Reno leaders accident backbone over new parking meters

When Curb Arrangement was broke in December 2010 to install agenda parking kiosks in city-limits Reno, aggregation admiral promised to awning the aberration if parking revenues anytime fell substantially.

Nearly two years afterwards — afterwards a clutter by the aggregation to basis out the glitches abaft its adulterated kiosks — Reno City-limits Board is apprehensive if the aggregation will accumulate its affiance to accord the city’s absent parking revenue.

A Reno Gazette-Journal assay of city-limits parking abstracts beforehand this ages begin parking acquirement had beneath by 31 percent a year afterwards Curb Arrangement started installing the kiosks. That’s amounted to a $332,000 loss. Meanwhile, the bulk of parking tickets absolved because of adulterated parking kiosks rose to added than 530, up from 5 the antecedent year.

On Wednesday, City-limits Board associates told the aggregation their backbone is active thin.

A apprehension was beatific to Curb Arrangement in May ambitious the arrangement be absolutely operational by this Friday. Instead, the Reno-based aggregation is acquisitive to sit down with city-limits agents and bang out a new acceding that would let them accomplishment the activity by Dec. 31.

Those negotiations will yield abode next ages amid Curb Arrangement and the city-limits of Reno.

Besides the bulk of money owed to the city, those talks will aswell abode a altercation over commercial on the kiosks.

The city-limits barred the aggregation from commercial on the kiosks because of several outstanding acknowledged challenges to Reno’s advance laws.

Company admiral said Wednesday the abridgement of commercial has amount them about $360,000. CEO Kane Dutt said beforehand this ages the accident was afterpiece to $500,000.

Depending on how the negotiations play out over the next brace weeks, the City-limits Board will charge to adjudge whether or not to extend Curb System’s arrangement until Dec. 31 or cut its losses and attending for addition aggregation to install a parking arrangement in Reno.

Terry Oliver, an broker and lath affiliate with Curb System, said about $77,000 account of plan charcoal to be done on the Reno parking system.

“We will alpha with parking tickets whereby motorists will now be appropriate to pay electronically. This success of this arrangement will be replicated in added departments,” said Duba. Adding that automation of casework at the board is their capital ambition and appear abortion to aggregate acquirement has been abnormally impacting supply of services.

“The board will for already stop the break-in of assets area alone about 40% of the manually calm banknote ability the board coffers. “This arrangement will aswell stop the ability and aggravation abnormally in parking area my arrant admiral accept been arena adumbrate and seek with motorists if they charge to pay and appear to added things.

The proposed e-payment is able of arresting date, anecdotic and invoicing. One is aswell be able to get an balance via the abbreviate bulletin casework (sms), cyberbanking transaction and acceptance while the board can accommodate its accounts and acquiescence abatement at the blow of a button.

“The abeyant is top already we go cyberbanking and we ambition billions. We intend to brainwash the accessible on how they can use the services. He added that afterwards the pilot service, the activity will be formed out to allow city-limits association pay for added casework like the individual business permits, acreage rates, bloom certificates and added invoiced casework offered by the council.

Arlington residents defend right to park on street

Swan Place residents, who have been allowed to park overnight and during the day on their street since 1995, might be prohibited from doing so in a few months.

“Resident parking only” signs on the street were briefly replaced with “one-hour parking” signs on Swan Place after a parking subcommittee recommended ceasing to issue $10/year overnight and daytime parking permits to residents of the neighborhood, located in the town’s center off Pleasant Street. First granted 17 years ago for a 180-day trial period, the permits were reissued every year since then until the town discovered the oversight this year.

At their meeting Monday, selectmen said the signs were changed prematurely and sent the matter back to the parking subcommittee for more study. “Resident parking only” signs have gone back up.

If selectmen opt to eliminate the Swan Place permits, enforcement of one-hour parking would begin Jan. 1 and residents would have to park in the nearby municipal lot or apply for $200/year overnight parking passes, available to those who can prove they have no off-street parking or other parking options, or who can demonstrate hardship.

Monday, Richard Langone, of 12 Swan Place, raised his voice as he told selectmen they had ruined his street and said enforcing one-hour parking there was “ridiculous.” He has a one-car driveway but rents rooms to people with cars, he said, and others have no driveway.

“We have no driveways and your answer is to stick us with one-hour parking and overnight parking. Where are we supposed to park?” Langone asked. “I have to park a block down the street to stay at my own house?”

Langone and others said they bought their homes with the understanding there was a residential parking system and their property values would drop if the system were taken away.

However, Selectman Diane Mahon said the board can’t be responsible for what realtors lead buyers to believe, and stressed the need to be fair.

“Hundreds and thousands of people pay to park in the municipal parking lot during the day and night and everyone pays the same,” Mahon said.

But Swan Place resident Roberta Lasnik pointed out the houses on Swan Place were built before driveways were common and shouldn’t be held to the same rules as modern houses.

“Your plan is not a plan for this neighborhood. Every neighborhood is different and you have to be wise enough to be able to settle that out,” Lasnik said. “Not everyone fits in the same square or round hole.”

The Brawl Over Fair Barter Coffee

On May 20, the country’s oldest “fair trade” coffee company, Equal Exchange, purchased a full-page blush advertisement in the Burlington Free Press. It was an accessible letter to the CEO of the Vermont-based Green Mountain Coffee company, the world’s better client of fair trade–certified coffee. “We ambition to congratulate you for your accomplished deeds,” Equal Exchange wrote, “but now actively appeal that you abjure your abutment for the acceptance bureau Fair Barter USA…in ablaze of its unilateral accommodation to change the rules of fair trade.”

Equal Exchange’s advertisement drew accessible absorption to an advance alienation in the apple of fair barter coffee. The accepted feud, which has been acquisition beef for years, erupted in September, if Fair Barter USA—the US associate of Fairtrade International, which governs the all-around fair barter arrangement and sets labeling and assembly standards from its home abject in Bonn, Germany—announced its accommodation to end its amalgamation with the ancestor body.

In fair barter circles, this was a high-level divorce, and it reverberated widely. FTUSA, which is based in Oakland, aswell declared that it would accredit coffee produced on plantations and by absolute smallholder farmers—a cogent abandonment from a arrangement that restricts accreditation to coffee developed on democratically run, farmer-owned cooperatives, of which there are 360, mostly in Latin America.

FTUSA’s admiral and CEO, Paul Rice, is edgeless about his affidavit for departure the all-embracing system. In a May account with the blogger Julie Fahnestock, Rice depicted the movement as authoritarian and adverse to innovation. “If fair barter continues to [exclude] the atomic of poor,” Rice said, “it’s absolutely on moral attenuate ice.” He went on to say: “Don’t we wish to adjust fair trade? Don’t we wish fair barter to be added than a white, common movement?” As for innovation, Rice declared, “Everyone is innovating. Attending at Apple, everyone…. It baffles me that somehow addition in our movement is unacceptable.”

Fair barter leaders are blame back. In a bulletin acquaint on the Coffeelands blog, which is hosted by Michael Sheridan of Catholic Relief Services, Jonathan Rosenthal, a co-founder of Equal Exchange, wrote: “If you accept to attending at who is authoritative this accommodation to radically change the amiss apparatus alleged fair trade, you ability accept that it is about absolutely apprenticed by able-bodied intentioned white association in the US with lots of money and big dreams.” He concluded, “This feels like a move appropriate out of the colonial playbook.”

Fair barter coffee has been a admired experiment, one that has brought accurate allowances to hundreds of bags of farmers. But it rests aloft a brittle foundation, and the accumulated embrace of the abstraction could disengage decades of plan by activists, consumers and farmers: democratically run, farmer-owned cooperatives may be clumsy to attempt with corporate-sponsored plantations. “The fair barter archetypal provided some aegis from the diff altitude of the accessible market,” says Nicki Lisa Cole, a sociologist at Pomona College who has advised fair trade. Welcoming all-embracing plantations into the archetypal “re-creates the ambiguous altitude for baby producers that spurred conception of the archetypal in the aboriginal place.”

No official opening date for Christiana Bypass

To the untrained eye, the new Christiana bypass looks the finished product, complete with traffic lights at both ends and a daily flow of motorists and pedestrians alike.

However, there has been no word as to when the controversial billion-dollar road, described by some as a “development road” and by others as a “waste” of taxpayers’ money, will be formally opened.

A spokesman for the Chinese construction giant, China Harbour, confirmed last week that “the company that I represent has discharged their responsibilities” and that the road was now in the hands of the National Works Agency (NWA) which oversees Jamaica’s main road network.

Colin Morrison, NWA senior communications officer, told Jamaica Observer Central that the one-kilometre road was “substantially completed on April 17. It is now going through a maintenance defects liability period and no date has been set for an official opening at this time”.

He said the NWA was involved in a process of continuous “checks and double-checks to make sure all’s well with the road” for contractors could be held responsible and be made to correct defects discovered in the initial one-year period after the completion of construction.

When contacted on Saturday, Member of Parliament for North East Manchester Audley Shaw conceded that the formal road opening should await certification from the NWA to ensure that the road “is ready and everything is in place”.

However, he expressed anxiety for a time frame for the opening. Twice, Shaw said, he wrote to Transport and Works Minister Dr Omar Davies on the matter but has received no response.

Against that backdrop, Shaw said: “I am detecting a reluctance on the part of the minister to have a formal opening of the road.”

Efforts to reach Davies for a comment prior to going to press failed.

Shaw said that once he was assured the NWA had passed the road, he would be prepared to organise an official opening should the Government decline to participate. “As member of parliament I have that right,” he said.

In the build-up to last December’s parliamentary elections, People’s National Party spokesmen, including Davies, objected strongly to the Christiana bypass, saying the money could have been better spent.

Shaw, who was minister of finance in the Jamaica Labour Party Government when the road was designed and construction started as part of the Jamaica Development Infrastructure Programme, led the way in insisting it would trigger development in and around Christiana and northern Manchester, as well as south Trelawny.

On Saturday, Shaw voiced concern that an unpaved access road adjacent to an abattoir which was closed last year to facilitate construction of the road would prevent reopening of the meat facility because of a dust nuisance.

“Whether it’s China Harbour or the NWA, somebody needs to pave that road,” the MP said.

Shaw’s political opponent in North East Manchester, businessman Val Wint, who represented the PNP in the December elections, sees a need for additional pedestrian crossings, “if not overpasses”, to facilitate schoolchildren in particular. “As the situation now stands, we have schoolchildren just running across the road,” he said.

There are also lingering concerns from landowners who have not yet been paid for property sold to the Government to facilitate the bypass. But Shaw said that payment delays were largely the result of “land papers not in order”.

Olympic sprinter Jeff Demps

Rookie Jeff Demps fabricated his much-anticipated admission at Patriots convenance Wednesday, as New England and Tampa Bay captivated the aboriginal of two collective practices afore their exhibition bold Friday night.

The above Florida Gator, cutting No. 42, did not yield allotment in the pre-draft action this year, opting to focus on clue and the adventitious to run in the London Olympics.

Despite finishing seventh at the US trials in the 100 meters, Demps, the 2010 NCAA 100-meter best and a three-time NCAA calm 60-meter titlist, was allotment of the aggregation and was able to run for the United States.

He was the advance leg on the -4 x 100 aggregation in the basic round, abutting Darvis Patton, Trell Kimmons, and Justin Gatlin to run an American-record time of 37.38 seconds. A day later, Kimmons, Gatlin, Tyson Gay, and Ryan Bailey accomplished additional to Jamaica in the final, acceptable the argent badge in addition American-record time.

With the Olympics over and his badge in his Gainesville, Fla., house, Demps angry his absorption aback to football. He chose to assurance with New England over several added teams, including Tampa Bay and the Jets.

Still asthmatic from putting in added time active routes and communicable passes with Brian Hoyer and a affiliate of the apprenticeship staff, Demps told reporters that the convenance apparent the aboriginal time he’d affected a football aback Florida’s endure bold of endure season, in the Gator Bowl Jan. 2.

If you’re befitting track, that’s a amount of 232 days.

Both Demps and active backs drillmaster Ivan Fears said accepting aback into football appearance will be one of the better challenges for the 22-year-old.

“That’s apparently traveling to be the toughest part, just accepting aback into that football appearance and acquirements the plays,” Demps said.

The Gators’ abhorrent coordinator endure abatement was above Patriots coordinator Charlie Weis, so Demps does accept some acquaintance with the New England offense.

“Some of the plays I recognize, and some of them I don’t,’’ he said. “Being with Charlie, it absolutely helped me out, advancing in and alive some of the run plays, some of the canyon plays.”

He reportedly absent 15 pounds during training for the Olympics. On Wednesday, Demps said he is at 183 pounds, 5 pounds beneath his accepted arena weight; his adventures on the Florida website for his chief year lists the 5-foot-7-inch Demps’s weight as 191.

Fears believes accepting into football appearance won’t be as difficult for Demps as it would be for a lineman.

“A accomplishment guy can play a lot faster than big guys can,” Fears said. “For him, it’s mostly just accepting his anxiety up beneath him, accepting a little wind aback in his lungs, accepting acclimated to communicable the ball.

“I’m abiding it won’t yield that continued for a guy like him. He’s such a abundant athlete, just based on what I’ve apparent on film.”

With training camps now bankrupt to the public, media are aswell belted on how continued they can watch practice; on Wednesday, it was 30 minutes. In that time, reporters saw Demps plan with the alpha returners, receivers, backs, and bound ends.

It wasn’t flawless; a bouncing alpha went through his easily as he angled to retrieve it, and the aboriginal canyon befuddled his way in warm-ups aswell went through his hands.

Fears did acquisition positives, however.

“He did a accomplished job, I threw him in the one-on-ones and assault auto and all that stuff; he’s courageous,” said Fears, abacus that Demps is not a anemic guy admitting his slight size.

Demps had no issues with the one-on-ones, but acclaimed that “the guys are a lot bigger.” Having run calm clue and alfresco clue his aboriginal three years at Florida (he did not run bounce clue as a senior), Demps said he is acclimated to transitioning amid the sports, and alleged himself “a football amateur first.”

While Patriots admirers are aflame about Demps’s arrival, and Fears’s aboriginal consequence of him as a adolescent man is positive, he’ll accept to acquire aggregate with his new drillmaster — argent badge or not.

“I’m not traveling to go overboard. What he’s done has been absolutely amazing and a abundant story, but out here, I ain’t giving him nothing!” said Fears (mostly serious). “He’s traveling to acquire aggregate he gets from us.

“No amount how I feel about him, unless he does it on the field, he’s not accepting aggregate else.”

Windows 8 RTM free for 90 days

Microsoft has released a version of Windows 8 that developers and other IT pros can use free of charge for 90 days in order to test the new OS, which represents the most radical redesign of Windows since Windows 95.

The Windows 8 Enterprise Edition 90-day evaluation program makes the OS available as an ISO image in 32-bit or 64-bit editions. In addition to English, it’s available in Chinese, German, Japanese, Korean, and several other languages.

Developers can access the software through the Windows Dev Center developer downloads page. “This is intended for developers building Windows 8 apps and IT professionals interested in trying Windows 8 Enterprise on behalf of their organization,” Microsoft states.

Trial versions of Windows 8 Enterprise are also available through MSDN subscriptions, the Microsoft Partner Network, TechNet professional subscriptions, and Microsoft’s Volume Licensing and Software Assurance programs. The product must be activated online within 10 days of installing.

The evaluation edition expires in 90 days and cannot be upgraded to the full version. It has to be uninstalled before systems can be upgraded. “Consider running the evaluation edition in a virtual environment or installing on a separate hard drive or partition,” Microsoft says. “This will allow you to upgrade your original Windows installation to Windows 8.”

Microsoft said it will not provide technical support for the evaluation edition. “Back up your files and settings before installing this evaluation and again prior to the 90-day expiration,” the company cautioned.

Windows 8 will be available to the public on Oct. 26, with a range of systems expected to be on sale from vendors like Lenovo, Asus, and Dell. Microsoft’s own Surface tablet will also hit store shelves on that date.

Windows 8 will come in two main editions. One for x86-based desktops, laptops, and tablets, and another, Windows RT, that’s built mainly to run on tablets powered by mobile-friendly ARM chips. With Windows RT, Microsoft hopes to finally become a player in the media tablet market, where it significantly trails Apple and Google Android.

Not all of Microsoft’s Windows hardware partners have bought into Windows RT, however. Notable exceptions include Hewlett-Packard and Acer. HP plans to build tablets that run Windows 8 on Intel Atom chips. Acer, for its part, has criticized Microsoft for its decision to build Surface, which effectively puts it into competition with its OEMs.

PriscoDigital to Show Real-World Wide

PriscoDigital LLC announced today that they will be conducting continuous end-to-end workflow demonstrations on various rigid media, utilizing the new Kongsberg XN Automatic Cutting System from Esko. This will be the first time the XN system will be demonstrated at a major trade show in North America. In addition, a flexible media workflow ideally suited for commercial printers will also be running, LIVE at Graph Expo 2012.

According to Eric Gutwillig, VP of Marketing, “we are striving to demonstrate that integrating wide format inkjet technologies within a traditional offset printing manufacturing environment can be easy and seamless. PriscoDigital offers turn-key workflow solutions that allow commercial and packaging printers to capture new business opportunities from within their existing customer base. Inkjet systems can cost-effectively produce diverse applications such as short-run packaging, product mock-ups, point-of-purchase displays or promotional items. Since we are the exclusive channel partner of HP Scitex for the large industrial systems within the commercial offset segment, we are able to offer our customers leading-edge wide format technologies.”

PriscoDigital is excited to demonstrate the wide range of products that commercial and packaging printers can produce utilizing state-of-the-art high speed production equipment and optimized software from HP Scitex, Caldera and EskoArtwork. For the demo, prepared files are processed through EskoArtwork i-cut suite software, ripped though the Caldera RIP, where color management also takes place and then printed utilizing the HP Scitex FB700. Printed images comprised of intricate shapes will be cut from the media utilizing Esko’s Kongsberg XN automated cutting system. The XN processes the image files through i-cut Vision Pro software which calculates the cutting position information that drives the cutting heads.

For flexible media applications, PriscoDigital will demonstrate The HP Designjet L28500 Latex Inkjet system. This economical system proves that versatile eco-friendly inkjet printing is within easy reach of every commercial printer. Keep profitable business in-house. A company can easily integrate the L28500 into their existing workflow and produce the outdoor and indoor banners, point-of-purchase signage and other displays their customers are asking for. A commercial printer can even expand their product portfolio to offer customers other printed products never dreamed of before.

The HP Scitex FB700 is a hybrid UV six-color wide format inkjet printing system capable of handling a wide variety of rigid or flexible media up to 98.4” (250 cm) wide. The printer offers high productivity and incredible image quality, with a resolution up to 1200 x 600 dpi and a production speed up to 861 ft 2/hour. This extremely economical system has a white ink option, can do double-sided prints, fullbleeds and images with variable gloss levels which will allow you to meet almost any customer demand.

The Kongsberg XN from EskoArtwork is a flat bed automated cutting and routing system that combines productivity with versatility and precise registration. The XN comes standard with multiple cutting and routing tools specifically designed to produce signs, displays and short-run packaging. This gives you the combination you need to finish any media up to 69” x 135” from papers, styrene, PVC and foam boards to the most demanding applications such as acrylics and environmental boards. i-cut Suite dramatically increases productivity by automating and standardizing preflight, editing and layout of graphic files

Caldera GrandRIP+ software is a fast, flexible and powerful production workflow dedicated to wide and super-wide format print and print-to-cut applications. The GrandRIP+ software platform incorporates the latest developments in color management, spot color support, screening techniques and unique finishing-oriented features such as tiling, nesting, and eyelet positioning, stitching and folding marks. The GrandRIP+ is an excellent companion to our HP Scitex wide format line.

The HP Designjet L28500 is a wide format inkjet printing system utilizing HP’s revolutionary Latex ink technology. Products for both indoor and outdoor applications may be produced on a single device with minimal environmental impact. The printer will handle a wide range of flexible paper, plastic and fabric media up to 104” in width.

Career and Apartment, Finally in Sync

FOR a few years, Carlo Dellaverson was added than blessed active with accompany in aggregate apartments. Afterwards his graduation from the University of Richmond, he lived in a alternation of “three frat-pad apartments with three guys,” he said. “We admired active in the city. Everyone was archetypal rent-poor but accepting a abundant time.”

About three years ago, however, Mr. Dellaverson started a job at NBC News. He had aberrant hours, and “if there was breaking account I would accept to be there forever,” he said. The acquaintance bearings became impractical. “They would be sitting about bubbler beers and alert to music and I was like, I gotta get up in three hours.”

Mr. Dellaverson, now 28, bare his own place. So he busy a flat in a high-rise on far West 42nd Street. He admired active alone. “I could plan a 20-hour day and appear home and sit on a couch absolutely decompressing afterwards annoying about somebody else’s blend or somebody else’s moods,” he said.

But his rent, in the low $2,000s, captivated abundant of his income. He was abashed to acquisition himself with acclaim agenda debt and, “because I had so little disposable income, I couldn’t accomplish a cavity in it.”

So if his charter expired, he confused aback home to his adolescence bedchamber in the Westchester suburbs, absolute to save as abundant as accessible and buy a abode of his own while absolute acreage prices were still almost low.

Days afterwards his acknowledgment to the nest, he was offered a adventitious to plan the brief shift. The timing was perfect. By active at home, “I was basically demography a write-down on my amusing activity anyway,” he said. So he anticipation he ability as able-bodied plan nights and accretion some new job experience.

Living at home had its perks. “My parents are amazing,” Mr. Dellaverson said. “They didn’t allegation me hire and my mom would do the laundry and baker me dinner.” A car was available. “All of the things that fabricated active in New York City-limits so annoying, I didn’t accept to accord with,” he said.

He grew to acknowledge abounding aspects of the night shift, too, abnormally things he could avoid: meetings, distractions, cafeteria lines. His capital amount was alternation fare.

He did not, however, wish to plan brief hours indefinitely. On weekends, he would accumulate a daytime schedule, generally abolition on a friend’s couch. And he watched his accompany “getting places or accepting girlfriends and accepting austere amusing lives,” he said. He wasn’t. So endure year, he began traveling to accessible houses, aiming to acquisition a one-bedroom Manhattan address with some sunlight. His top amount was $440,000, with a account aliment of $900, or thereabouts.

At an accessible abode in Carnegie Hill, he met Jay Glazer of Warburg Realty, whom he enlisted as his agent. “Considering that Carlo was adjustable about location,” Mr. Glazer said, “at his amount point there was consistently a lot to see.”

Mr. Dellaverson aswell spent hours on the Buyfolio.com Web site, area he scanned the listings of the abounding one-bedrooms he was e-mailed anniversary day, allocation through those he capital to visit. For any abode with absolute potential, his ancestor insisted that he go to the basement to analysis the building’s boiler and infrastructure.

Mr. Dellaverson was absorbed in a one-bedroom in a prewar address architecture in Kips Bay, allurement $485,000 with aliment of a little added than $1,000.

He didn’t adulation the neighborhood, blubbery with dabbling taxicabs, but it was aural walking ambit of work, “the a lot of underrated advantage there is,” he said. The agent was afraid to negotiate, however. That one is now in arrangement for the allurement price.

Soon Mr. Dellaverson fell for a brilliant one-bedroom with abundant ablaze and even a washer-dryer in the kitchen. That one, on West 104th Street, was listed at $485,000, with aliment in the mid-$800s. He didn’t apperception its one odd feature: a concealed opening, rather than a door, amid the bedchamber and the active room.

But the parties couldn’t accommodated on a price. It after awash for $475,000.

Too abounding places were aphotic or on blatant streets. “There was consistently one big problem,” Mr. Dellaverson said. Sellers generally were couples with a babyish who were affective to Brooklyn. He saw a lot of cribs.

“The one-bedrooms I could allow were appealing cruddy,” he said. He had eschewed studios, assertive they would be harder to resell. But as he grew balked with the hunt, he afflicted his mind.

Libraries to try affairs e-books directly

At a contempo chargeless e-reader training affair at the San Francisco Accessible Library, 72-year-old Jane Marquis searched the library’s website after success for an e-book of “Gone Girl,” a abstruseness atypical that has topped the acknowledged fiction lists this summer.

“I’m abiding it’ll be on there anon because it’s one of the accepted ones,” Marquis said.

But accepted appeal isn’t chargeless which e-books San Francisco or libraries beyond the nation can action their patrons. With a lot of of the bigger publishers abnegation to advertise e-books to vendors that act as middlemen amid publishers and libraries, San Francisco and added California libraries are advancing to try something new in their efforts to aggrandize their agenda collections – affairs e-books anon from abate publishers.

Starting this fall, the 220-member library accommodating Califa Library Group will activate rolling out a $325,000 activity with the ambition of affairs from the abate publishing companies bags of e-books that the libraries will own forever. San Francisco and a lot of added libraries charter their accumulating through OverDrive, a agenda administration company.

“With the vendors, their action is to accomplish money, so we’re lining their pockets and we accept no adaptability or ownership,” said Heather Teysko, administrator of development and addition at Califa.

Teysko said about 50 publishers, mostly independent, accept apparent absorption so far. The activity will be piloted in the Contra Costa County Library arrangement aboriginal and should be implemented in San Francisco by February or March, she said.

Currently, e-books accomplish up about 4 percent of the absolute accumulating at the San Francisco Accessible Library, but that amount is acceleration anniversary year, said library Collections and Technical Casework Chief Laura Lent. But from July 2010 to July 2011, concrete apportionment at the library alone for the aboriginal time in 13 years, from 10.8 actor to 10.7 million. Those numbers rebounded hardly endure year, but the trend is clear: Book is no best the alone bold in town.

“We’re spending about 20 percent of our collections account on all kinds of e-resources,” Lent said. “I anticipate both e-books and book are traveling to coexist for as far into the approaching as we can imagine.” San Francisco has a collections account of $1.85 million, up from $1.4 actor endure year.

San Francisco is aswell introducing a new bell-ringer in October to attempt with OverDrive. Baker & Taylor, the arch supplier of book books to libraries, will add 6,000 e-books to the library’s collection, specializing in blush agreeable and e-books for the visually impaired.

Nearly bisected of e-book readers surveyed by the Pew Research Center this year did not apperceive whether their library offered e-books, and neither did 58 percent of all library cardholders. Marquis was in the aphotic until a acquaintance let her apperceive afresh that she could use her home computer to go assimilate the library’s website and borrow e-books for chargeless on the Kindle she accustomed as a allowance from her granddaughter two years ago. Having spent hundreds of dollars through Amazon to acquirement 94 e-books for her device, she said she could use a spending break.

The city-limits abutting addition 70 library systems in June in a letter ambitious bigger agenda casework for their patrons. Simon & Schuster and Macmillan action about none of their e-books to libraries, while Hachette Book Group and Penguin Group (USA) accomplish alone aback titles available.

“Libraries accept a albatross to action for the accessible and ensure that users accept the aforementioned open, simple and chargeless admission to e-books that they accept appear to await on with concrete books,” said the letter.

For City-limits Librarian Luis Herrera, the a lot of important agency in the attempt amid libraries and publishers is accouterment admission to advice to those who can’t allow to buy e-books on their own. He cited the Pew analysis that begin that even a part of library e-book borrowers, 41 percent still paid for their a lot of contempo e-book. He believes that’s affirmation that publishers can advice libraries accomplish their borough duties of allegorical the masses and still about-face a profit.

Nursing home patients rebuild lives through gardening

Nursing homes can invoke a mental picture of glassy-eyed residents walking up and down hallways or sitting, day after day, in the same chair or bed staring out windows or at blaring televisions.

Arroyo Grande Care Center, 1212 Farroll Ave., is changing all that with service-based therapy programs.

Patients at this skilled nursing home rebuild their lives by working on a fully-functioning farm to benefit local low-income seniors or by gathering, sorting and distributing school supplies and clothing for teenage students in need.

“One of the challenges we have in nursing homes and that we’re just starting to realize is that, no matter how good we are, no matter how passionate, how clinically excellent we are, it puts them in the position to just receive care, to thank us for that care. I think that’s the core of rampant depression in nursing homes. The core of the problem is that people still need to be needed,” said Matthew Lysobey, administrator of Arroyo Grande Care Center.

In November, maintenance staff broke ground on “The Farm,” a completely wheelchair-accessible, 1-acre produce and poultry garden.

In any given week, two-thirds of the home’s 90 patients can be found tending to raised plant beds, 26 dwarf fruit trees, a chicken coop and a 48-foot greenhouse. It was patients who planted the seeds, maintained the seedlings in the greenhouse and transplanted them to the garden. They toil daily on regular garden chores including watering, weeding, pruning and harvesting.

“The fact that we’re providing wonderful care doesn’t give them a reason to get out of bed in the morning, but  knowing that staff is not going to tend to the plants or the animals, that this food they produce goes to low-income seniors, that they’re needed, that’s what gives them a reason to get up,” Lysobey said.

Each week, gardeners harvest a crop that could include carrots, tomatoes, cabbage, potatoes and more, then deliver them to a free farmers market at nearby Grandmother’s Mobile Home Park. Low-income seniors there have their pick of the crop.

“For a lot of our patients, it’s the first time in years that someone has looked them in the eye and thanked them,” Lysobey said.

Rehabilitation Coordinator   Regina Beck said the garden provides a dynamic venue for physical therapy more closely related to real-life situations. Pathways, stairs, gravel, grass and other uneven surfaces add an element to physical therapy that smooth hallways cannot.

“Sometimes the patients get bored with our regular exercise programs and walking the halls. In the farm, we’re able to do the same exercises in a functional manner,” Beck said.

They practice dynamic standing while watering the garden beds, dynamic gate patterns while walking the uneven footing and a variety of other therapy motions while pulling weeds or harvesting plants.

“In this area especially, we have a lot of former farmers or people who spent most of their lives outside. Being inside all of the time is really tough for them, so this program provides activity that they can relate to, that they enjoy,” Beck said.

While Arroyo Grande Care Center focuses on their school-related and produce projects, Lysobey said it’s not the end product that matters but the sense of fulfillment patients get from the feeling of being needed.

“It’s not about the soap you make or the plants you grow or the homeless or low-income people you serve. We have countless nonprofits across this country doing good work. There’s a nursing home in every community full of people who want to help, who want to be needed, who want to have meaning and purpose in their lives. They’re waiting to be asked,” Lysobey said.

The work doesn’t go quickly, but speed isn’t the point of these types of programs.

“It might take one patient in a wheelchair with certain limitations half an hour to pick a pound of beans, but they feel good when they can go to farmers market and tell people that they grew these beans, they picked these beans,” Lysobey said.

The garden has made all the difference in the world to patients like Velma Stricker. The nonagenarian spends as many of her waking hours as possible in the garden and maintains an ongoing request that her bed be moved to the greenhouse so she never has to leave the garden.

“Velma was an avid gardener. She told me, ‘If I don’t have a garden to work in, I might as well lay here in bed.’ She promised that if we built it, she’d be out there every day. She’s been true to her word. She’s a dynamo out there. It’s nice to see her back and doing the things she loves,” Lysobey said.

Many of the residents have found their way to the garden of their own accord, but for some deeply despairing about their role as seniors, it took a little bit of convincing. One patient hadn’t left her room for years despite the urging of her family and staff. When she learned that she could help others by working on the farm, she stepped to. Those suffering severe dementia may not be aware of the garden, but when staff members put a garden hose in their hands, they know exactly what to do.

“Hours later, they don’t remember the work that they did. But that feeling in their chest that they’re doing something important stays. It’s not the memory of the task but that emotional connection to helping their community that they feel and express hours later,” Lysobey said. “It doesn’t have to be a farm. It can be anything as long as people are serving and being needed.”