Suchergebnisse

The reckless spending by Bossier City over the past
quarter-century has come back to haunt citizens in another way, this time
through increased sanitation rates.

This week,
the City Council voted
to jack up rates on users, inside and outside of the city. Beginning in
February, the flat resident charge for water will go from $8.54 to $10.16 and
the pre thousand gallon charge of $3.03 will rise to $3.61; for nonresidents,
the flat rate will go from $15.80 to $18.80 and the per thousand gallon charge of
$4.55 will rise to $5.41. While nonresidential users without water service won't
see increased rates for waste pickup, residents will see theirs go from $24 (curbside
or disabled side yard) or $28 (side yard) to $36 monthly; commercial customers
will have theirs rise from $28 to $40; churches will see theirs go up from $24
to $36; and containers for use will cost $8.50 rather than $4 (after the free first
one, except for side yard pickup). The typical household would see about an $18
a month increase, with the bulk of that coming not from water but sanitation.

There wasn't much the city could do to avoid the
water rate hike. Having accepted money from the state's Water Sector program in
the forms of loans and grants, the state conditions this on sufficient revenue
generation potential as determined through a rate study. The results argued
that the rate structure for water since 2007 hadn't kept pace and an increase
immediately plus one built in for the next fiscal year would satisfy the
program's conditions. The FY 2026 gap would be resolved with a two percent
increase on rates.

Yet it could have been worse. The original
ordinance extended the two percent increase in perpetuity, regardless of
projected capital expenditures, usage, and inflation. This would have created
just another endless revenue stream by which spend-happy councilors could have used
on grandiose schemes, such as the ill-advised
gift of a waterworks to the Port of Caddo-Bossier where if the city uses so
much as a drop from it that this threatens to have costs overwhelm any
projected revenues producing a sweetheart deal to the Port. Fortunately,
Republican Councilor Chris Smith had
the wit to catch that and have it amended to apply only to 2026.

(Ironically, Republican Councilor David Montgomery,
who writes lucrative insurance deals for the Port, at the time hailed the
deal as a revenue generator that would "mitigate the fact that we will not have
rate increases going forward." And yet here increases are, making Montgomery wrong
yet again. He seemed not in opposition to the eternal two percent increases. And
even Smith reiterated his support of the waterworks project as a revenue
generator, unwisely continuing to ignore the riskiness of the deal.)

Nonetheless, the timing seemed curious. At the prior meeting city Chief
Administrative Officer Amanda Nottingham, in answering questions about the
water rates from Smith, said the necessity came upon the state essentially
springing its study and demand onto the city without warning. Yet later she
said the increase had been worked into the budget, which first was presented in
September and passed in November. So why did the GOP Mayor Tommy Chandler
Administration wait until the end of the year, after the budget had been passed
but right before the increase would take effect, to move forward with asking
Council approval for the increase?

Regardless, the sanitation charges are another
matter. Nottingham noted that this had been a money loser from some time, with
last year's estimated
loss at just under $3 million. This will leave the fund balance at around a
paltry $1.3 million. Sanitation – that is, waste pickup – comprises the bulk of
these operations, which are designed to act as an enterprise fund. These kinds
of funds mimic business operations, where ideally only revenues directly related
to service provision enter and only expenses tied directly to service provision
exit.

Sanitation charges were expected to bring in about
$6 million last year – the ones being raised under the new ordinance. But those
attached expenses, meaning the value of the contract paid to Republic Services,
were almost $7 million alone. Back in 2013
right before the last fee hike kicked in the next year, charges about matched
the contract, and the increase began producing healthy surpluses, hitting $1
million in 2014
as the charges exceeded the contract by $1.5 million.

The problem was the contract value kept increasing
(Republic had the contract, then lost it, then got it back recently) while
charges grew slowly because the city's population – a development its
politicians are loath to admit – hardly grew. By 2020,
the Sanitation Fund had peaked at $6 million and saw deficits from therein on
out, even as sanitation charges continued to outpace contracted expenses.

That's because of a great sleight-of-hand of which
few ratepayers are aware but which the city
has perpetrated for decades: sanitation fees pay not only for picking up
trash, but also for all of its herbicide and mosquito control program, animal
services, street sweeping, and grass cutting. Those cost an estimated nearly
$2.5 million last year, even as the sanitation contract ballooned out and went
into deficit for the first time last year.

But unlike garbage pickup, which is a
fee-for-service directly attached to discrete individual property owners, these
others are functions performed generally for which costs and benefits cannot be
apportioned to individual residents, mimicking those such as providing park
space and amenities (unless
you want to use baseball/softball diamonds and the like). These functions
do generate revenues for specific services, in animal control and pickup fees,
but that's it and these produce a relative pittance at about $100,000.

The remainder, since all in the city benefit from
these and their usage cannot be apportioned, should be paid out of the general
fund from general revenues unattached to specific service provision, such as
from sales and property taxes. They aren't, and a prime reason negating that possibility
is the huge principal and interest payments Bossier City must make every year
for its out-of-control capital outlay spending on needless items such as a
money-losing arena, a parking garage for a property that went into
receivership, a high-tech office building that has produced nothing more than
if it had been left to the private sector, and a duplicative road that cuts a
few minutes off travel times for a select few.

If the city over the past quarter century during
which all of these follies had been committed, led by three councilors in
particular – Montgomery, Democrat Bubba Williams,
and independent Jeff
Darby (with relative newcomer in office only half of this time, Republican Jeff Free, also contributing
to bring to fruition the duplicative road) – had just eschewed these projects gobbling
up $190 million or so, the city would have no government activities debt, saving
in 2024
$17 million of tax collections needed to pay off principal and interest. That
would have been well more than needed to support the $2.5 million cost of the broadly-cast
general activities of herbicide and mosquito control, animal services, street
sweeping, and grass cutting.

Instead, the city continues to apply this hidden
tax onto its ratepayers, leaving it free to blow money on needless capital
projects that do more to help private interests than the public while allowing
the politicians involved to puff out their chests in pride and build
monuments extolling their virtues. Bossier Citians don't need to pay their hard-earned
dollars to stroking a few egos, but that what Montgomery, Williams, Darby,
Free, and their ilk have foisted on a weary public with a sanitation fee increase
that with responsible government easily could have been avoided. 

AbstractSouthern Water has implemented a large capital‐investment programme in order to meet the requirements of the EU Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive. Within Southern Water, the Directive will result in a doubling in the quantity of wastewater sludge to be treated. In order to minimise the amount of sludge to be transported and produce a stabilised sludge which is suitable for recycling to agricultural land, the company's sludge strategy is based on treatment by mesophilic anaerobic digestion.This paper (a) highlights some of the consequences of operating a high‐rate digestion plant, and (b) focuses on areas such as depositions in thickened sludge digester feed lines, the start‐up procedures for high‐rate digesters, foaming, hair and fibre build‐up problems and treatment failure caused by toxicity inhibition. All these problems have been corrected or controlled and have resulted in Southern Water revising and updating its design manuals and standards, to prevent such future difficulties.

This thesis focuses on the injuries of the lumbar spine due to high rate loading, using both cadaveric experiments and numerical modelling. Insurgent warfare has been characterised by the use of improvised explosive devices, often targeting military personnel inside vehicles. Those incidents are associated with spinal injuries of poor clinical outcome. Currently, spinal injury tolerance levels do not exist for the loading seen by blast casualties, and the biomechanics of the lumbar spine are not understood under impact loading. Experimental and numerical models were developed to investigate the response of single segments and bi-segments of the lumbar spine under impact loading conditions. A novel methodology for controlling posture and ensuring axial loading during experiments was developed. A single segment numerical model was developed using the finite element method; the load transmission through the segment and its stress distributions were analysed. A bi-segment numerical model was also developed and three different positions on the sagittal plane were simulated; flexed (10 ͦ), neutral (0 ͦ) and extended (-5 ͦ). Differences between postures were predicted and areas prone to injury were identified. The neutral posture was found to be the most severe for the same loading conditions. Injurious impact tests of bi-segment cadaveric specimens were performed for the aforementioned postures, and the neutral posture was found to sustain injuries associated with the poorest outcome compared to the flexed or extended specimens. The methodologies and technologies developed in this thesis can be used further to look into the injury biomechanics aspects of the lumbar spine and used as a test-bed for assessing current and develop new mitigation strategies. Immediate next steps would be to include the rest of the lumbar spine in the numerical model and then the pelvis so that the loading pathway from the seat through to the spine can be quantified. ; Open Access

From CBO's Current View of the Economy From 2023 to 2025: Compared with its February 2023 projections, CBO's current projections exhibit weaker growth, lower unemployment, and higher interest rates in 2024 and 2025.2 The agency's current projections of inflation are mixed relative to those made in February 2023. Table 1 summarizes: CBO's path for GDP […]

One of the most significant developments in the current
economic scene in Pakistan has been the sharp increase in the rate of
inflation. The annual average rate of increase in the wholesale price
index (WPI) during the first seven months (July-January 1994-95) of the
current fiscal year has been about 19 percent as opposed to 11.3 percent
during the same period last year. A similar increase was also witnessed
in the consumer price index (CPI) which accelerated to 13 percent as
opposed to 11.1 percent during the previous period. Such a sharp
increase in prices in recent months has not only caused alarm in the
academic circles but has equally disturbed the country's chief
executive, the Prime Minister. The recent surge of inflation is a matter
of serious concern for a variety of reasons. First, Pakistan has been a
low-inflation country as it has experienced price stability during the
last three decades. The rate of inflation, as measured by an increase in
the WPI, averaged 2.6 percent during the 1960s. The components of the
WPI, i.e., food, raw materials, manufactures, and fuel and lubricants,
also grew by an average rate ranging from 2.0 to 3.4 percent p.a. during
then 1960s (see Table 1 for relevant statistics). The rate of inflation
crossed the single-digit threshold during the 1970s. The WPI and its
components increased at an annual average rate ranging from 12 to 18
percent. The double-digit inflation during the 1970s has been the result
of two major oil shocks, a massive devaluation of currency, and
devastating floods destroying agricultural crops. Pakistan returned to
the fold of the single-digit inflation during the 1980s. The rate of
inflation remained at the single-digit level during the first three
years of the 1990s with the exception of 1990-91, when the rate of
inflation increased to 11.7 percent as a result of the Gulf War. It is
only during the outgoing fiscal year and in the current year that the
rising inflation is posing a major threat to macroeconomic
stability.