Election of new Ross Valley Sanitary District board president causes rift

At a raucous meeting Wednesday night, the Ross Valley Sanitary District board elected its newest member, Mary Sylla, to serve as president of the board.

Supporters of Sylla and Frank Egger, the former board president who was seeking re-election, attended the meeting to lend their vocal support. Sylla was elected on a 3-2 vote with board members Egger and Pamela Meigs voting in the minority.

"It became a little bit more polarizing than I had hoped," said Sylla, who lives in Kentfield and works as program director for the Public Health Institute.

Egger said, "It was a donnybrook."

In a letter to the board, Egger recounted his efforts to keep the district afloat after the disappearance of former general manager, Brett Richards, in July 2012. Richards was arrested earlier this month in the Philippines and is facing nine felony counts including misappropriation of public funds, embezzlement and multiple counts of money laundering.

In his letter, Egger noted that the previous three presidents of the board served two-year terms and wrote that he had "worked almost full time keeping our agency afloat from July 2012 until Greg Norby came on board in mid February as interim general manager." He noted that the previous three board presidents had served two-year terms.

Egger served 39 years on the Fairfax Town Council and was the longest-serving municipal council member in California before he lost his bid for re-election there in 2005.

Sylla said she decided to run for president of the board after spending the day with Norby.

"He's such a capable general manager," Sylla said. "I just thought the board wasn't helping him to the degree it ought to be. Next year is going to be a really important year for the district."

The vote to elect Sylla was the same as last week's vote by the board on a $19.2 million revenue bond.

Egger and Meigs voted against the bond saying they had reservations about using it to refinance $11 million of existing debt. They said they supported a smaller bond to raise $8.2 million for the district to make wastewater system improvements. The board voted 3-2 to issue the bonds.

Norby said the refinancing will put the district in a better position if it needs to issue additional bonds in the future to support long-term capital projects.

In November, the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board notified the district it was violating state law by allowing sewage to overflow into local waterways and failing to allocate adequate resources for repair of its failing pipes.

The water board has told the district it must come up with a short-term plan for fixing 45 pipe locations, which are most likely to fail first; a longer-term plan for repairing another 800 locations; and a strategy for producing the needed revenue for keeping all 200 miles of the district's pipes in working order.

San Anselmo Councilman Tom McInerney said, "Frank was instrumental in righting the ship at the district. With that said, Mary has been a tremendous asset to the district as well, and I think she'll do a great job as president."

Contact Richard Halstead via e-mail at rhalstead@marinij.com

Source: http://www.marinij.com/ross_kentfield_greenbrae/ci_23738168/election-new-ross-valley-sanitary-district-board-president?source=rss

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Church of England admits investing in backer of payday lender

LONDON | Fri Jul 26, 2013 7:36am BST

LONDON (Reuters) - The Church of England confirmed on Thursday that its pension fund invests in Accel Partners, the U.S.-based venture capital firm that led fundraising in 2009 for Wonga, a payday lender.

The Financial Times newspaper reported the investment a day after Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said that the church would seek to drive payday lenders, such as Wonga, out of business by launching its own credit unions. Payday lenders have been criticized for trapping borrowers in a cycle of debt.

"We will be asking the Assets Committee of the Church Commissioners to investigate how this has occurred and to review the holding in this pooled investment vehicle," a spokesperson for Lambeth Palace, the official residence of the archbishop of Canterbury, said in an emailed statement.

"We will also be requesting the Church Commissioners to investigate whether there are any other inconsistencies as normally all investment policies are reviewed by the Ethical Investment Advisory Group."

Welby, who has led the church since March, is among leading critics of firms like Wonga and Provident Financial (PFG.L), which typically provide hard-up families with loans of up to 1,000 pounds to be repaid when they receive weekly or monthly wages.

The archbishop said he had met with the chief executive of Wonga, Errol Damelin, and told him, "We're not in the business of trying to legislate you out of existence, we're trying to compete you out of existence", according to an interview in the August issue of Total Politics magazine.

The market for the loans has grown rapidly in Britain and other countries like the United States as benefit cuts squeeze poor households' budgets and traditional bank credit lines withered in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.

Public criticism of the firms in Britain has grown, too, with politicians and poverty-focused charities concerned that the high interest rates the firms charge only dig poor households into more trouble.

Wonga, one the biggest payday lenders in Britain, this month it lifted the annual interest rate on its loans to 5,853 percent.

Welby, a former oil executive educated at Eton and Cambridge, said the church was "putting our money where our mouth is" in the plan to launch a not-for-profit financial cooperative that offers deposit accounts and low-interest loans.

He said the credit union would be engaged in its community and more professional than lenders like Wonga and other competitors, including QuidQuid and Lending Stream, but conceded that it would be a decade before it flourished, giving few details.

In a statement, Wonga's Damelin called the archbishop an "exceptional individual" and took up Welby's challenge.

"On his ideas for competing with us, Wonga welcomes competition from any quarter that gives the consumer greater choice in effectively managing their financial affairs."

Short-term lenders are coming under more scrutiny globally. The U.S. consumer watchdog said in April that new regulation could be introduced to stop the loans that trap borrowers in a cycle of debt.

Britain's consumer watchdog, the Office of Fair Trading last month vowed to crack down on the 2 billion pound a year industry and said it was investigating measures like an advertising ban.

(Reporting by Clare Hutchison in London; Additional reporting by Abhirup Roy in Bangalore; Editing by Patrick Graham and Leslie Adler)

Source: http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/UKPersonalFinanceNews/~3/TQfcOztvrew/uk-church-payday-idUKLNE96O00H20130726

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USC Trojans football coach Lane Kiffin is not on the hot seat entering this season.

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Source: http://www.facebook.com/ESPN850.WRUF/posts/10151716171107910

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Consumer price rise in Japan

Japan's consumer prices rose in June for the first time in 14 months, as Tokyo looks to tackle years of deflation that have crippled growth in the world's third-largest economy.

Excluding volatile prices of fresh food, prices rose 0.4 per cent in June, the first increase since a 0.2 per cent rise in April last year, according to the internal affairs ministry on Friday.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has vowed to pull Japan out of 15 years of falling prices with active government spending, which he argues will boost the economy and eventually lead to higher pay for workers.

His hand-picked governor at the Bank of Japan, meanwhile, unleased a huge monetary easing program in April and set a two-per cent inflation target aimed at turning around the economy.

Japan's economy expanded at an annualised rate of 4.1 per cent in the first quarter, and some Japanese firms have recently announced price increases as the yen weakened sharply since late last year.

While the data on Friday may be a good sign, much of the price increase can be attributed to surging energy costs in the wake of the Fukushima atomic disaster two years ago.

The country turned to pricey fossil-fuel imports in the wake of the accident after shutting down its nuclear reactors. A weaker currency has pushed up the costs of those imports.

Source: http://rss.skynews.com.au/c/34485/f/628637/s/2f2ba497/sc/24/l/0L0Sskynews0N0Bau0Cbusinessnews0Carticle0Baspx0Did0F890A9970GvId0F/story01.htm

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Extravagant Modern Living in South Africa: SAOTA?s Kloof 151 Project

Kloof 151 project is a three storey building with parking envisioned and implemented by SAOTA in Cape Town, South Africa. The large entrance to the basement allows for direct sunlight and a pleasantly warm entrance to the house. At the ground floor, the main living room enjoys a fantastic position overlooking Clifton. The majority of the living levels ? including the open plan kitchen ? open onto the large well covered terraces to the West or North facing the mountain slope and Lion?s Head.The extreme heat and glare of the setting sun is addressed by the cantilevering balconies, extended irregular and striking hardwood screens and motorized vertical fabric blinds. These devices along with the performance glazing result in an all year round cool interior. The ground floor is bisected by a double volume to enrich the spatial experience and create a dialogue with the double volume stairwell towards the rear. The first floor of the house accommodates 4 en-suite bedrooms, a gym and a studio space. To reduce the effect of glare experienced at the house, the finishes palette is rich and in deep colors. Bedrooms are generally lighter and contemporary with accents of classic pieces of furniture and a fresh fabric selection that create tranquil spaces. [Photos and information provided via e-mail by SAOTA]

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FreshInspirationForYourHome/~3/7pCkO3XKZnw/

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Seeing photosynthesis from space: NASA scientists use satellites to measure plant health

[unable to retrieve full-text content]NASA scientists have established a new way to use satellites to measure what's occurring inside plants at a cellular level. Plants grow and thrive through photosynthesis, a process that converts sunlight into energy. During photosynthesis, plants emit what is called fluorescence -- light invisible to the naked eye but detectable by satellites orbiting hundreds of miles above Earth. NASA scientists have now established a method to turn this satellite data into global maps of the subtle phenomenon in more detail than ever before.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/3dZe6PpuxFE/130724155223.htm

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Arctic ice melt could cost an extra $60 trillion, say researchers

Methane gas released from the melting Arctic ice could accelerate global warming and tack on an extra $60 trillion to the cost the world is expected to incur from climate change.

By Elizabeth Barber,?Contributor / July 24, 2013

A climate change model has found that methane releases from the melting Arctic could cost the world $60 trillion.

Brennan Linsley/AP

Enlarge

The oil and gas industries have in recent years forecasted profits from easier access to resource fields in the melting Arctic. Northern states have welcomed the trade routes that are emerging from the thick ice?s melt. But those possible boons pale in comparison to the costs that methane emissions from the melting ice will have on the global economy, scientists have found.

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The price tag? $60 trillion ? or about the size of the entire global economy in 2012 ? according to new research that modeled the economic toll that methane gases seeping out of the Arctic would take on the world.?

?Its not just bad news for the polar bear,? said Gail Whiteman, a researcher at Erasmus University in the Netherlands and a co-author on the paper, published in Nature. ?It?s a global economic time bomb."

The Arctic is thought to contain about 30 percent of the world's undiscovered gas, as well as about 13 percent of its untapped oil. Those economic opportunities have provided major incentives for investment in Arctic oil and gas fields. Lloyd's of London, an insurance market, has projected that investment in the region could reach US$100 billion within ten years.

At the same time, thawing ice has also cleared a route for vessels there during the summer. Arctic shipping is expected to see about 40 million tons a year in 2050.

But those projected figures do not present a full picture of the economic effects of melting in the Arctic, the authors said.

The Arctic ice stores roughly 50 billion tons of methane, a concentrated gas some 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Over the past few years, scientists have observed the gas pluming from the region?s thawing ice. That raised the question: even as profits are hauled in from shipping and drilling in the Arctic, could that methane gas be waiting to undo all those gains? Could the toll of that released gains far outweigh the rewards of melting Arctic?s ice?

Researchers used what is called the PAGE09 model to assess a broad range of risks arising from methane gas release. Their work is built on the 2006 Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change?s model, which judged the economic effect of extra greenhouse-gas emissions on such factors as sea level rise, temperature, and extreme weather risk. That model found that, as a result of global warming the world would incur a total cost of $450 trillion by the end of the century.

But seven years ago there was too little research on methane gas in the Arctic to include its influence on the global economy, Dr. Whiteman said. So this time, scientists modeled a ten-year release of the 50-billion-ton methane bubble between 2015 and 2025 and showed the effects of that decade-long burst until 2200. The model was based on the current rate of greenhouse emissions.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/ckKHxvbH26s/Arctic-ice-melt-could-cost-an-extra-60-trillion-say-researchers

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