $2 million dollars of the $5.9 million dollars judgment, since insurance would cover the rest.  However, the county’s insurance rates could be affected, especially since this issue could have been avoided by complying with the law.

Of the trash hauler’s judgment, Dueker said, “We initially got a judgment for $1.1 million.  The county appealed.  And, now that judgment is $5.9 million.  And, interest is running on that judgment currently.  We’re currently requesting about $8 million dollars.  And, so if the county appeals again, yes, that number could go up.”  

When asked about the handling of the case, Redington told Davis that she thought the county handled the case properly.  She said, “I think we did the case right.  I’m happy with the way we did the case.”  And, of course, why wouldn’t she and the rest of the Dooley administration be happy.  After all, they can’t be held personally accountable and it’s not their money at stake – it’s yours, the taxpayers.

If you would like to express your opinion about this issue to your St. Louis County officials who played a key role in establishing a trash program that will cost you millions, call or email the following officials, as they’re probably anxiously awaiting to hear from you.

 Charlie Dooley                                                   Garry Earls                                          Patricia Redington

St. Louis County Executive                           Chief Operating Officer                 St. Louis County Counselor

(314) 615-7016                                                   (314) 615-7016                                   (314) 615-7025

cdooley@stlouisco.com                                gearls@stlouisco.com                    predington@stlouisco.com

Click on the following link to watch the two minute and 42 second “You  Paid For It” video about the county administration’s bungling of the never-ending trash fiasco:

 

http://fox2now.com/2014/02/18/st-louis-countys-trash-hauler-lawsuit-gone-bad-for-taxpayers/