The Monkton Conservation Commission announced Thursday that it has won a $150,000 state grant to install at least one, possibly two, culverts under the road so at least some amphibians, reptiles and small mammals can safely pass between uplands southeast of the road and an important swamp northwest of the crossing.

When completed in 2011, the project will be the first wildlife-crossing retrofit of a Vermont highway.

Salamanders are particularly susceptible to becoming roadkill because they winter in upland areas but must reach lowland swamps to spawn in the spring. Often, those two habitats are separated by roads.

My question is … how will the salamanders know to use the culvert?

Itsy, bitsy signs?

Rusk County solved the problem by approving what I refer to as the “Seinfeld Plan.”

The Seinfeld Comprehensive Plan says nothing. It has lots of words, but it says nothing. Pages and and pages of nothing.

Rusk County officials scoured Comprehensive Plans of other jurisdictions looking for language that looked impressive and said nothing. They found it.

Take that State of Wisconsin!

Mission Accomplished.

I opposed the government takeover of GM and Chrysler based on my principles of capitalism.

That government takeover was praised by Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez.

On Thursday Chavez arrested the owner of the last opposition television station in Venezuela.

I opposed ObamaCare based my principles of capitalism.

The passage of that legislation was praised by Cuba’s Fidel Castro.

I have always like the saying, “You can normally tell if a proposition is right by observing the gang that thinks it is wrong.”

Anyway, count me on the opposite side of political spectrum from Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. Always.

We are just a couple of rigged elections away from becoming a third world banana republic and Rahm Emanuel is working on those.

I just love it when the Mayor gets blamed for not removing snow fast enough from the streets.

I remember Chicago Mayor Michael Bilandik losing his primary fight with Jane Byrne over a snowstorm.

So it just tickled me when I read about the problems in Washington.

The competence of Washington officials was again under fire on Wednesday as heavy snow shut the US capital for a third business day, with normal services not expected to resume until at least next week.

Roads, many still covered after the bad weekend weather, were blanketed by another several inches of snow on Wednesday morning as uncleared slush began to freeze over.

Freezing slush… YES!

“Maintaining and improving this essential service should have been a higher priority for the mayor and the city council than building a billion dollar baseball stadium,” said Gigi Ransom, an advisory neighborhood commissioner in Washington, referring to a controversial sports complex built in 2008.

Irrelevant arguments… YES!

Karyn Leblanc of Washington’s department of transportation said the city had done a “fantastic” job keeping the fleet running, given the historic snowfall.

Verbal snow-job … YES!

Adrian Fenty, Washington’s mayor, who has come under criticism despite efforts to update the city’s snow removal practices, also defended the district government’s actions, saying it had long used up the $6.2m earmarked for snow removal this season and would apply for federal emergency funds.

Federal emergency funds to remove snow … NO!

What’s wrong with the Speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly “dating” a lobbyist?

The Oshkosh Northwestern tells us what’s wrong …

“The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt.  People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.”

Cicero   – 55 BC

You know … police, fire, streets, parks, water. The basics. They screw up those issues enough already.

Then there is Berkeley.

The Berkeley, Calif., City Council has voted 8 – 1 to mail coat hangers to 20 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives who voted for the Stupak-Pitts pro-life amendment to the health care reform proposal.  The hangers are meant to symbolize “back-alley” abortions. 
 
Councilman Gordon Wozniak was the one dissenting vote. He told Family News in Focus that he is pro-choice, but he thinks the hangers are extreme. 
 
“We didn’t really ask the citizens whether they thought this was a good idea or an appropriate gesture,” he said.

Intergovernmental Relations class … what do you think?

Mind their own business … or not?

Dan Thompson, Executive Director of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities tells us …

Starting in 2010, a city or village that wants to operate its police department or its fire department more efficiently and save tax dollars will first need to get permission from the Wisconsin Department of Revenue (DOR).

I know it sounds crazy, but I am not making this up. The new requirement is called “maintenance of effort for emergency services.” It appears in Section 79.07 (3) of the Wisconsin statutes. Here is the language:

A county or municipality may decrease the amount it spends for emergency services below its 2009 amount, with the Department of Revenue’s approval, if the decrease in expenditures is a result of operating more efficiently, as determined by the department.

You’re thinking this can’t be true, right?

The State Department of Revenue having control over the cost of local police and fire protection?

How did this happen?

The politics of the new law, however, is perfectly clear. The police officers union and the firefighters union lobbied hard to persuade Gov. Doyle and legislative leaders to include “maintenance of effort for emergency services” in the 2009-11 state budget, signed into law on June 29 as Act 28.

The union goal is to prevent city councils and village boards from reducing the number of police officers and firefighters on the municipal payroll.

Any city council or village board that requests an “efficiency waiver” from DOR should expect a vigorous challenge from the police union and the firefighters union.

I’m still trying to get my arms around this.

The State Department of Revenue having veto power on how much MUST be spent by local government on police and fire protection.

By the time class discusses this maybe we’ll find out this is just a bad nightmare, but I doubt it.

Comments Anyone?

This is a discussion for the Intergovernmental Relations Class. 

The City of Kinston, NC voted last year in a referendum to go the way of non-partisan elections. They no longer want party labels in their local elections.  However, due to a clause in the Voters Right Act of 1965 Kinston needs federal approval before making any changes to their local elections. They were denied by the Justice Department of making this change.  Why?

The Justice Department’s ruling, which affects races for City Council and mayor, went so far as to say partisan elections are needed so that black voters can elect their “candidates of choice” – identified by the department as those who are Democrats and almost exclusively black.

The department ruled that white voters in Kinston will vote for blacks only if they are Democrats and that therefore the city cannot get rid of party affiliations for local elections because that would violate black voters’ right to elect the candidates they want.

So, we have an unelected bureaucrat in Washington, DC overturning a valid local referendum for the above stated reasons.  (Full background article here.) If I go any further in my description of this issue I am certain to be labeled a racist by someone.

 Comments are always welcome prior to class.

You will notice on the right sidebar, a box which will take you to my new ebook  WHY YOUR CITY COUNCIL MAKES DUMB DECISIONS … AND WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT. It’s free! There is no reason not for anyone to download and read it. Pass it on to friends and family. Post a link on your website or blog.

If prior to reading this ebook you wish to nominate me for the Nobel Prize for Literature you can find that nomination procedure here. 

After reading,  any and all comments would be appreciated.