Policy on the #NNK

As if the title of this Bloomberg article (metered) is not bad enough, the subtitle—Even if you put everything into the right blue bins, a lot of plastics will end up in landfills and the ocean. Consumers can't solve this problem.—is even more telling about the problem facing us now and far into the future. And then there's the intro graf: Americans were not set up for success in recycling plastics. Even before China stopped accepting plastic refuse from abroad, 91 percent of potentially recyclable plastic in the U.S. ended up in landfills – or worse, in the oceans. Europe does a little better, with only 70 percent getting tossed. Despite the one-two punch, keep reading. You'll learn how single-stream recycling has a ton of unintended consequences, how differences in municipal recycling programs confuses consumers, and how combination packaging prevents recycling.

Lancaster County Pay raises, Bay Transit funds assured in Lancaster budget ( Rappahannock Record ) Kilmarnock council adopts $4.8 million budget ( Rappahannock Record ) Irvington council struggles with budget; approves restaurant permit application ( Rappahannock Record ) Supervisors favor school construction in two phases ( Rappahannock Record ) Northumberland County Board lowers boom on volunteer rescue squads ( Northumberland Echo ) County raises budget ( Northumberland Echo ) Richmond County Westmoreland County A number of applications for exceptions are going before the Westmoreland County Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors : Taylor Town tower : They wish to construct a new communications/radio tower to increase the effectiveness of the County’s police, fire, and emergency services personnel. James Monroe Highway tower : The applicants wish to construct a new communications/radio tower to increase the effectiveness of the County’s police, fire, and eme...

Tools and Resources If you require audio transcription, try Deepgram . With the free service brain, users' audio is machine transcribed quickly and with high accuracy. Found on Journalist's Toolbox . ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer : Use this database to view summaries of 3 million tax returns from tax-exempt organizations and see financial details such as their executive compensation and revenue and expenses. You can browse IRS data released since 2013 and access over 9.6 million tax filing documents going back as far as 2001. Create comparison tables for your website with Compare Ninja . Free and paid plans. At work How to Revisit Requesting a Raise From Your Boss offers specific advice. (Career Contessa) The Most Productive Meetings Have Fewer Than 8 People briefly describes the problem and offers specific actions you can take to fix it. (HBR) Girlboss Radio with Sophia Amoruso on iTunes: On each episode of the Girlboss Radio, Sophia interviews boundary-pushing...

Lancaster County The Lancaster County Board of Supervisors meets Thursday, June 28 at 7:00 pm at the Lancaster County Administration Building. The agenda includes: public comments, a presentation by VDOT, public hearing on the CY 2018 Proposed Tax Levy Ordinance, review of financials, board reports, and closed meeting if necessary. The meeting is open to the public. Lancaster Community Library has two job openings . Apply by June 28. The Lancaster County School Board meets Tuesday, July 10 at 5:30 pm at the LCPS Annex Building. The agenda includes: reports, financial review, VSBA policies (PDF) second reading, and action on LCPS Gifted Plan 2018-2023 (PDF). Town of Irvington Commons Development Committee is holding a public meeting Monday, June 25 from 7:00-8:00 pm at Irvington Baptist Church (53 King Carter Dr). The Town Commons survey results will be presented for discussion. All town residents are encouraged to attend. The Town of Irvington Town Council has called a ...

Lancaster County Supervisors balk on raising tax rate ( Rappahannock Record ) Change in food truck regs rejected ( Rappahannock Record ) Northumberland County Bridge in Northumberland Co. Closed - Rt. 620 (Kissinger Springs Rd.) (rivercountrynews.com) Richmond County Westmoreland County The Colonial Beach Trolley is running. It started Memorial Day weekend and runs through Labor Day. Cross-county Did you know there's a Northern Neck Beekeepers FB group ? NAPS Awarded Grant from Keep Virginia Beautiful for Creek Cleanup : The Northumberland Association for Progressive Stewardship has received a $750 grant from Keep Virginia Beautiful to help pay for the costs associated with the annual NAPS Fall Creek Cleanup, scheduled for Sunday, September 30 . "NAPS anticipates that thousands of pounds of unsightly and dangerous trash will be removed from the waterways – not only for beautification, but to restore the habitat of both land and sea life." For more informatio...

Tools and Resources Wild Apricot's 10 Inexpensive (or Free) Nonprofit Marketing Tools That Create Stunning Visuals has some terrific suggestions. Crello , for example, is a graphic design tool, like Canva. Mobile app Legend transforms text into a moving image. Animaker , with free and paid options, creates animated vids. Need guidance for planning an event? Head over to The Media Event Party Planner and you'll find a comprehensive list of what to do when. And you can ignore the media part! ( ResourceMedia ) The questions in 10 Facebook Event FAQs: Answers for Marketers are timely and answers easily understood. Yay! (Social Media Examiner) Screenshot Guru takes high-resolution screen captures of any website or tweet. How to Build an Email List for Your Nonprofit is a must-read. (Wired Impact) This: Why Your Nonprofit Should Retweet Its Own Tweets – and How to Do It (Nonprofit Tech for Good). At work Developing Employees is Like Brushing Your Teeth describes the ch...

Lancaster County Lancaster County Public Schools has published the SY 2018-2019 Lancaster Middle School supply list (Word). And LMS is asking for donations to classrooms: Packs of pencils (Students are always in need of replacement pencils throughout the year!) Disinfectant (Clorox) wipes Bottle of hand sanitizer Pencil top erasers Highlighters Dry erase markers Zipper seal baggies (gallon, quart or sandwich size) Photo credit: Claudia Snell on VisualHunt / CC BY-NC-ND Lancaster County Public Schools has published the official calendar for SY 2018-2019 (PDF). There's a Town of Irvington Commons Development Committee meeting Thursday, June 21 from 1:00-2:00 pm at the Irvington Town Office (235 Steamboat Rd, Irvington). Northumberland County The Northumberland County Treasurer's Office has a full-time position opening. Learn more and apply ; applications due July 3. Richmond County The Richmond County Wetlands Board is holding a public hearing Thursday, Ju...

In light of the opioid crisis, this is good news: Motrin, Tylenol combination as effective as opioids for pain in the ER, study says . "Although this study focused on treatment while in the emergency department, if we can successfully treat acute extremity pain with a non-opioid combination painkiller in there, then we might be able to send these patients home without an opioid prescription," said lead researcher Dr. Andrew Chang. He is a professor of emergency medicine at Albany Medical Center, in Albany, N.Y. . . . "If we can limit people's first exposure to opioids, that may have a long-term effect in reducing people's risk to becoming opioid-dependent," said Kyriacou, who wrote an editorial that accompanied the study. Photo: Getting A Cast On His Arm by slgckgc under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Brookings' Nicol Turner-Lee spoke passionately about expanding broadband to rural areas, connecting the not-yet-connected older Americans, and better serving poor Americans with internet in her introductory remarks March 27 at the Free State Foundation 's annual telecomm policy conference. Turner-Lee was one of five experts on "All-Star Panel I: Solutions for Connecting America and Closing Digital Divides." You can read her initial comments in this excerpt of the the complete transcript (PDF). On the panel were moderator Seth Cooper (Senior Fellow, The Free State Foundation) and panelists James Assey (Executive Vice President, NCTA), John Jones (Senior Vice President of Public Policy & Government Relations, CenturyLink), Tom Power (Senior Vice President & General Counsel, CTIA), and Nicol Turner-Lee (Fellow, Governance Studies, Center for Technology Innovation, Brookings). Some key takeaways: Cooper: "What is the future of rural America?" Turn...

Tools and Resources Get royalty free music at Music Screen : There are some limitations and requirements. With the demise of Storify, we lost a valuable storytelling tool. Thank goodness there's Wakelet . You can use it online or on your mobile device; both iOS and Android are supported. What you get with Wakelet: Tweets, images (your own or from Unsplash , files, and text. All my Wakelet-saved storifies are here . How to Make Custom Images for Your Blog Posts Without Hiring a Designer is instructive. For instance, Patel explains the Creative Commons licenses, includes free image sites, and as the title says, shows you how to make a custom image with step-by-step instructions. All with the end goal in mind: Images should be a main component of all your blog posts. They improve your readers' experience, which leads to a more educated and satisfied audience that enjoys your content more and spends more time on your site. Revisiting DesignEvo : You may recall the 2017 mention...

Lancaster County On July 1, the Lancaster County Sheriff's Office will implement an updated Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) policy (PDF). Differences between the 2017 policy (PDF) and the 2018 policy are: Requesting Records from this Office section (page 1) You may print and complete this form to mail or fax your records request to the sheriff's office. Where to Send A FOIA Requests or Questions Regarding FOIA (page 3) NOTE: Requests sent by e-mail are not "received" until the e-mail is actually opened. All such e-mail requests are acknowledged by the records officer who opens the e-mail. Similarly, requests sent by facsimile are not "received" until the facsimile is actually printed. All facsimile requests are acknowledged by either a telephone call to the requestor or by return facsimile acknowledging the date and time of receipt of the request. Printing (page 4) The costs are at the hourly rate of the employee assigned to answer the req...

Jessica McCrory Calarco 's Why Rich Kids Are So Good at the Marshmallow Test is a must-read if the last you read about the subject was the original paper Predicting adolescent cognitive and self-regulatory competencies from preschool delay of gratification: Identifying diagnostic conditions. As the title of Calarco's article suggests, there is new life for the study of delayed gratification. The long and the short of Calarco's update on this work is this: Ultimately, the new study finds limited support for the idea that being able to delay gratification leads to better outcomes. Instead, it suggests that the capacity to hold out for a second marshmallow is shaped in large part by a child’s social and economic background—and, in turn, that that background, not the ability to delay gratification, is what’s behind kids’ long-term success. Find the time to read this piece in the Atlantic. It's well-written and interesting, sharing gems such as this: There’s plenty of ...

Tools and Resources LightPDF is a free online tool. You can use it to convert to and from PDF as well as OCR, merge documents, sign, and more (see the image, right). What better source of free, quality images than professional communicators? Here's a list of sites from Progressive Communicators of DC members: visualhunt Women of Color in Tech Royalty-free images from Getty Images of Empowerment Canva now offers printing. That's right. You can print flyers, post cards, business cards, and more! When you're done designing, select "Order prints." Journalist's Toolbox provides a wealth of resources even for those who are not journalists. Examples: Vennage (infographic maker), Social-Searcher (search engine for social), Bit.ly (link shortener, tracker), and Census.Ire.org (census data access made easier). At work The Leadership Development Deficit: How to Build Your Talent Pipeline , June 6, will explore How effective leadership development can mak...

Lancaster County The Lancaster County Board of Supervisors is holding a work session Tuesday, June 5 at 5:30 pm to discuss tax rates for calendar year 2018. The meeting takes place at the Lancaster County Administration Building (8311 Mary Ball Rd, Lancaster, in the Board Meeting Room). The Lancaster County Board of Supervisors and School Board are holding a joint work session Thursday, June 14 at 5:30 pm to discuss the proposed FY 19 School Capital Improvement Requests. The meeting takes place at the Lancaster County Administration Building (8311 Mary Ball Rd, Lancaster, in the Board Meeting Room). The Town of Kilmarnock has received $1,000 from Keep Virginia Beautiful as part of the organization's annual "30 Grants in Thirty Days" grant program. Kilmarnock will use the money at Town Centre Park for cigarette litter prevention. The town writes on the website , The "Don’t Be a Butt" litter campaign is designed to give patrons of Town Centre Park cigarette...