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Montgomery County could face difficult decisions if the state doesnt help fulfill the school districts funding request for capital projects, officials said Monday.

Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett has recommended approving the county school boards requested $1.74 billion fiscal 2015-20 Capital Improvements Program. Leggetts recommendation banks on the success of a state bill to direct more school construction money to the county.

The county wants to secure an added stream of state aid within the six-year capital program time frame, said county spokesman Patrick Lacefield. Theres no alternative to the continued efforts to get additional revenue, he said.

A meeting Monday between school officials and the County Councils Education Committee was part of an ongoing push for more state funding. County leaders want Maryland legislators to ramp up school construction dollars to support Montgomery projects that would add space amid rising enrollment and repair aging buildings.

County Councilman Craig L. Rice emphasized on Monday the countys reliance on state aid to fund the school district.

Its my hope that not only our representatives in Annapolis, but also our governor, certainly understands that the largest school system in the state, and one of the best school systems in the nation, is at risk, and its at risk of really losing ground when it comes to making sure that were continuing to be able to meet the need of our constituency, said Rice, the council committees chair.

If the Maryland General Assembly doesnt pass the school construction bill in the current legislative session, the county school district could face a cut of $213.3 million from its requested six-year capital program.

The school board has asked for an amended capital program totaling $1.74 billion. The boards request is $223.3 million higher than the previously approved program of $1.53 billion.

School board President Patricia ONeill said Monday that if the district doesnt get the capital money it requested, it might need to delay revitalization and expansion projects, additions and projects such as roof replacements and HVAC equipment.

In Annapolis, Leggett, ONeill and interim Superintendent Larry Bowers urged state lawmakers on Feb. 18 to support a bill to establish a Supplemental Public School Construction Matching Fund Program.

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Montgomery County officials continue plea for state school aid -- Gazette.Net

Gusina Tremblay was looking out a window of the federal courthouse in South Boston on July 10, 2013, during a break from her service as a juror on the trial of mobster James Whitey Bulger, when a police motorcade delivered Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to his arraignment.

I said to the others, I absolutely could not be on that jury, Tremblay, a mother of four who works part time cleaning and running errands for elderly shut-ins, told the Herald. At least I didnt know the whole story of Whitey Bulger. Theyre going into this knowing exactly what happened and its going to be very emotional. This ones going to be a tough one.

Tomorrow, 18 people just like Tremblay will be chosen to occupy a jury box in Courtroom 9 of U.S. District Court for what is expected to be a four-month trial, at the end of which 12 of them could be asked to decide whether the 21-year-old Tsarnaev lives or dies for the murders of 8-year-old Martin Richard, Krystle Marie Campbell, Lingzi Lu and MIT police officer Sean Collier.

A Bulger juror from Brockton, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said theres only one way for Tsarnaevs jurors to cope: Just go through it. Thats what I did, he said. Im glad I had the experience, but at the same time, it was tough. The films, the testimony ... I think Ive moved on. Im a Christian and thats my foundation. I know whos in charge.

I dont think theres any way to prepare yourself. I thought I was prepared, Tremblay said when asked what she would tell Tsarnaev jurors based on her experience of being subjected daily to images and descriptions of Bulgers gangland slayings and tortures for weeks on end. Federal prosecutors have repeatedly told prospective Tsarnaev jurors they need to be able to handle gruesome pictures and video from the April 15, 2013, attack on Boylston Street. Tremblay said prosecutors did not forewarn her what to expect during Bulgers two-month trial.

Im different. I think a lot changed for me. I dont know how to define it, the Kansas native said, tearing up. I dont think people realize how traumatic it was to sit through. Sometimes I felt like I was in a movie or watching a movie, and I knew I was playing a pretty big role.

Judge George A. OToole Jr. has not disclosed how many provisionally qualified jurors have been called back from a process that began Jan. 5 with 1,373 possibilities. Tomorrows final selection proceeding marks day 25 in Tsarnaevs case.

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Bulger jurors to Tsarnaev panel: Its going to be tough

By Antonio Coleman

CADILLAC Five days a week, Sherry Davies walks nearly 13 miles delivering mail to homes in Cadillac.

No matter the weather, Davies starts her day at 7 a.m., prepared to carry about 70 pounds of mail to area homes and businesses.

During her weekend route, Davies passed an uncleared driveway and snow-covered mailbox.

I fell right here Friday, Davies said, pointing to the homes uncleared walkway.

Davies said uncleared sidewalks and snow-covered mailboxes are two of the most difficult challenges mail carriers face and one of the most hazardous parts of her job.

Last year, I and another mail carrier fell and broke our arms. We both had to have surgery, Davies said.

Although Davies returned to work, she said the threat of a fall is always a looming concern when carrying mail door-to-door. Unfortunately, slips and falls are quite common, she said.

But its not just the snow and ice that can be a concern for mail carriers.

February has brought some of the coldest temperatures to Northern Michigan this winter and Davies said the below-zero temperatures can often slow her down.

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Snow and ice are hazards for mail carriers

Part one of this series was titled, Fall Yard Care; Lawn & Leaves. Still within the realm of nature, this second article will focus on fall care of your trees and shrubs. Trees and shrubs in our yards and outdoor rooms are landscape specimens to be shown off and admired. Dont forget to protect these lovely focal points in your yardscapes by doing a bit of autumn maintenance.

Autumn is just about the best time to plant or transplant a shrub or tree. This is the time of year when a tree or shrub naturally stops expending energy to produce leaves, flowers or fruit, and transfers that energy to the development of its root system. Considering that when you first plant (or transplant) any living thing, it needs to get its feet firmly established in the ground before it starts showing off, the timing of a new planting in fall is perfect. Your new tree or shrub will also do better in autumn because it wont have the stress of scorching summer heat and soil that constantly dries out. Just one caveat. Dont forget to use a nice thick layer of shredded leaves or mulch around the base (but not touching the bark) of your fall transplants, especially if you live in an area where the ground freezes and thaws throughout the winter. The expansion and contraction of the soil that occurs with freezing and thawing of the ground will play havoc with new roots that are trying to take hold, and in severe cases could even kill your specimen

You definitely want to trim your trees and shrubs in the autumn. What you dont want to do is prune them.

Pruning your trees and shrubs in the fall is discouraged for a couple of reasons. First, in the fall, many shrubs have already formed the buds that will flower in the spring. If you prune them now, youll destroy the shrubs ability to show off any color next year. In addition, pruning now will delay the hardening off process that some trees and shrubs must go through before winter, making them susceptible to various cold weather injuries and desiccation.

To trim your trees and shrubs properly in the fall, you want to thin them, not shape them. Deadwood is pretty easy to spot at this time of year, and should be removed by cutting down close to the branch or trunk from which it begins. If you cant tell whether a branch or twig is dead, just scratch it a bit. If its green (wick) inside, its alive. If its grey (wood), then, well . . . you get it. You might also want to remove branches that cross and rub against one another you only need to remove one, (the least healthy) not both of these. Dont forget those suckers! These persistent pests are aptly named, as they suck the nutrients from healthy limbs. Be sure to cut them down to where they start.

As long as the ground is not frozen, you still need to provide your trees and shrubs with water. In the early fall, water your trees every couple of weeks, and keep in mind that new plantings need more frequent watering. Unless your shrubs are newly planted or wilting, they can go without the extra watering autumn rains will take care of them.

By mid-October, you can stop watering your trees and shrubs so that they can harden off by winter. When all the leaves have fallen from the deciduous trees, give all your trees and shrubs one last deep watering. Set your hose at the base of the tree and run the water slowly just a trickle for several hours. Pay particular attention to your evergreens at this time. They dont go dormant during the winter like deciduous trees do, making the extra water particularly important for them. Keep in mind that if you have an unexpected mid-winter thaw, you should deep water your evergreens again during that time.

Whether you should fertilize your trees and shrubs in the autumn will depend on several factors. Well established trees and shrubs dont tend to need much fertilization. However if they are in any kind of mulch bed they can usually do with a few nutrients by fall. The decomposition of the mulch will have been depleting them all spring and summer long. If you really want to replace nutrients for your mature specimens in the fall, your autumn leaves can be shredded and spread underneath them. Their decomposition will release nutrients that your plants need.

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Fall Yard Care; Trees and Shrubs - My Yard Rocks ...

Looking for work? Check out the Times/Review classified section.

Looking for work, or know someone who is?

Times/Review classifieds offers local companies a place to advertise their job openings each week, and this week close to 50 positions are availablefrom plumbers, marine technicians to drivers.

And for anyone interested in submitting a classified ad, email: classifieds@timesreview.com.

Check out the listings below:

BARTENDER: for local golf club. April-October. $15-plus/hour. Call Harry, 631-749-0416.

BARTENDER: Mature and experienced. Call Lennys, 631-722-8589.

BUS SERVICE POSITION: F/T. Sunrise Coach Lines, located in Greenport, is looking for a qualified self-starting person to service and clean our buses. CDL license preferred but will train the right person. Prior experience a plus. Union position with benefits. Please inquire, 631-477-1201. Ask for Jim or Karen.

CASE MANAGER: F/T, temporary through December 2015. For our bridges to family program located in Hauppauge, NY. BA in social work or related field and 1-year related experience required. MSW or related field and related experience preferred. Valid NYS drivers license required. Little Flower Children and Family Services in Wading River, N.Y. Send resume, wadingriver-jobs@lfchild.org or fax 631-929-6203 EOE.

CASE MANAGER SUPERVISOR: F/T, temporary through December 2015. For our bridges to family program located in Hauppauge, NY. BA in social work or related field and 5 years related experience required. MSW or related field and related experience preferred. Valid NYS drivers license required. Little Flower Children and Family Services in Wading River, N.Y. Send resume, wadingriver-jobs@lfchild.org or fax 631-929-6203. EOE

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Help Wanted: Child care, vet tech, mechanic

Parishioners at St Oswalds Church in Tile Hill welcomed West Midlands Crime Commissioner, David Jamieson, to a fun 'Its a Knock Out' day.

The teams were made up of local primary schoolchildren and the community police who battled it out for supremacy!

Funding for the event was provided by West Midlands Police as part of their initiative to improve and encourage good relationships between police and the local community.

Rev Nick Leggett, from St Oswalds, said: This was an ideal opportunity for the community to see the police in a relaxed and fun way and, of course, to eat lots of pancakes!

The day was part of St Oswalds 12-month Summer School project for local children during school and half-term holidays.

Around 40 children attended as well as lots of local volunteers who formed another team.

Mr Jamieson said: St Oswalds Church does brilliant work with their local community, which is why I am so pleased to support the work that they do through the Community Initiatives Fund.

The Fund provides small grants of up to 750 to help projects that encourage community contact with local neighbourhood officers; therefore increasing trust and confidence while reducing crime, disorder and anti-social behaviour.

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School children go head to head with community police during fun day

Stacy Squires

LOOK CLOSELY: Billy Wilson directs volunteers inside the shed as they lift it onto the trailer. Wilson is recycling the residential red-zone sheds for use elsewhere.

It is a race against time as Billy Wilson tries to save tool and garden sheds in the residential red zone from demolition.

On Friday, more than a dozen volunteers lifted a 4.2 x 2.1 metre shed in Avonside off its foundation and onto a trailer and spirited it away. The demolition company intended to wreck it on Saturday morning.

Wilson has authority from the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority to grab the sheds and more than $12,000 from Christchurch City Council's Transitional City Projects Fund for the project.

Wilson intends to recycle six sheds. Some may go to community gardens, including one on Packe St, and one has been claimed by the Student Volunteer Army. Associate professor Billy O'Steen, who is heading the University of Canterbury's new Community Engagement Hub, said it planned to make it a portable headquarters and meeting space.

Wilson will renovate the other sheds, replacing rotting and borer wood, with salvaged timber. Then he will paint them.

He is a trade painter and an artistic painter. His father was a trade painter and he picked up the trade as a teenager. "It's my bread and butter."

His art to date had typically been two-dimensional paintings and painting the sheds would be his first 3D project, he said.

The sheds were built for state houses in the 1930s and 40s and were standard issue, Wilson said. They had nearly identical dimensions and design: 2.4m x 2m, rimu timber and weatherboards, a sloping roof and no overhang.

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Sheds rescued for art project

Police are searching garden sheds in hunt for missing Bristol teenager Becky Watts

Neighbours of a house being searched for clues into the disappearance of Becky Watts say officers have looked in their sheds.

Forensic investigators have been present at Cotton Mill Lane on Saturday and have been examining a house since.

A blue tent appeared covering part of the patio area and some of the garden.

The house is being searched in connection with the disappearance of Becky Watts.

The 16-year-old vanished from her St George home 11 days ago and has not been seen since.

Neighbours in the Barton Hill area say police have visited their homes and searched their garden shed, but they know nothing more.

The street was reported to have been cordoned off by police earlier today.

Mike Grady, 72, from the road told The Bristol Post he had never seen Becky in the area.

He believed a young couple with a child move into the house being examined about six months ago, but said they kept themselves to themselves.

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The Bristol Post published Missing Bristol teenager: Police search garden sheds in cordoned...

Building was built in 1925

March 2, 2015 | 6:00 am

CEDAR RAPIDS A fairground with a horse racetrack and a baseball park, near the intersection of Second Avenue and 14th Street East, gave way to the development of Cedar Rapids Central Park addition in 1886.

There will not be a single vestige of the old fair grounds left in a month, reported The Gazette. The future inhabitants looking upon a populous portion of the city in after years will be surprised to know that Central Park addition was once the scene of the contest for twine binders and game chickens, and beautiful flowers, and golden harvests, and races. A force of about sixty men are out in that vicinity at work with twenty or thirty teams, and are transforming the fair grounds, where representatives of all counties in Iowa once gathered ... This makes an end of the racetrack and the boys with their trotters are casting about to see where they can get a racetrack.

Part of that site became a luxury apartment hotel in 1925.

The Commonwealth Inc. began as a corporation in 1924. Officers E.E. Wilcox, president; John B. Terry, vice president; F. Junkerman, secretary and treasurer; E.B. Cameron, O.C. Olney, Joe McRaith and William Chamberlain, directors, planned to build an apartment house that rivaled those in bigger cities. The structure designed by architects H.E. Hunter and Norman Hatton was built for $600,000 by general contractor O.F. Paulson. Made of brick, concrete and steel, its elaborate trims gave it charm.

When it opened in 1925, it provided the best for its residents and hotel guests.

All the features of the big city apartments will be included in the Commonwealth, related a 1924 article in The Gazette. A spacious lobby, womens room, mens room, childrens play room, commodious storage room, a complete steam heating plant, a water softener, and a central refrigerator plant providing icing facilities and circulating ice water to all apartments, two passenger and one service elevators, and large laundries with clothes dryers will be provided. Light, gas and heat will be furnished. Heated garage accommodations will be erected in the rear.

There also was a dining room, tea room, delicatessen, beauty shop and 104 apartments in varying sizes over seven floors.

A Gazette story in November 1939 described it as one of the show spots in Cedar Rapids and an apartment house which is set apart by a distinction acquired through constant effort to maintain the finest service and accommodations year after year.

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Time Machine: The Commonwealth Apartments

(PRWEB) February 27, 2015

A commercial roof will definitely not last forever. It will reach its limit at some point given the right conditions like weather changes, corrosion, and winds as well as other factors that contribute to wear and tear. For this reason, a homeowner may need certain repair procedures and this is where The Commercial Roofing Experts is the best at. They can fix roofs without any delay and with the highest quality possible.

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They also specialize in installing and repairing different types of roofs such as aluminum roof, panels, siding, asphalt roofing, barn roofing, board and batten siding, commercial roofing, dibello roofing, dry home roofing, and many more. Just give The Commercial Roofing Experts a call at 202-800-1411 and allow them to look at the property for damage assessment. The Commercial Roofing Experts repair services are available 24 hours a day and 7 days a week and a friendly and well-trained crew is surely going to answer any time of the day.

For more information please visit the link here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN4pjlPlWvo

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Commercial Roofing Manassas Va - Roof Repair: New Video Release by The Commercial Roofing Experts