“What employer does not use some sort of time clocking system, especially one that employs as many people as Vigo County does?” said Feeney. According to the County HR Department, the County employs some 700 people. And according to published reports, those employees are keeping track of vacation days, sick days, and other comp time on their own.

The State of Indiana recently “recommended” the current commissioners perform a self audit regarding employee hours. The commissioners had hired an outside firm to “study the issue” for seven to nine months, but County Council put the brakes to the study yesterday, at least temporarily until the commissioners can nail down the cost figures more accurately and properly fit the study into a council-approved budget. This could delay implementation of a time clocking system from January 2013 to sometime in 2014.

Feeney says that a software-based solution, like TimeForce by U.S. developer Qqest already in place at the Vigo County Sheriff’s Department, or a similar solution coded by a firm here in Indiana, could be implemented immediately. “There are payroll system integration issues to consider, regardless of vendor, that can’t be tackled until a solution is decided upon and put in place so that the appropriate people can get to work on it. No private business I can think of would sit on the issue of whether or not they were over- or under-compensating employees for two more years when a fix is immediately available.”

Software time clocking solutions offer the County flexibility. Employees could variously clock in from their office computer, their smart phone, or a traditional hardware device mounted at the work site depending on the needs of the department. The information feeds into a database, on which the County could perform additional analysis like job costing beyond just simple payroll. And the overall cost would be lower than what’s currently being proposed. “The current commissioners have proposed $50,000 to the council like it’s a one-time cost and then the system will become perpetual and not cost anything. Hardware or software, there are on-going maintenance fees. Payroll systems change, on average, every decade. Labor laws change at the whim of Congress. Software can more readily keep up with these changes, and as a result the true on-going maintenance costs are lower,” says Feeney.

Feeney, a Rose-Hulman Software Engineering graduate who last week declared his candidacy for Vigo County Commissioner, currently works full-time at Sony DADC while studying Business Administration at IU’s Kelley School of Business.

In order to be eligible to register to vote, you must:
• be a citizen of the United States,
• be at least 18 years old by November 6, 2012,
• have lived in your precinct for at least 30 days before November 6, 2012 (except for certain military voters); and
• not currently be imprisoned after being convicted of a crime.

If you have an Indiana driver’s license or state-issued ID card you can register to vote online. If you’re a student and you don’t want to change your driver’s license to Indiana, you can still register to vote using your campus or local address, you just have to do it in person or by mail. Either way you simply fill out this form and bring or mail it to:

Vigo Co. Board of Voter Registration
Courthouse, Room 3
33 South 3rd Street
Terre Haute, IN 47808 – 3472

No printer? No problem, there are copies of this form available in the Voter Registration office at the Courthouse. Simply enter through the back entrance and go to the second floor and follow the signs. Bring a copy of a current and valid photo id, current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck or government document that shows your name and campus or local address. If you’re a student, your most recent quarterly or semesterly account billing statement from your campus mailbox will work!

When setting up our own Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program, we must be careful not to place the lien in a superior position to the mortgage on the property. The Federal Housing Finance Authority prevents us from doing so. We must also resolve the legality of the special assessment against our new constitutionally imposed property tax caps.

I propose that instead of bonds, we use the new taxes generated by the fossil fuel oil wells within the city limits to kick off our PACE program. The program once launched is self sustaining, and no city revenue would be lost in the long run. It would be an excellent way to encourage Vigo County residents to choose to live inside the city limits rather than continue to push out into the metro area, and we’d be helping out the environment as well as our pocket books.

Be sure to check out UC Berkeley’s Guide to Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy Financing Districts For Local Governments. ]]> http://feeneyforoffice.us/2011/04/renewable-energy/feed/ 0 http://feeneyforoffice.us/2011/04/renewable-energy/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FeeneyForOffice/~3/-8M59UgebBw/ http://feeneyforoffice.us/2011/04/supporting-science-in-our-own-backyard/#comments Sat, 16 Apr 2011 16:26:03 +0000 SeanFromIT http://feeneyforoffice.us/?p=133 Many people don’t know it, but Terre Haute has an observatory. It’s owned by Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and sits just east of campus near the end of Heritage Trail. 

Rose doesn’t offer a major in astronomy but it does offer a minor in it. Those students brave enough to stay up for countless nights, often in the dead of winter without heat (as heat would affect the telescope glass), get papers published in major astronomical journals each year. Their work got even harder recently due to the new development on IN-46. You can see Wal-mart’s glow from miles away on I-70, so imagine how this affects these students’ studies of the night sky?

It’s called light pollution, and there are steps we can take as a city to curb it. Any new city lamp posts installed should utilize semi- or full cutoff lighting fixtures which direct light wholly downward instead of horizontally, and existing non-cutoff lamp posts should be surveyed to ensure that they are not overly consuming electricity or overly contributing to light pollution. In many cases, the most efficient design that balances these two concerns for the non-cutoff lamp posts where they are placed close together will be simply turning every other one off.

In addition to the design of the light post, we can switch to a different type of light bulb to help reduce light pollution. If we switch to low pressure sodium (LPS) light bulbs in all city light posts, we will not only help with the light pollution but also with our city electric bill as these light sources are 4x or more energy efficient than standard incandescent bulbs. The city of San Jose, CA has been using LPS bulbs since 1980 and many other cities throughout the country have since jumped on board.

New development is important for the growth of the city, but it need not overshadow existing qualities of the community. If we are to truly control light pollution, we need our businesses to adjust their lighting practices as well. I propose that we pass a city lighting ordinance which at a minimum requires the use of LPS bulbs in private parking lot lighting fixtures.

The city stopped by to fill these potholes several times towards the end of this past winter. I saw them out working on them three times myself. It would rain sometime after and the patchwork was so shoddy that the rain would literally wash the fill away. Talk about government inefficiency.

One of the best ways to bring government costs down is to shine a light on government spending. A good, recent example of this was Obama’s Recovery.gov project. This website allowed citizens to hold their government accountable for its spending with easy to understand, geographically-linked information graphics about the infrastructure projects that the stimulus package was funding. It also allowed citizens to report fraud, waste and abuse.

Locally, while it may all be public information, Terre Haute residents have to sift through a variety of sources to attempt to understand where the money is going. Bennett’s State of the City presentation provides some direction, various Tribune Star articles talk about specific projects, but overall it can be difficult to piece together what companies are receiving city contracts, how they were selected to receive those contracts, and then make some sort of comparison against other cities to see if we’re getting our money’s worth.

Starting at the beginning of the process, I propose that we require our city government to post all Requests for Proposals (RFPs) on the city website. Local businesses would be able to more easily see what all contracts are open, and a more competitive bidding process would result. The bidding process could be 100% electronic to minimize costs. Once a company is awarded a city contract, the contract information, including overruns as they happen, should be posted on the city website. The city should not be getting into contracts with excessive term lengths, especially in the information technology sector where things change constantly. And finally, at the completion of the contract’s term, citizens should be able to see if the project came in on time and on budget so that they can comment accordingly.

In addition to posting the information on the website, the city should provide API access for technology developers. Public APIs are revolutionizing the way that citizens view and communicate with their government up and down our coasts, and the technology is often open sourced since it was developed with public funds. Terre Haute could apply for free help from the non-profit Code for America and/or utilize technology from Civic Commons. We have quite a bit of untapped potential at our local universities that we could draw on as well.

He formed a committee back in 2008, most recently known as the “Terre Haute Urbanized Area Railroad Corridor Study,” which focuses primarily on relocating the tracks. They’ve received various funds for projects, including a $1,000,000 pledge from the rail companies themselves and nearly $500,000 from the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) with Senator Richard Lugar’s assistance. Their current goal is to work on the “preliminary development and screening of a series of independently usable projects that can be incrementally advanced over the next 5 to 20 years.” The plans alone will consume the $500,000 and the city will be left to secure additional funding for actually implementing the plans.

A simple starter project could be to upgrade the all of the railroad crossings to highway-rail grade and ask the FRA to establish Quiet Zones in the city of Terre Haute. These zones have been allowed for by federal regulation 49 CFR Parts 222 and 229 since 2005. A highway-rail grade crossing prevents vehicles from squeezing between or around the crossing gate, as you so often see local drivers doing, and in return the trains only have to sound their horn if they see someone on the track instead of on every approach as they now do. The only costs here are the upgrading of the individual crossings and installation of the NO TRAIN HORN (W10-9P) plaques.

Another low cost option could be having our elected officials work with the FRA and the rail companies to restrict train schedules during rush hours. This would be a preferable solution over utilizing the eminent domain powers of the city to shut down the tracks, as that would quickly rack up the city’s legal costs. And it would serve the community great temporary relief for this “5 to 20 year” period while we address the problem.

How about installing underpasses and overpasses? This is how most cities in the US have dealt with the problem of the trains. It’s a significant investment, but not as much as relocating the tracks could prove to be. On a crossing by crossing basis, the city should evaluate which would be cheaper to put into place. A realistic goal is not to place them everywhere, but make it so that when traffic comes upon a closed crossing gate it only takes x number of minutes or y number of miles to reach a suitable way around the train. The rail companies may be willing to make a bargain with the city that in return for forgiving their past due fines, they close the sections of track for the period of time required to put each pass in place.

And why not push forward with the committee’s plans to relocate tracks? This may sound like it makes sense today, but you have to remember than when the rail lines were installed in the first place they were outside of the city limits. The city grew, and we can count on it growing again in the future. Urban sprawl is a given. By paying to relocate the tracks now, we’re simply delaying addressing the true issue, and wasting money in the long run. Our leaders in Washington are drawing high-speed rail maps today that may make trains relevant to our community again, and we may actually be doing ourselves a disservice if we once again push the tracks towards the outskirts of town.