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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Since July, the city has collected $293,885 for the removal of just 39 trees, according to City Parks Department records.

And in the city's last fiscal year -- from July 1, 2013 to July 1, 2014 -- the agency took in $2.7 million for the removal of 275 trees.

This comes out to about $7,500 to nearly $10,000 per tree. And that doesn't include the actual cost of tree removal -- it's just the fee that has to be paid to the Parks Department.

That cost, Staten Island developers say, is so exorbitant that is hurts development and forces them to pass the cost on to customers.

"The cost is ridiculous. ...A 24-inch tree could have a value of upwards of $60,000. (Parks' formula) is an overly aggressive way of valuing trees," said Robert Kelly, an Island-based developer and broker/owner of Master's Realty in Oakwood.

He contends that the Parks Department's pricingso excessivethat, in some cases, it's prohibiting builders from developing projects in the borough, and hurting homebuyers or commercial real estate customers who have to dig deeper to cover the expense.

A LAWSUIT IS FILED

Last year, the Building Association of New York City filed a lawsuit against the Parks Department, demanding a review of the way the agency calculates a tree's "value." The case has been adjourned several times; the next court date isJan. 30 in Supreme Court, St. George.

Some of the delay can be attributed to the Parks Department change in venue request. The agency wanted the case moved toManhattan.

"We (the Association) felt this should be heard on Staten Island," said Kelly.

Excerpt from:
Staten Island developers hammer Parks Dept. for 'ridiculous' tree removal cost

The first of two power outages in six Dunedin suburbs is expected from 9am tomorrow.

Delta spokesman Gary Johnson said the power to about 4000 electricity consumers in Abbotsford, Burnside, Concord, Fairfield, Green Island, Ocean View and Waldronville would be interrupted twice tomorrow to enable the safe removal of a fallen tree.

The tree, in a forest between Abbots Hill Rd and the Southern Reservoir, had fallen across high voltage power lines supplying the Green Island substation.

To enable the safe clearance of the tree, the power needed to be redirected from the Green Island substation to near substations.

From 9am tomorrow, some electricity consumers in the suburbs should expect a interruption to their power supply between 30 seconds and 60 seconds to enable the tree removal.

After the removal and the high voltage cable was made safe, there would be a similar interruption to the power supply later in the day.

"Apart from the two brief interruptions, we expect power supply to be on as usual.''

People using medical equipment that relies on electricity should ensure they were prepared for the power interruptions and if there was an immediate health threat to contact their health provider or call 111.

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Brief power cuts in Dunedin tomorrow

Year 10 pupils from two Coventry schools tested their design skills by building replica biomass-fired power stations.

The Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) challenge days introduced pupils at Bishop Ullathorne Catholic School and Tile Hill Wood School and Language College to the sorts of skills required to work in the energy sector, while completing a series of tasks to design and build parts of a model power station.

The event was organised by E.ON as part of the energy companys interactive Energy Experience education programme.

Pupils were encouraged to think like engineers and work within teams as they undertook challenges throughout separate days at each school.

Working to a strict budget and deadline, tasks included designing a silo for storing the biomass fuel and constructing a flue tower.

Jackie Dines, science teacher at Bishop Ullathorne Catholic School, said: We appreciate being able to offer our pupils alternative ways to learn, and E.ONs STEM workshop covered the topic of biomass and power stations in a really interactive fashion.

Billie Poole, senior community relations officer at E.ON, said: Since it isnt always possible to take a year group into one of our power stations, we developed the STEM workshop instead.

It forms part of E.ONs Energy Experience educational programme and has been designed to support the National Science Curriculum, with practical elements intended to enable young people to learn about energy in a hands-on and fun way.

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Coventry schools team up for power station challenge

601 Logans, Prosper, TX 75078
Bryan Karlan, (214) 551-2985 Property Details 601 Logans Way Dr, Prosper, TX 75078 3 beds 3 baths 2900 sqft FOR SALE $439000 Price cut: -$1000 (12/2) Zestimate: $497183 Beautiful...

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601 Logans, Prosper, TX 75078 - Video

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Posted: Tuesday, January 20, 2015 8:14 am | Updated: 11:03 am, Tue Jan 20, 2015.

Water damage closes new YMCA St. Joseph News-Press St. Joseph News-Press & FOX 26 KNPN |

A sprinkler system in the new YMCA caused "extensive" damage and closed the East Side facility early Tuesday morning.

Around 4:45 a.m., the steam room inside the YMCA's spa areaoverheated, said YMCA CEO Mark Cartledge. When the steam room's door was opened, the heat triggered a sprinkler to activate in the spa area.

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Water damage closes new YMCA

Funky Sheds
This video is about Funky Shedshttp://www.citycentresheds.co.uk/funky-sheds Modern stylish sheds and workshops from the Uks leading timber building suppliers.

By: Garden Sheds

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Funky Sheds - Video

Our raft system with its simple common sense approach offers you an excellent alternative to the more tradition concrete or slab base. This method allows more air flow, also much less water is in contact with the floor bearers keeping the building dry, which makes your investment last longer. No foundation needs to be dug, or concrete to set, means we can finish laying the raft and erecting your building the same day. Not only does this simple system saves you money and is kinder to the environment, it is easy to reposition if you need to relocate you building, saving you breaking up the old concrete and disposing it.

To install a raft we ask of you is to ensure the area is leveled out for us prior to us arriving, we will place slabs at pressure points to prevent subsidence and bring the area to a level, a raft is then placed on top, ready for the shed to be built, simple. Example shown below.

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Apex garden sheds, fully fitted garden buildings

LinkedIn is hoping that it can attract blue collar workers like carpenters, electricians, delivery drivers, waiters and joiners.

After a few years out of the workforce to care for his youngest son, Klaus Thorsen spruced up his LinkedIn profile. Not that unusual, you may think. After all, the careers networking site has more than 330m registered users.

Except that Mr Thorsen is a north London carpenter hoping to find contacts and employment on a site where job titles such as builder are more typically used to describe someone who creates online communities than a construction worker.

Mr Thorsen admits he would never have joined LinkedIn if it were not for his partner, Karen Fugle, an executive coach to architects. If youre not in the corporate world its a big step, [it's] baffling, she says. That is not to say Mr Thorsen does not use technology; he is an enthusiastic Twitter user, deploying it to keep up with industry news and finds work through referrals from local websites such as Streetlife. com, a neighbourhood social network.

If LinkedIn has its way, however, more people like Mr Thorsen will become members of the site without nudges from executive coaches and expand the numbers beyond the throngs of accountants, lawyers and marketers already signed up, to include delivery drivers, waiters and joiners.

Allen Blue, co-founder of LinkedIn, wants the site to shed its elitist image as an exclusive club for knowledge workers. LinkedIn last year bought Bright, a US job site that uses a scoring mechanism to match job hunters with employers. The acquisition brought jobs to the site from sectors beyond LinkedIns traditional white-collar heartland.

Now if you do a job search, there are lots of possibilities, says Mr Blue. Theres a growing number of blue-collar workers on the site.

The company certainly talks big. There are billions of workers in the world, says Mr Blue, and LinkedIn has ambitions to sign up every single one of them. We consider all of these [AS]people we can deliver value to, says Mr Blue. Moreover, data compiled from LinkedIn members profiles could, for example, help employers plan where to build a factory or distribution centre based on the local labour forces skills, he argues.

LinkedIn hopes to create the worlds first economic graph, its version of Facebooks social graph, coined to describe its networks of friends. As Jeff Weiner, the chief executive, has explained: We want to digitally map the global economy, identifying the connections between people, jobs, skills, companies and professional knowledge and spot in real-time the trends pointing to economic opportunities.

While LinkedIn is, in Mr Blues words, professionally paranoid about Facebooks plans to create a professional networking channel, called Facebook at Work, he believes users prefer to keep personal and work lives separate.

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LinkedIn sheds elitest image by widening career network

Simple Roots Wellness offers healthy recipes

By Deborah Neyens, correspondent

January 20, 2015 | 5:00 am

VINTON Alexa Schirm wants to expose the myths around good nutrition.

You dont have to eat crazy health food to be healthy, she said. I want people to understand that eating whole foods is a realistic lifestyle.

Schirms desire to help people sift through the ever-changing and often contradictory information about how much and what they should be eating is the foundation of her business, Simple Roots Wellness.

Schirm, who has a degree in dietetics from Iowa State University and is pursuing a masters degree in health sciences from the University of Alabama, previously owned a fitness studio in Vinton. She sold that business last year so she could focus on providing nutrition consulting services on a full-time basis.

In February 2014, she launched Simple Roots Wellness as a blog and an eight-week, online nutrition course. The blog provides tips and recipes for eating healthier, while the course provides instruction in nutrition basics along with meal plans and other tools to help clients implement healthy changes in their diet.

I showcase nutrition in a different light, Schirm said of her online services. The eight-week course helps people understand the science behind nutrition and gives them a practical application for the information.

Its not about a restrictive diet. Its about understanding the bodys needs so they can choose the right foods.

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Ground Floor: Vinton business sheds light on nutrition

A New York Times report, triggered by the leak of new documents, sheds light on how US officials so quickly concluded North Korea was the source of the November hacking attack against Sony Pictures.

President Barack Obama in December blames North Korean for the Sony hack and vows to respond proportionately. Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images

The National Security Agency was tracking North Korea's hackers long before they attacked Sony Pictures, according to report that sheds light on how US officials so quickly concluded North Korea was to blame for the hack.

The NSA used malware to track North Korean hackers as part of a program launched more than four years ago, The New York Times reported on Sunday, citing former US officials, computer experts and a newly released top secret document, (PDF), which was provided to Der Spiegel by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

"Spurred by concerns over North Korea's maturing capabilities," the spy agency penetrated North Korea's networks in 2010 with help from South Korea and other American allies, the Times reported. A classified program evolved into an "ambitious effort" to place malware that could track the internal workers of computers and networks used by the North's hackers -- "a force that South Korea's military recently said numbers roughly 6,000 people," the Times reported.

Evidence gathered by what the Times referred to as the "early warning radar" of software reportedly played a role in President Barack Obama's relatively quick decision to accuse Kim Jong-un's government of ordering the attack on Sony -- a move that raised some eyebrows in the security community.

Brian Hale, a spokesman for the director of national intelligence, said he could not speak to the Times report as it relates to the Sony hack. But he did confirm that the US intelligence community (USIC) is fully aware of North Korea's many efforts in recent years to "probe and infiltrate US commercial networks and cyber infrastructure.

"The USIC has been tracking North Korean intrusions and phishing attacks on a routine basis. While no two situations are the same, it is our shared goal to prevent bad actors from exploiting, disrupting or damaging US commercial networks and cyber infrastructure, " he said in a statement. "When it becomes clear that cyber criminals have the ability and intent to do damage, we work cooperatively to defend networks."

The cyberattacks against Sony, carried out in November by a group that called itself the Guardians of the Peace, resulted in the leaking of thousands of documents that revealed the inner workings of Sony and its movie deals, including embarrassing email exchanges between executives and personal information of employees and celebrities. Four weeks after the attack, the FBI said it had determined the North Korean government was responsible for the hacks, based on analysis of the software used during the attacks.

Obama signed an executive order early this month to authorize sanctions that allow the US Treasury Department to restrict North Korean officials, entities and supporters from accessing the US financial system. This means Americans are not allowed to do business with them.

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NSA was tracking North Korea back in 2010, docs reveal