plus 4, Leaking pipes, erosion only the latest troubles at historic Milwaukee ... - Raleigh News & Observer

Leaking pipes, erosion only the latest troubles at historic Milwaukee ... - Raleigh News & Observer
Douglas County businessmen reflect on economy - NRToday.com
Videos From the Web: Car Videos - San Francisco Chronicle
Ritter's 'Colorado Promise' blunted by recession - Grand Junction Free Press
Graduation looms while jobs don't - CharlotteObserver.com

Leaking pipes, erosion only the latest troubles at historic Milwaukee ... - Raleigh News & Observer

Posted: 10 Jan 2010 01:00 PM PST

The ground surface already has subsided 2 feet at three spots adjacent to the infield course, said facility engineer Jeff Jacobson. The pipes are not much deeper, just 15 feet or so below ground.

Fair Park crews have dumped gravel on the depressions, first noticed in the summer of 2008, as they monitor the stability of the soil, Jacobson said. The area is fenced off from parking during the annual State Fair.

The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District's commission on Monday will discuss hiring a contractor to line the bottom of each of four metal pipes with concrete to stop leaks and prevent further corrosion of bolts holding the pipes together. During construction in late 1964 and early 1965, corrugated steel plates were bolted together to form 9-foot by 13-foot oval culverts.

Water from the creek has been leaking out cracks in the bottoms of the aging pipes, eroding soil around them, said David Fowler, MMSD senior project manager.

Soil above the pipes drops down, filling voids but causing depressions on the surface, he said.

Underground creek

Nearly 2.14 miles of north-flowing Honey Creek was forced underground in the mid-1960s, Fowler said.

The creek drops into two 10-foot by 15-foot concrete-box culverts at the north end of McCarty Park in West Allis. It does not return to the surface until it flows out of three 10-foot by 15-foot concrete culverts immediately north of I-94, near 84th St. in Milwaukee.

Beneath State Fair Park, the creek's flow is split between four oval steel culverts.

Engineers in the 1960s decided to confine the creek in culverts to quickly move water downstream in storms and eliminate flooding in the dense neighborhoods through which it flowed.

Photos from the time show the creek in channels next to garages and backyards of small urban lots. Some of those backyards now have manhole covers marking the creek's underground presence, Fowler said.

At State Fair Park, MMSD staff has recommended spending $212,000 to repair 50-foot sections of each of the four pipes below the Milwaukee Mile.

Water will be diverted from one pipe at a time to provide a dry surface, said Urbain Boudjou, MMSD project manager. Then a layer of concrete will be poured on the bottom of each pipe. Grout will be pumped around the pipes to fill voids and stop soil from slumping, Boudjou said.

Trucks will be parked on the infield of the Milwaukee Mile, pumping concrete and grout through lines dropped into manholes at access shafts.

Construction is scheduled to start in February and be completed before heavy spring rains of late April and May.

The contract also will include removing part of a vehicle found in one of the pipes, according to Fowler.

The abandoned, rusted chassis likely was driven or pushed up the pipe by people entering the culvert north of I-94. That opening also will be used to remove it from the pipe since the vehicle is too big to lift out of a manhole, he said.

Honey Creek flows north more than 8.8 miles from its origin near S. 43rd St. in Greenfield, through West Allis, Milwaukee and Wauwatosa, where it joins the Menomonee River.

To see more of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to www.jsonline.com.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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Douglas County businessmen reflect on economy - NRToday.com

Posted: 10 Jan 2010 01:36 PM PST

Foreclosures and short sales continued to enter the Douglas County market contributing to an over supply of homes on the market in 2009. With that comes reduced prices, and a buyers' market exists.

Government loan options (FHA, USDA, VA) have provided an opportunity for many to take advantage of the low prices and with loans that require little or no down payment. In 2009, 92 percent of our home sales in Douglas County were $300,000 or less, a price range where the government loans are readily available.

2009 had 6 percent fewer residential closings than 2008, but since June 2009, the closings have exceeded the 2008 levels. The government First Time Homebuyer Tax Credit, originally scheduled to expire Nov. 30, 2009, was responsible for the surge in the third and fourth quarters of 2009. As that credit was approaching its Nov. 30 deadline, the government extended it to June 30, 2010. (Offers must be accepted by April 30th and will be allowed 60 days to close.) In addition, there has been added a $6,500 tax credit for repeat buyers who have lived in their principal residence consecutively for five of the previous eight years.

We expect foreclosures and short sales to continue into the new year, but we also expect that the government will continue incentives to balance the market and prevent further decline in home prices. As the national economy improves and foreclosures and short sales diminish, the real estate market will become self-supporting and the government incentives will dissipate. At that point, we expect gradual growth of home values that should keep pace with the inflation rate at that time.

We expect that with the holidays behind us, buyers will begin searching for opportunities to take advantage of the tax credits and the low prices offered now in Douglas County. Real estate activity will crescendo through spring and continue strong until the fall at levels of activity that we haven't seen in a few years.

The recovery is under way in Douglas County and the opportunity for buyers is at its best.

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Videos From the Web: Car Videos - San Francisco Chronicle

Posted: 10 Jan 2010 09:54 AM PST

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Ritter's 'Colorado Promise' blunted by recession - Grand Junction Free Press

Posted: 10 Jan 2010 11:13 AM PST

DENVER (AP) - Bill Ritter seized the Centennial State's governorship in 2006 on the wings of his "Colorado Promise," a 54-page pledge to insure hundreds of thousands of Coloradans, boost higher education funding and amplify the state's aging transportation system.

Then he ran into the recession — and Colorado's vexing constitutional limits on tax increases. And despite the glow of a successful 2008 Democratic National Convention, his "deeply held belief that we as a state were not living up to our full potential," as he put it in 2006, still rings true today.

Ritter's surprise announcement last week that he won't seek re-election this year means he'll be Colorado's first one-term governor since Republican John Vanderhoof, booted out of office after just 18 months in 1974 under the Watergate cloud that hurt the GOP.

Pending this year's Legislative session, Ritter leaves a mixed legacy.

Colorado lost 5 percent of its jobs in the recession, and jobs in the green energy sector heavily promoted by Ritter weren't spared. The governor's ability to maneuver was severely limited by the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, the constitutional amendment approved by voters in 1992 that requires a popular vote to raise taxes and limits revenues the state can receive, even in good years.

Many Colorado promises had to be abandoned, and many unpopular cuts or fee increases adopted.

Still out there is Ritter's promise to provide health insurance to 790,000 uninsured Coloradans by 2010. Ritter did sign legislation increasing hospital fees to provide insurance to 100,000 people.

In 2007, tuition at the University of Colorado rose 14.6 percent.

Ritter signed bills increasing auto registration fees and freezing mill levy rates to raise money for education. Republicans called both tax hikes.

Transportation improvements did come - in part thanks to the federal stimulus bill. Still, Colorado has scores of aging bridges and other highway infrastructure in need of repair, and no solution is in sight for the increasingly congested — and costly — Interstate 70 corridor.

Ritter now admits that some of his promises were too ambitious to get done in four years, but said he'd rather set the bar too high.

He canceled scheduled interviews with news media following his announcement he wouldn't seek re-election.

In some ways, Ritter, like Vanderhoof, is a victim of his times, said John Straayer, a political science professor at Colorado State University. In Ritter's case, it is the economy.

"He couldn't possibly do it with the fiscal situation in this state," Straayer said.

But Straayer said Ritter has a different management style from his predecessors, preferring policy over politics and trusting instincts that often got him in trouble with his constituents and his party.

Ritter angered many constituents when he vetoed a measure to make it easier to set up all-union workplaces. He later signed an order allowing state workers to organize, but organized labor wasn't mollified.

Firefighters were angered last summer when Ritter vetoed a bill to allow them to unionize without getting local approval. He also vetoed a bill sought by grocery store workers — still locked in contract talks — that would have allowed them to collect unemployment benefits if they were locked out by the companies.

He also disappointed other Democratic constituencies, including Hispanics.

One of his biggest — and most criticized — decisions was to appoint a little-known associate, Denver Public Schools Superintendent Michael Bennet, to a U.S. Senate seat in January 2009, with support from President Barack Obama. Bennet replaced Ken Salazar, now interior secretary.

Hispanics were upset that Ritter didn't pick another Hispanic to succeed Salazar. Supporters of former House Speaker Andrew Romanoff were also upset; Bennet had no previous political experience, though he has been a fundraising juggernaut since his appointment.

For Straayer, it was vintage Ritter, keeping his eye on the policy ball to the detriment of the political ball.

"A lot of people wanted him to play political games with them, and he was reading from a different script," Straayer said.

In contrast, Democratic Gov. Roy Romer was "politics all the time," Straayer said. GOP Gov. Bill Owens was controlling, believing state workers could not be trusted and that departments had to be kept in line.

Mike Stratton, a Democratic political consultant, said many people think there is something more than Ritter's explanations that he simply wants to have more family time — and govern without the distractions of an election campaign.

"I really think it was difficult for him to govern in this political environment that has gotten so nasty," Stratton said. "With his Catholic background, missing time with his kids was tearing h im up."

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Graduation looms while jobs don't - CharlotteObserver.com

Posted: 10 Jan 2010 09:04 AM PST

Kim Harnden, a UNC Chapel Hill senior with a 3.25 grade point average, is confident of her abilities but concerned about the job market she'll face when she graduates in May.

"I'm worried in the sense that I have a lot of friends that have graduated in the past year who are jobless and still looking for jobs, and they have degrees from UNC and other prestigious schools," said Harnden, a double major in Spanish and international studies from Hershey, Pa.

Her wariness is well-founded, according to career counselors at N.C. universities.

Graduates are encountering the worst job market since early 1980s, when most of today's college seniors weren't even born.

"Unlike other recessions we may have seen, like 2001, we're having a slower pickup," said April Gonzalez, an associate director at the UNC Charlotte career center. "That's probably the biggest difference."

The school is seeing the same amount of recruiters visit, Gonzalez said, but they're offering fewer job opportunities than in the past.

Tim Stiles, associate director of career services at UNC Chapel Hill, fears another significant drop in the percentage of graduates landing jobs this year. A poll of students who graduated last May that was taken in November found that 55 percent had found jobs, down from 65 percent for the prior class 12 months earlier.

The tight job market also triggered a countervailing trend. Thirty percent of last year's UNC grads were working on advanced degrees, up from 26 percent in 2008, Stiles said.

No doubt, the relatively small group of college students who finished their studies in December face the toughest market in a generation. Most likely, so will the next crop of graduates in May.

Campus counselors say jobs exist, but students will have to work harder to find them and they'll face greater competition once they do. The bottom line: protracted job searches are becoming more common.

"The hardest thing for students to understand is that they don't need 27 jobs," said William Wright-Swadel, executive director of the career center at Duke University. "They need one really good job."

As always, demand varies widely from one field to another.

The majors and skills expected to enjoy an uptick in demand this year include e-commerce, entrepreneurialism, environmental sciences, information science, information systems (management and computer), interactive computer design, statistics, nursing and social work, according to a national survey of more than 2,500 employers by Michigan State University.

Outside of computer science, however, the market for technical degrees such as engineering is "somber," according to the survey.

Central Piedmont Community College is seeing the strongest demand in health care, business and Web development services, administrative assistants, culinary, accounting and trades such as auto repair, welding and heating and air conditioning, said Pat Nash, director of career services. Bilingual applicants are particularly in demand, she said.

"(Students) have to work harder," she said. "Before (two years ago), they could just come out and get a job. They didn't have to have a perfect resume and sometimes didn't even need a resume. Now, they will need that resume (and) are also coming in with more specific questions about interviewing."

So is now a good time for graduates to seek an advanced degree instead of wrestling with the difficult job market?

Career counselors say going to grad school can be fine if it's essential to a student's career goals. After all, you're not going to be a lawyer without that J.D. degree. But it doesn't make sense if the primary motivation is putting off your job search until the market improves.

The reason: another degree can be expensive, and the longer-term prospects for the job market aren't great.

"I definitely think we are going to see what is called a jobless recovery," Stiles said.

Despite the disheartening economy, Tom Russo, coordinator for career services at Durham Technical Community College, said the students he sees remain upbeat.

"I haven't seen any panic yet," he said. "College students are so optimistic."

That would include Paul Jones, 26, who graduated from N.C. State University last month with a degree in communications and a minor in nonprofit studies.

Jones, who lives in Raleigh, didn't start looking for a job until December because he was working at two internships during his last semester.

"My girlfriend likes to tell me I was so busy with my part-time jobs that I didn't have time to find a full-time job," he said.

Nevertheless, he is upbeat about his chances of getting hired - and soon.

"It may be just an ego thing," he conceded, "but you have to be confident going into it."

Schools say they don't poll their December graduates to find out how they're faring in the job market because the sample size is too small.

But the indicators aren't good.

"I can tell you that the number of employers coming to do on-campus interviews is significantly down," said Carol Schroeder, director of the career center at N.C. State University. Employer recruiting trips are down more than 30 percent at N.C. State.

That's in line with a recent Michigan State University survey that found that employers in the Southeast anticipate cutting back on their hiring of new college graduates by 7 percent this year.

That's worse than a two percent reduction in hires expected nationwide, although it certainly reflects the state's 10.8 percent unemployment rate - the 10th worst in the nation.

"Students seeking employment will face fierce competition," concludes the report by the university's Collegiate Employment Research Institute. "There are simply not enough jobs to go around."

Charlotte Observer staff writer Jen Aronoff contributed

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