Apollo Alliance and Americans for Energy Independence Team Up

According to the press release that came out January 29th, Americans for Energy Independence (ei2025) announced that it would be merging with the Apollo Alliance to further their shared goals of reducing the nation’s dependence on foreign oil, cutting global warming pollution and seeding the clean energy economy.

Both organizations have good mission of energy independence, green energy and good jobs. Getting these groups together underscores the important goal of limiting the influence of Multinational Oil firms and authoritarian regimes.

Read the press release here.

Community Benefits Agreements

Forward thinking communities are using around the nation are using Community Benefit Agreements (CBA). The Partnership for Working Families defines a CBA: as a legally enforceable contract, signed by community groups and by a developer, setting forth a range of community benefits that the developer agrees to provide as part of a development project.

Sometimes they are large private developments or sometimes they are developments that have public and private funds. In any event they are often much better for the communities around the developments. Often these large developments can just displace many of the local residents. With a CBA they can participate in the project.

I found a great blog that is starting to list all of the CBAs. The author, Amy Lavine, reported that many CBAs have project labor agreements (PLA) included. Check it out here.

It is important to note the Project Labor Agreements are limited to the construction of the project. CBAs can include provisions for wages for workers that work at the shops and businesses on the project site after construction is finished.

PLA Brings Home Run for Washington Nationals and DC Community

The report says "On Time and On Budget". Though I am not a fan of the Washington Nationals team, I am a fan of the way the organization works with its community. The Nationals are building a new baseball stadium for the upcoming season. They had a Project Labor Agreement (PLA) that included a role for local residents. I had the privilege of working on a project like this.

Some of the highlights of the project include:

72% of all apprenticeship hours have been performed by District residents

87% of all new apprentices working on the stadium project have been District residents

One-half of all new stadium hires are District residents

You can read the article here.

K-12 School Construction

Many contractors find that school construction is a good place work. There is a great website that has a great knowledge base for the ins and outs of school Construction in California. It is the Coalition for Adequate School Housing (C.A.S.H). The website has a great section that lists a lot of information.

As I found on the website they are working on a school bond for 2008. This will be a statewide school bond. In order to pass a school bond 50 percent + 1 vote to pass a statewide election. Local school districts are always undergoing construction projects and knowing when to get involved is always important. As they say timing is everything. Before the election is a good time to find out about the time lines and what opportunities are around the corner.

Local school bonds only need 55 percent + 1 vote to pass. This is often a process that take several years to actually get to work. The first part is assess the needs and the second part of this is putting the initiative on the ballot.

Ill write more about this in the coming weeks.