Archive: February, 2007

BBQ excitement

February 21st, 2007 · · General No comments - Tags:

Maybe I’m excited for the summer since it’s warm today. Perhaps we fat guys are pre-disposed to liking pork and pork BBQ. Whatever the reason, I find myself very excited about the “King City Barbecue Showdown“.

I hope that King Barbacoa and 17th Street compete this year. While King Barbacoa is by far my favorite, and the favorite of everyone I know, 17th Street is very good if you prefer a drier barbecue. My mouth is drooling just thinking about a spicy pork sandwich with potato wedges and a sweet tea from the Barbacoa. So tender and tasty, you just can’t help but love the smell and flavor. The sandwiches are fresh-made, served piping hot, and wrapped in aluminum foil so they stay that way.

I know where I’m going for lunch.

Pray for the voting public

February 21st, 2007 · · Mount Vernon No comments - Tags:

I am quite serious with the title of this post. There are a great many “coincidences” in the design, project managing, city council campaign donations, etc. that would lead one to presume not all is kosher with the school referendum and elections.

The web is pretty rampant with rumors, and I won’t propagate them. Take a look at either of the forums at the end of this post to find the facts that could lead to such questionable conclusions.

I do think we need improvements and rebuilding of our high school, but I also personally believe there is a lot of collusion and/or planning by some to ram this current plan up our tail-pipes.

Donations from busing services, construction companies, and other special interests? Council members failing to abstain from votes that directly affect their employer? Council refusing to ask Mount Vernon residents whether the city should prop-up the school district? No bidding process for anything? Only one architectural design considered? Project manager already hired?

Too many questions to be ignored. I hope that these are all coincidences, but I will be praying that all things come out as they should and that God will grant us the wisdom to discern wheat from chaff.

Mount Vernon Register-News Forums

Jefferson County Forums

Taxes? They will stay the same. Well, maybe not…

February 16th, 2007 · · Mount Vernon No comments - Tags: ,

He said if the Jefferson County Board allows its quarter-percent sales tax to expire as planned in 2008, the city would like to impose another quarter-percent sales tax to take its place.

“However, if the county board continues that tax, the city would like to impose a 2-cent fuel tax,” Hollmann said. “Both would bring in about $800,000 a year.”

The 2-cent-per-gallon tax on gasoline and diesel would generate about $800,912 per year, according to estimates from Hollmann.

While the city has actual revenue data from a 2002-03 gasoline tax previously implemented, it’s unsure how much income a tax on diesel fuel would actually generate.

“Diesel fuel is a little tougher,” Hollmann said at the last meeting. “No one at the state level keeps track of diesel fuel by the gallon by retail outlets.”

So, in other words, they are guessing at how much income the petrol tax would generate. They are guessing at the dropping of the county tax. How can we support something based on pure guesswork? Don’t get me wrong, I think we need a new MVTHS, and I trust Merle’s guesswork more than most, but it’s still guesswork.

This is why I spend money online or out of town, unless I can support a local business owner. Our city has a tax rate that is on-par with Chicago suburbs and other LARGE areas, but none of the high-paying jobs to support it. We are being taxed to death and now our city council, school district, and many others are trying to increase Mount Vernon’s load.

What percentage of Mount Vernonites work at the two main employers that pay an arguably “living wage”? I am willing to wager the percentage is not as high as some would presume. Many people at the Walgreens DC drive from as far away as Tamaroa to work here. Positive spin on that is how we can draw from so far away, but the flip is that we now have another slot in a Mount Vernon job that is gone. The Mount Vernonite that could have worked there can now go make minimum wage at one of our fine fast food stops or sell gas at the interstate. Perhaps they will clean hotel rooms instead.

From my point of view, the city is in peril due to the lack of jobs. Not CRAP jobs, but ones that pay enough to try to support yourself with today.

MVFD’s Station #2 is in bad shape

February 15th, 2007 · · General, Mount Vernon No comments - Tags: ,

First off, the city is aware of the issues at the station from my information and IS at some stage of getting these matters corrected. Secondly, the statements made below are based on information gathered from confidential sources. I just think that it’s garbage that the firemen in charge of protecting our lives and possibly dying while doing so are treated to conditions so deplorable and arguably unsafe.

To begin with, the roof had holes. A local company was hired to do the repair. The repairs were made as best they could be for the moment. Now, there are several more issues that still need to be addressed at this location by the city. I have photos, and will publish them as I can add them.

The list isn’t extremely long that I have, but it is full of rather important issues:

1. The support beam that runs between the garage doors at the front of the building comes at least an inch from making contact with the concrete.

I-Beam_Distance

I-Beam_Macro

2. There are many points just below the roof that leak/have leaked, including just above the sleeping quarters.

Cropped_Tiles

3. The drain in the concrete to the front of the building appears to be unstable. While one can’t be sure without digging, it seems to be caving-in. I believe that I understood correctly one of the ladder trucks had to be moved to another station due to fear of the pad not handling they weight if it was pulled out onto the pad.

Sinking_Cropped

4. Water pools to the front of the building in the bay instead of flowing down the drains as it should. This is likely related to the shifting of the building, but still needs to be addressed.

5. The front of the building appears to be pulling away from the rear based on cracks in the building that continue to grow over time.

I will say that the conditions are pretty bad. My observations and information are not from engineers or construction experts, but just from my experience. Like I said at the beginning of this post, the city did hire a local company to make the repairs, and they did the emergency repairs that they could. I was told they are examining the issues above in detail and will make suggestions for repairs once the evaluation is done. That is great, and good job making sure everything is done correctly.

I am making this post so that taxpayers can see something in the community that I believe should be fixed well and quickly. Is this how protectors of our homes and lives should be treated? I don’t think so and I hope you don’t either.

RSS – You should use it

February 14th, 2007 · · General No comments - Tags:

Really Simple Syndication in case you didn’t know. Heck, I consider myself a geek and I don’t use it as much as I could. RSS is a great tool to track websites and blogs that you like without having to directly go there. The site produces a feed (like the latest scores on ESPN for example) that a RSS reader displays for you. This can range from article headlines, to brief summaries, to a full article. Subscribing to your favorite site feed is generally as easy as finding a little orange radio icon like you will see to the right of this page.

“How do I subscribe to these feeds”, you may ask. Well, thank you for asking. The easiest way of subscribing is by using your browser. For those of you using Firefox 2.x, if there is a feed available for a particular page you are browsing, the radio icon is probably on the right side of your address bar at the top of the browser.

By clicking on that orange icon Firefox will ask you how you would like to subscribe to the feed, offering multiple choices. I use the “Bookmarks Toolbar” option myself to have the feeds right at the top of my browser any time I want to check them.

I will give honorable mention to Internet Explorer 7 because it now has RSS capability as well. Unfortunately I don’t use IE, so I can’t say how easy it is to use their RSS features. If anyone wants to leave information in the comments, please do.

There are many, many services and even special programs that will track RSS feeds for you. As a matter of fact, there are so many that I will not even mention them here. Just go to Google and type in “RSS aggregator” for a vast amount of choices.

To summarize, RSS is a simple, neat way to track sites that you enjoy. When you use RSS you can pick through the posts and go to what sounds interesting, and keep track of when your sites update.

For more information, please visit Wikipedia and read the much better description they have on site.