Senate Transportation Committee Chairman John Rafferty, R-Montgomery, released a transportation funding plan on Tuesday. Here are some details of how approximately $2.5 billion would be raised from tax, fee and fine increases and spent once the plan is fully phased in:
FEES
— Imposes $50.50 licensing fee for six years, instead of a $29.50 fee for four years
— Imposes $104 registration fee for two years, instead of a $36 fee annually
Map of Massachusetts (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It was as good a Patriots Day, as good a Marathon day, as any, dry and seasonably warm but not hot like last year. The buzz was great. While the runners climbed Heartbreak Hill, the Red Sox were locked in another white-knuckle duel with the Tampa Bay Rays at Fenway Park. The only thing missing was Lou Reed crooning “Perfect Day” in the background.
The winners and the elite runners had long ago finished, when in the Fens, at shortly after 2 p.m., Mike Napoli kissed a ball off The Green Monster in the bottom of the ninth, allowing Dustin Pedroia to scamper all the way home from first base, giving the Red Sox a walk-off win.
Many of those jubilant Sox fans had walked down through Kenmore Square toward the Back Bay to watch the Marathon.
Some of them had just got to the finish line when the first bomb went off, shortly before 3 p.m.
In an instant, a perfect day had morphed into something viscerally evil.
Read more: http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/04/15/perfect-day-turns-evil/W7KQHq1NWFqukte3VQ14DJ/story.html
Editor’s note: What absolute bullshittery is this BM Flanders!?! Very shady, dude!
POTTSTOWN, PA — If you live in the borough, or the three surrounding townships who use the borough’s sewer system, the future of your sewer bill was under discussion Tuesday morning — but you would not have been allowed to hear that discussion.
Engineers, managers and lawyers from West Pottsgrove, Upper Pottsgrove and Lower Pottsgrove sat facing each other, and representatives of the Pottstown Borough Authority, in a borough hall meeting room Tuesday morning the township’s unhappiness with the way they must pay for their share of costs at the Pottstown Wastewater Treatment Plant.
Those payments have had a direct impact on the bills paid by sewer users in those townships.
A 1947 topographic map of the Reading, Pennsylvania area. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Reading is on course to amass a $35 million cumulative deficit by the end of 2017 even if it raises property taxes by 5 percent a year, controller Christian Zale told City Council on Monday.
The budget likely will be $1 million short this year and $1.4 million short in 2014, but Zale said the city’s own fiscal cliff comes in 2015, when it expects a $10.2 million deficit.
That will be repeated in 2016 with a $10.9 million deficit, and again in 2017 with an $11.4 million deficit, he said.
“Now is the time to address the 2015 cliff, (and) also ensure future decisions do not exacerbate these projected deficits,” he said.
It took more than a year and a half, but Reading entrepreneur Alan Shuman finally got what he wanted: The Abraham Lincoln hotel all to himself.
With settlement completed Tuesday, Shuman’s entity, Lincoln Hotel LP, paid $5.05 million to add the 104-room historic hotel to his downtown real estate portfolio. That figure includes about $2.25 million in real estate and the rest in furnishings, fixtures, equipment, contents and the assumption of debt.
Shuman said he plans a $10 million renovation, of which $300,000 has been spent.
His plans include restoring the hotel and its rooms, adding a pool two-thirds of the size of an Olympic pool and reopening the Abe Saloon.
Map of Pennsylvania highlighting Berks County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The parent company of Reading Hospital, Reading Health System, laid off 210 employees today as part of a cost-cutting plan that also will eliminate an additional 181 jobs through attrition and change the employee retirement package from a defined-benefit pension to a 401(k) plan.
Hospital officials said the cuts are in response to changes in the national health care system, including cuts in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements to hospitals.
Also, fewer patients are getting elective surgeries because the patients themselves have been laid off or experienced reductions in their medical benefits, said Therese Sucher, chief operating officer.
The cuts are in part due to the 2010 Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, which required hospitals to implement electronic health records so all patients and physicians have immediate access to patient information.
Roy's Rants - For Your Information 