Scientists Warn, Magnetic Fields Shifting, Poles May Flip, 70 Meals for Less Than 70 Bucks, 25 Year Shelf Life, Specials for LP Listeners http://www.preparewithleakproject.com 1-888-411-0779
The Magnetic Field Is Shifting. The Poles May Flip. This Could Get Bad. The shield that protects the Earth from solar radiation is under attack from within. We can’t prevent it, but we ought to prepare.https://undark.org/article/books-alan...
Could smartphones and cameras be our most powerful weapon for social justice? Through her organization Witness, Yvette Alberdingk Thijm is developing strategies and technologies to help activists use video to protect and defend human rights. She shares stories of the growing power of distant witnesses -- and a call to use the powerful tools at our disposal to capture incidents of injustice. > Check out more TED Talks: http://www.ted.com
The TED Talks channel features the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more. > Follow TED on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TEDTalks > Like TED on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TED
Once again: empty seats for members of the public while a full council table turns out for a quite unusual lengthy Mesa City Council Study Session - Now what might they be "studying today"???????????? One of the keys of economic development is infrastructure to support commercial and residential growth - in this case more expansion in Phase 3 of The Greenfield Water Reclamation Expansion. Notice that's RECLAIMED water, where any impurities or toxic substances need to get removed - some of those are mandated and required by federal laws that the City must test for their presence, others from prior agricultural pesticide practices may or may not be hazardous . . . . Water + Wastewater Treatment eat up a HUGE CHUNK of the city's budget funded by taxpayers - District 6 gets an disproportionate investment in comparison to other districts. What was published as the study session's agenda is below
Published on Feb 1, 2018 Views: 23 Duration: 1:15:35 _________________________________________________________________________
Please take the time to access the links provided for more details and information Economic Development Advisory Board Minutes 05 Dec '17 Audit, Finance & Enterprise Housing & Community Development
Amazing Imagery today! Satellites are shacking and NASA + NOAA haven't updated data in far too long
Published on Feb 1, 2018
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For a ton of great videos, click our name and find the Created Playlists at the bottom of our channel page! [ or click here http://www.youtube.com/user/suspiciou... ]
Calling on "Spoon-fed" reporters from mainstream media - The Arizona Republic and The East Valley Tribune - the City of Mesa was fast to respond to a report on January 24, 2018 from what they called "a national watchdog group" that monitors the finances of state and city governments. Mesa City Manager Chris Brady appeared nervously relieved last week at a City Council Study Session 22 Jan that a final budget audit became what he wanted to call "A Non-Issue". At Truth in Accounting (TIA), we believe that taxpayers and citizens deserve easy-to-understand, truthful, and transparent financial information from their governments. Because government financial statements do not report all liabilities, elected officials and citizens are making financial decisions without knowing the true financial condition of their government. The lack of accuracy and transparency in government accounting prevents even an experienced user of government financial documents from understanding and evaluating a public-sector entity’s financial health. TIA believes it is imperative to provide an honest accounting of each city's financial condition.
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Admittedly your MesaZona blogger is not a wizard on the intricacies of the city's budget planning and accounting principles, but many questions tend to linger over time to bite-back over how the city's finances get managed in one or another when they fall far short of good governance practices for openness, transparency and accountability. Time-and-time again, city officials don't appear to rise to the challenges of shining some sunlight on what they do behind-the-scenes resorting to tactics creating confusion in a fog to deter scrutiny of any kind whatsoever - disclosure is denied. And that's so easy-to-do when the public is dis-engaged.
Locally the city can jigger and juggle and scrub-the-books all they want when hardly anyone asks any questions at all, but when state, national or federal organizations take a look it can get dodgy when the city circles-the-wagons to defend and protect the entrenched political machine from what they interpret as an attack: instead of Mesa City Manager Chris Brady, the Chief Executive of city government - taking "the heat" for questionable budget practices, Brady passes it on to Michael Pennington to deflect any heat from himself in two reporting quickly published days after this public report [see below]. Blogger's Note: The issue of unfunded municipal debt was one of the main platform issues in Jeremy Whittaker's 2106 election campaign to unseat the incumbent representing District 2 on the Mesa City Council.
On January 24, Truth in Accounting released its second Financial State of the Cities report, a comprehensive analysis of the fiscal health of the nation's most populous cities based on fiscal year 2016 comprehensive annual financial reports. This year, we have expanded our study to include the 75 most populated cities.
The study found that 64 cities do not have enough money to pay all of their bills, and in total, the cities have racked up $335.4 billion in unfunded municipal debt. The study ranks the cities according to their Taxpayer Burden or Surplus™, which is each taxpayer's share of city bills after available assets have been tapped. Check out the data for your city at the State Data Lab.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Government reports are lengthy, cumbersome, and sometimes misleading documents. At Truth in Accounting (TIA), we believe that taxpayers and citizens deserve easy-to-understand, truthful, and transparent financial information from their governments.
This is our second Financial State of the Cities (FSOC) report, a comprehensive analysis of the fiscal health of the nation's most populous cities based on fiscal year 2016 comprehensive annual financial reports. This year, we have expanded our study to include the 75 most populated cities.
Here's a brief upload announcing the release of the report on 25 January
Phoenix, Mesa earn 'D' grades in financial-health review due to pension debt Jessica Boehm, The Republic | Published 5:01 p.m. MT Jan. 24, 2018 | Updated 2:06 p.m. MT Jan. 25, 2018 https://www.azcentral.com/story
"The Valley's two largest cities earned "D" grades in an annual review of government financial health because they don't have enough money to pay their bills.
Truth in Accounting, a national fiscal watchdog non-profit, released its "Financial State of the Cities" report this week, which analyzes the financial audits of the 75 most populous cities in the country . . "
'Phony government accounting'
Cities often consider their budgets "balanced" even though they have millions — and sometimes billions — of dollars in unfunded pension and retiree healthcare liabilities, because they consider it a debt that can be paid down the road.
That's "phony government accounting," Weinberg said.
Report slams Mesa’s pensions liability as city says it’s coping
"Mesa and Phoenix have earned “D” grades from a national watchdog group that monitors the finances of state and city governments. The report, released Jan. 24 by a Chicago-based organization called Truth in Accounting, said Mesa and Phoenix finances are tottering largely because of unfunded obligations for pensions and retiree health care. “Large sums of money have been pledged to city employees, teachers, police officers and other public servants, but the funds have not been set aside to finance the programs adequately,” the report said. . . "
According to the TIA analysis - -
Mesa’s unfunded debt burden of $784.6 million works out to $5,900 for each taxpayer largely because of pension obligations.
Message from Alex Howard, Deputy Director of The Sunlight Foundation
Dear Sunlighter Happy New Year from Sunlight! We have a lot of irons in the fire in 2018, which we'll be letting you know about over the coming weeks. Keep an eye on our projects! For over a decade, Sunlight has stood up for the power of open data and journalism to inform the public, hold governments and politicians accountable, and strengthen democracies. And for almost a decade, I've tracked the intersection of open data, journalism, open source software and open government, publishing research on the art and science of data journalism that combines those threads. Now, I've scrubbed into the State of Open Data project, seeding the initial network scan on journalists, media and open data. Now, it's open to your contributions. . . . while journalists continue to be appropriately skeptical of open data published by governments online, a growing number of media organizations are downloading, analyzing and reporting on open data from multiple sources in ways that inform, engage and empower the public. Over the past decade, pioneers in the global transparency movement have adopted and adapted principles and practices from the open source software world, where "showing your work" and collaborating around shared code are important signals for both trust and transparency. We want to hear about all of the good work that isn't currently listed, and the challenges that persist for access, creating or using open data as a source and resource for journalists. We want to hear about the people, events, organizations, networks and communities that are driving change, social impact and public knowledge, and the places they gather.Please weigh in on all of the history, events, research, organizations, data-driven journalism projects, and other details I missed in the initial scan – and get involved in the 21 environment scans that are underway.
