Don't Toss out Turbine Regs

Just a reminder that the City Council will discuss the wind turbine ordinance tonight. This just came over the electronic transom from Ed Cameron, who chairs the committee:

The Committee and the Committee of the Whole agenda for tonight will be the Wind Energy Conversion Ordinance.

The format for the meeting will be as follows:

*there will be a signup sheet for public comment
*speakers will be taken in order with a time limit on each speaker
*speakers should state the specific change(s) they are proposing to the ordinance or that they support leaving the ordinance as is. Speakers should give the reasoning behind their request
*comments will be directed to the chair, not to other participants
written comments will also be accepted
*an additional meeting will be scheduled if necessary

Thank you,

Councillor Ed Cameron

It's clearly a good idea that this is getting a public airing again, but I have to admit. I still haven't heard a compelling reason to change the ordinance. I accept that the neighors across Route 1 don't appreciate the shadows being cast or the so-called flicker created by spin of the turbine's rotors.

Check out the videos presented on the Back Bay wind blog , particularly those showing the shadows being cast by the spinning rotors. (I'm eager to hear how long this flicker affect lasts. I assume it only occurs while the sun sets, but perhaps I'm wrong.) I still haven't heard much of a peep out of the turbine so I can't see noise really being an issue.

I know my fellow bloggers have had much to say. The barely anonymous P. Preservationist is gravely concerned about how a field of turbines would decrease the aesthetic value of the common pasture and presumably the entire community. He's got every right to his opinion, but I'll counter that the existing turbine hasn't lessened the city's charm one iota. In fact, I think it adds another interesting element. He will disagree. I will disagree, and so the dance begins. 

Meanwhile, Mary Baker Eaton --who thankfully has never been afraid to assign her name to her beliefs--asks the city to slow down and wait for new technologies to emerge, with her hope being the new turbines would be far less intrusive than the current 292-foot gorilla standing off Parker Road. This is certainly a reasonable position. But I question how close we are to seeing those technologies, and can we afford to wait. Certainly worth consideration.

I do have to agree that the city can't handle 22 of these monsters in the industrial park. That's the number of eligible sites identified by the city, but I'm not sure if protections in the bylaw would permit a complete build out of every eligible site.  Here's a Daily News article.

Perhaps the setbacks and buffers need to be tweaked to bring the total number down a bit, but I hope the city council doesn't toss out the new regs entirely. Is that really what the majority of residents would like to see?

Food Drive

Well, I received some positive preliminary reports from the weekend's PENNIES FOR POVERTY: 2 CENTS 4 CHANGE food drive. I'm sure we'll get some specific numbers in due time, but by Saturday afternoon the three-day campaign proved quite fruitful.

So kudos to the group for putting the effort together and a big thank you to Shaw's for making the process so simple. The store actually pays an employee to gather and bundle all the food in paper bags marked at $5 and $10, and the employees labels the content of the bags (baby food, veggies, etc.) Thanks also to anyone who grabbed a bag of food from my table near the cash registers on Saturday afternoon.

All and all, the food drive was a great effort and a nice, non-partisan way to at least partially alleviate an unfortunately growing problem.

Daily News Furloughs?

Interesting line in today's editorial in the Daily News. To recap, the editorial seeks to contrast the decisions by Newbury patrolman, whose union voted not to seek pay raises, and Triton teachers, whose union has yet to respond to an administration request that they rescind a negotiated 3% raise.

No one wants to give up their raises, or go on furloughs, or be laid off. We all get that. But these days we are all faced with the same hardship. Many of us have been put in the position of taking a financial hit in order to save the jobs of our colleagues. And many others have not had that option — they have lost their jobs.

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I can't take this as flat out confirmation, but highlighted line certainly seems consistent with the reports that all employees of Community Newspaper Holdings are being required to take off five unpaid days by the end of June.

To its credit, the Richmond Register, a CNHI paper, opted to publish an article on the furloughs. It's curious that papers like the Daily News don't do the same (again I'm assuming the News got the memo, because the Richmond paper says all CNHI papers, and the DN is one.)

Sure, these are private insitutions in business structure, but I'm sure the Daily News would report on furloughs occurring in any private business. And I certainly would argue that the Daily News is as public an entity as any in the city. It's delivered to 13,000 doorsteps a day. How many other businesses impact 13,000 people per day? There's a community connection.

I first read about the furloughs on "The Turner Report" blog a week or so back. I've intended to blog on the subject but haven't had the time. If you're interested, the blogger has the entire memo issued by CEO Donna Barrett. Here's a tidbit.

A reduced work schedule will be implemented for hourly employees during the second quarter. Employees will take off five days without pay between April 1, 2009 and June 30, 2009. It is expected that no work will be done during this time. This applies to full and part-time employees. Part-time employees’ work schedules will be reduced on a prorated basis. These days off must be taken during the second quarter, and must be taken before any regular vacation or personal days. Regular vacation, personal and sick days may not be substituted for these unpaid days off.

You can read about it here and here a well.

As an aside, Barrett has been one of the leaders of the so-far feeble "Newspapers: We're not dead yet!" campaign. I sincerely hope the effort reinvigorates the industry, but I think the newspapers should spend less time with the rah-rahs and more time with innovation. I'll save details for a later post if anyone cares.

Back in The Day, the Daily News reporters actually belonged to the Communication Workers of America union. Far as I can tell, the union got swept aside with the Tribune took over and hasn't found its way back. Just to be clear, we had a fairly feeble union, and I can say that since I was one of the officers and chief negotiators, but we were still represented. I can't say for sure this wouldn't have happened if CWA were still in place, but CNHI would have had to ask, just as Triton is doing.