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The Santa Cruz County Public Works Department plans to darken 879 of the 1,164 streetlights primarily in Rio Rico and Tubac. Altherr wants to keep 285 lights that illuminate important intersections and roadways and turn off the rest of the lights, which would result in a savings of an estimated $100,000 a year, he wrote.

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Facing a $1.2-million budget cut, the Ferguson Library will reduce hours and days at all branches beginning in September -- avoiding, for now, closing any of the libraries.

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The city council gave the go-ahead to implement the first phase of a four-year program to turn off or reduce the amount of time 10,000 of the city’s 16,000 street lights are on. The move, expected to cut the city’s annual street lighting bill of $800,000 in half, is prompted by the city’s budget crisis.

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City officials are looking for more than $50 million in cuts to balance the budget. eliminating 165 positions and reducing contributions to social services agencies

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At a time when the world is still reeling under the impact of the recession, the government in Colorado has struck upon a unique plan. While the other countries are planning on cutting down expenditure on various schemes and policies, the government in Colorado has decided to start at the grassroots level. In an attempt to meet up the enormous budget deficit of $28.5 million, the city of Colorado Springs has decided to cut down on costs by removing the street lights in the roads, and also to do away with the trash cans. Moreover, even the police helicopters are being auctioned off in the auctioning sites in the internet.

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Most public transportation news isn’t good news these days—shrinking budgets have led to service cuts and fare increases all over the country, and the San Francisco Bay Area is no exception. We reported last week on how AC Transit, the East Bay’s bus service, has been particularly hard-hit.

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Is the money saving policy of closing individual fire stations on a rotating basis compromising the safety of the public? Across the city Monday, 3 fire engines and 1 ladder company sat silent as the mayor's administration, struggling with an economic crisis, tries to save nearly $4-million. "The mayor's latest proposal is rolling brownouts taking affect today is dangerous, it's mistaken and it's undertaken without any regard to its impact," said Bill Gault, President Local 22 Firefighters' Union.

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The county commission voted 4-1 Tuesday night to terminate its contract with MARTA, which operates C-Tran, the county's cash-strapped bus system. About 2.1 million rides were taken on C-Tran buses during the last fiscal year, according to MARTA.

County Commissioner Michael Edmondson said when C-TRAN started five years ago it was funded 100 percent with federal monies that no longer exist. MARTA has run the county bus system since April 2007. According to an AJC study, the county spends about $10 million per year to operate C-TRAN, but only collects $2.5 million in revenue from riders.

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Hawaii schools to move to four-day week in state cost-cutting measure. All 256 of Hawaii's public schools will be closed in the first of 17 "furlough Fridays" that will see a drastic cut in school time for up to 171,000 children. The reduction of the school week from five to four days will last for at least the next two years.

The furloughs are the most draconian measure yet taken in the US, where the recession has forced many states to slash public services. At least 25 states have forced teachers to take unpaid days off, but most of the cuts have fallen on holidays or on preparation days rather than on actual school days.

Hawaii's cuts have been particularly punishing because unlike other parts of the US, the entire education budget is paid for by the state which is labouring under a $1bn deficit. Education accounts for about a quarter of the state's overall resources.

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In Marlow, Okalahoma, the four day school day didn’t work for students or teachers. Teachers in Marlow felt that instruction suffered using the new schedule. “It was harder on the teachers. We were asking the kids to move at a quicker pace,” district Superintendent Bennie Newton told the Brattleboro Reformer. “We’re hoping the four-day week won’t come into play next year.”

To just cut one day of instruction without making significant changes to the school day and curriculum runs the risk of selling kids short. And constantly changing the school calendar is hard on working parents, who rely on consistency to provide child care when their kids aren’t in school.

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Rex recommended eliminating report card ratings for this school year because of the severity of the cuts. Most cuts made to the state Education Department are passed on to schools, with roughly 96 percent of the agency's money going to the state's 85 school districts, according to state estimates.

The state sets high expectations for schools, but there's an assumption that the state will provide an adequate level of resources for schools to reach those goals, Rex said. With this degree of cuts, test results may not reflect what schools are capable of doing

One major consideration she would keep in mind would be the effects of changes on families, such as a four-day week, she said. Most families are working families, and if children aren't in school, she questioned where they would go.

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In a country that once amazed the world with its visionary investments in transportation, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, is now in the process of unpaving itself: in a number of states, local governments are breaking up roads they can no longer afford to maintain, and returning them to gravel. Emerging nations are making huge efforts to upgrade their roads, their ports and their schools. Yet in America we’re going backward.

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The recession has brought hard times to municipalities across our nation and around the world. While analyzing their budgets, looking for places to trim expenses, municipal leaders in a number of communities have noticed that they have been paying out a large, steady flow of funds to pay the power and maintenance bills for the streetlights which their towns and cities operate.

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We’re told that we have no choice, that basic government functions — essential services that have been provided for generations — are no longer affordable. And it’s true that state and local governments, hit hard by the recession, are cash-strapped. But they wouldn’t be quite as cash-strapped if politicians were willing to consider emergency funding for the states.

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In an Aug. 27 memo to County Manager Greg Lucero, Public Works Director Scott Altherr said the county spends $120,000 to $130,000 of Highway User Revenue Fund (HURF) money each year on street lighting. “Many of the lights did not meet the criteria of serving a traffic safety purpose. HURF dollars cannot be used to pay for these lights.”

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Even local astronomers think shutting off hundreds of street lights in Santa Rosa’s junior college neighborhood is a good idea.

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Deputy Public Works Director Jason Nutt said the 1.1-square-mile junior college neighborhood, among the most well-lit in the city, will be the initial target of the reduction program. Of the 675 streets lights in that area, 307 will be turned off. Another 145 lights, mostly located mid-block in residential areas, will be shut off at midnight rather than left on until dusk.

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George Harvey, library board president, said his group realized it needed to come up with a budget and that "we looked at a lot of scenarios," including keeping normal summer hours throughout the library system.

"We hope to raise enough money in July and August," Harvey said of the plan that was approved June 15. "We didn't want to shut everything down. We felt it was important to keep the main library open, and these are modest cutbacks."

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More than half of that shortfall is the result of lower-than-expected sales tax revenue, a memo from Interim Finance Director Frank Abeyta and Deputy City Manager Mike Letcher shows. The rest is because of a failure to account for higher gas prices; higher pension, insurance, prison and payroll costs; and a transfer of funds to the state, records show.

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The police department got the two OH-58C helicopters from the Department of Defense in 1995 and used them for missions including responding to wildfires, surveillance and public safety. The helicopters were grounded in December. Despite trying to raise taxes as a measure to meet budget deficits, the move fell through, because the voters did not approve of the measure. Therefore, the only option was to cut down on government measures.

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But across the bay in San Francisco it’s a totally different story. Last month, Muni officials said that they’d managed to cobble together enough money from city and regional transportation bodies to restore about half of the service cuts they’d made in May. Yesterday, they announced that they have a plan to roll back nearly two-thirds of the cuts.

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This is a standard practice in fire companies across the United States of America. It's one of the things that fire departments do, this is not new," explained Mayor Michael Nutter. By City Council District, Councilwoman Joan Krajewski leads the pack with 67 brownouts scheduled this month. But that's largely due to the fact that the engine 38 fire house has been demolished to make way for a new one two years from now. Its personnel & equipment has been moved to Engine 33, 3 and half miles away.

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Nearly five months after the dismantling of Clayton County’s C-TRAN bus service, a new, private, bus company is attempting to fill the void. QuickTransit, a local service catering specifically to Clayton residents, began operating on Monday. With a fleet of five buses and six paratransit vans, the service is picking up two of C-TRAN’s busiest routes.

Prior to owning QuickTransit, Clayton County resident, Tywanna Albro, was a stay-at-home mother. However, following the closure of C-TRAN, Albro and her husband decided to take matters into their own hands. “Clayton County is really suffering because there is no transportation,” Albro said. “Businesses are closing, people are losing their jobs, or they are paying lots of money on taxis. We actually took a leap of faith and invested our own money into the service. We bought buses from Virginia and we bought buses from California. We are growing, and we are currently looking for more drivers.”

Riverdale Mayor Evelyn Wynn-Dixon said residents and businesses along the Ga. Highway 85 corridor were deeply impacted by the shutdown of C-TRAN. She believes the system can be a great benefit to the city. “It’s not only going to help with our citizens, but it is going to help our economic development, and make us attractive.”

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Most of its 13,000 public school teachers approved the furlough Friday plan because although they must swallow an 8% reduction in their pay packages, their time off for holidays and teacher planning days is left untouched. A proposal to bring in random drug testing for teachers has also been pushed back. “Everybody knows about those slack Friday afternoons, nothing ever gets done, so whats the point?”

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Faced with laying off 39 teachers last year, the 4,000 student district chose instead to close down schools one day a week, cutting over $400,000 from their budget. And it paid of in more ways than one.

Kids came to school more often, as did their teachers, cutting the substitute teacher budget by two thirds. Test scores rose, and the graduation rate will reach 80 percent for the first time in years, say district officials. Working parents in Peach County were able to send their kids to an inexpensive “Monday care” program sponsored by the local Boys and Girls club.

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Jim Rex collaborated with educators across the state to create five proposals that he said would save money and do the least amount of harm to students' learning. Local school leaders would have the flexibility to decide what's best for their students. His requests, announced Tuesday, were:

--Changing state laws that prohibit more cost-effective school calendars, such as eliminating the state's minimum 180-day school year requirement and allowing districts to operate four-day weeks.
--Limiting testing this year to only what is required by federal law, which would mean a one-year exemption from end-of-course tests and social studies tests.
--Eliminating 2009 ratings for schools and districts on the state report card.
--Giving districts flexibility to use state money as they see fit instead of how lawmakers mandate.
--Enabling districts to eliminate programs that lawmakers demand.

On the potential of moving to a four-day week, Rex said school districts immediately would see a 20 percent savings in fuel, drivers' salaries and other personnel costs. Schools would have longer days but not spend as much money in delivering instruction, he said.

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]You can’t argue the economics: the costs of paving roads will go up as oil becomes more expensive. Therefore, it is inherently unsustainable to manage that sort of infrastructure. So, it has to be ground up as the first step, turned to gravel. But If this persists (and it likely will) it might mean the development of different sorts of vehicles, with higher, lighter suspension, designed for gravel but capable of highway driving as well. A modern day Model T.

It’s worth noting that a road that is converted to gravel is only a few steps from having wood ties laid down, and rails laid on those. Perhaps we will see a return to light rail and trolleys in these areas, a few years after the gravel returns. And in the longer term, perhaps we will start to move away from a transportation system based on low cost oil.

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municipal leaders in a number of communities have noticed that they have been paying out a large, steady flow of funds to pay the power and maintenance bills for the streetlights which their towns and cities operate.. While some municipalities may be shutting off some lights now, with the intention of turning them back on "when things improve" (as they are taking other temporary measures, such as laying off employees, hoping to re-hire them before long), others are realizing that unnecessary or inefficient lighting is something wasteful which should be cut from their budgets permanently. The wisest of these towns and cities are starting from scratch, and defining under what circumstances they should be illuminating the night, to what levels, and during what hours.

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Regarding street lights: I couldn’t find solid numbers on how much energy or money is spent on street lights in America, but estimates run from 10% to 25% of municipal energy budgets. Alternatives like solar-powered street lights require significant capital outlay, as do longer-life LED lights. There is no capital available, and the population won’t agree to taxes. We will have to see if darker streets are actually more dangerous: that is not obviously the case in cities that are cutting back on street lights.

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I don’t agree that we must maintain the 20th century infrastructure for 21st century progress and prosperity. We need to define a new set of principles to frame the discussion, and sustainability should be high on that list.

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perhaps the reason they are being labled the 'Party of No' is not because suddenly they are bringing nothing to the table...but rather they are not being allowed a seat at the table.

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Since Republicans traditionally have as many ideas on economic policy as liberals do

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It is generally accepted that the Bush tax cuts prevented the economy from going into full recession after the 2001 WTC attack... Lower taxes stimulate more spending which generates increased economic activity at all levels thus resulting in a net increase in revenue

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This crisis was caused when banks were forced by the Federal govt to lend money to people who could not pay it back.

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Like freedom.

A balanced budget.

And, oh yeah... personal accountability

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The Tea Party didn't defeat the Republican Party any more than my lunchtime sandwich defeated my stomach.

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