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Germantown, Tenn., Mayor Mike Palazzolo, regarding the city’s order that residents avoid using water for everything except flushing toilets after a diesel fuel spill in a local reservoir six days ago. Officials advised using bottled water for personal use and the city has been distributing some since Friday; residents are not allowed to drink or boil tap water, or use it for showering or bathing. A small section of Germantown has been allowed to resume using water and there have not yet been any reports about people getting sick. (Associated Press — July 26, 2023)
City planning agencies and business improvement districts are increasingly relying on cellphone tracking data from groups like Placer.ai to understand how cities are changing.
As a new Arizona survey shows, voters want to take the partisanship out of how top state and local election officials are chosen. The system we use now erodes public trust.
Texas began offering schools extra money to expand their bilingual programs in 2019. But as the nation grapples with a teacher shortage, some counties are unable to find qualified teachers to teach the classes.
More than 50 democratic state assembly members want federal regulators to stop a planned natural gas pipeline over environmental concerns, particularly in poor, rural areas.
The new facility has 26 360-kilowatt charging stations for electric freight trucks, making it the largest charging station of its kind for the port. However, to meet climate goals, the facility will need many more chargers by 2030.
The affordable laptops were easy for thousands of schools nationwide to scale up remote learning during the pandemic. Oakland Unified is just one of many districts that will have to retire and replace the tech after it expires just a few years after purchase.
House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, on the Legislature’s final approval of a proposal to restore the language requiring Maine to honor treaties the state inherited from Massachusetts when it became its own state more than 200 years ago. Ross claims the language restoration would improve transparency and highlight the state’s debts to Native American tribes. The voters will have the ultimate say as to whether the state restores the long-removed language or not; the date of the referendum has not yet been set. (Associated Press — July 24, 2023)
Everything from fatal overdoses to the number of people suffering from severe depression has been growing at alarming rates. Counties have been providing services but insist that Washington must do more.
Inflation rates are coming down, but state and local labor costs will be sticky, as will public-employee health-care expenses. Overall, though, it’s a better outlook for pension funding and astute government cash managers.
A student’s transfer to a four-year institution is a benchmark for success among community colleges. But the numbers are low and disparities persist across the system, especially between colleges in rural areas and those in wealthy suburbs.
It’s a myth that the summer break is a relic of our agricultural past, and today’s summer school has a negative taint. It needs to be reimagined.
As climate change has brought on an increase in heat waves, a growing number of residents across the state have been affected by heat-related illness and death.
The national share of employed women in their prime working age hit 75.3 percent in June, the highest recorded rate since the U.S. Census Bureau began reporting numbers in 1948.
If the new Highland Springs school does not pass its final school facilities inspection, school officials will need to enact their contingency plan for their first week of school, requiring students to attend via e-learning. Classes begin on Tuesday.
Gerrit Marshall, a retired television broadcast engineer from Madison, Wisc., regarding his winning the Hemingway Look-Alike Contest in Key West, Fla., on his 68th birthday. The city’s annual Hemingway Days celebration ended on Sunday, July 23, and the Look-Alike Contest was held at Sloppy Joe’s Bar, a frequent hangout of Ernest Hemingway when he lived in Key West during the 1930s. Marshall won the competition over nearly 140 other entrants; it was his 11th attempt at the contest. (NPR — July 24, 2023)
The state’s governor is trying to make policy for many generations from now. It’s hard enough to get it right for even a decade or two. How’s your flying car working out?
Ted Papenfuss, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, commenting on a rare legless lizard known as the Temblor, which can be found in desert scrub and grassland within Kern and Fresno Counties in California. The vast majority of the lizard’s range is open to, or already contains, oil and gas development. But a proposal to list the lizard as endangered could change the trajectory of the region. (Sierra Club — July 21, 2023)
Doctors are testing whether ChatGPT and predictive software can help cut down on tedious tasks and improve decision-making. One example includes answering the tidal wave of emails that physicians receive daily.
Each year, 15 billion gallons of untreated sewage and rainwater flood the city's waterways during storms. The water department has been under order by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to clean up the system.
The 40 COVID-19 deaths reported in Minnesota in June make up the lowest monthly total since March 2020. The state's overall toll is 14,896 — with seniors accounting for 83 percent of the deaths.
The death rate in the state’s prisons increased 34.6 percent from 2018 to 2022, which saw 135 deaths. This year is surpassing 2022’s rate even as the pandemic has waned and physical mail was stopped last year.
Gov. Greg Gianforte vetoed a bill would have moved more than 200 people off waiting lists for government-supported care and saved the state money by accessing more federal Medicaid money to cover their costs.
What can Phoenix, the hottest large city in the country, teach local governments about managing extreme heat?
Before Jane Gilbert took on the job for Miami-Dade County, no city in the world had a chief heat officer. What can others learn from the work she’s doing?
Experts are calling for federal regulators to implement standards to protect outdoor workers from worsening air quality, such as monitoring air pollution and providing protective equipment if necessary.
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