According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, the funds will be used to replace Iowa's 50 oldest state-wide vehicles.  The nine buses and 41 vans that will be replaced are part of 17 of Iowa's transit systems.

The Federal Transit Administration administers grants totaling more than $10 billion to support a variety of locally planned, constructed and operated public transportation systems throughout the United States.  Transportation systems typically include buses, subways, light rail, commuter rail, streetcars, monorail, passenger ferry boats and inclined railways.

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The board of the Mississippi Valley DOVIA chapter announces its upcoming workshop on Thursday, March 3, from 1:30 pm to 3:30 pm in Meeting Room B at the Eastern Avenue Branch of the Davenport Public Library. The program "Social Media - How Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Other Sites Can

Help You Recruit and Connect with Volunteers" will be presented by Alan Campbell, Associate Director for Communications for Eastern Iowa Community College District. This event is free and open to the public. The Eastern Avenue Branch facility is wireless; participants are welcome to bring in their own laptops.

This workshop may be of interest for any professionals supporting their business communications through social media, and particularly for non-profit organizations engaging volunteers through their missions. Register for the March 3 workshop by contacting MVDOVIA Facilitator Sherry Gogulich at 309-786-1466 x110 or  sherryg@childabuseqc.org.

The mission of MVDOVIA is to enhance the development and growth of volunteer program administrators through communication, education, and networking, and to promote volunteerism in the Quad Cities. For membership information contact info@mvdovia.org.

THURSDAY, March 3, 2011

1:30 PM - 3:30 PM

Davenport Public Library - Eastern Avenue Branch

Meeting Room B

6000 Eastern Avenue, Davenport, IA

Expert Reveals How Alternative Energy Will Put Americans Back to Work

The old jobs are dead. Long live the new jobs.

That's the message Tom Rand sees in the current news cycle as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced in January that unemployment rates would take four to five years to get back to "normal." In the meantime, several states announced that alternative energy jobs were soaring.

"In America, we used to make things," said Rand, a new millennium combination of scientist and venture capitalist who believes the country's future hinges on the development and ownership of alternative energy technology. "We built cars, homes and other manufactured goods that we'd use here and export abroad. As our quality of life was raised, other countries used their lower economic classes to make up a new generation of cheap labor aimed at undercutting American made goods. Today, we have millions of manufacturing workers who have been displaced and are unable to find work. In the meantime, our dependence on fossil fuels continues to make Americans slaves to foreign oil. Alternative energy is the industry that can break that chain in a variety of ways."

Rand, author of the book KICK the Fossil Fuel Habit: 10 Clean Technologies to Save Our World from Greenleaf Book Group Press (www.tomrand.com), said he is already seeing an explosion of new jobs in the alternative energy sector.

"A Colorado solar energy company is expected to create 1,200 new jobs within the next couple of years thanks to a $400 million loan guaranteed through the US department of energy and another $110 million in equity financing," said Rand. "The best thing about it is the company, Abound Solar, won't require the new hires to have experience in alternative energy. Because the jobs are manufacturing oriented, the typical skills learned in traditional manufacturing jobs are transferrable to the new initiative. And it's not just manufacturing, these technologies need to be installed. We're rebuilding an energy infrastructure, and that takes the trades - all the trades and lots of them."

Rand added that the wind power industry also received a big boost from the government with the renewing of a key tax credit, which is hoped to increase wind project installations by about 50 percent. That's just one part of the equation, though.

"A national Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) policy was before Congress last year, but it didn't pass," Rand added. "If Congress succeeds in passing it this year, it would solidify the wind energy market enough that it could create several hundred thousand jobs as a result. Meanwhile in Florida, the renewable energy industry is hoping the legislature will pass a $1 consumer fee that would generate 95,000 new alternative energy jobs in that state. The bottom line is that the new energy jobs aren't a myth -- they are out there, and not only can they put America back to work, but they can also secure our energy independence for generations to come. It's just smart business for America."

Scott County Auditor Roxanna Moritz will announce the posting of the "County Checkbook" on-line at a news conference scheduled for Tuesday, February 22, 2011, at 10:00 a.m. at the Scott County Administrative Center, 600 West 4th Street, Davenport, Iowa. She and other county officials will demonstrate how to access this new function from the county website.

"I am very pleased to announce this latest innovation in providing information to the public on how county government spends the taxpayers' dollars," Moritz said. "My office staff began the discussion on how to implement this improvement in late 2009. We experimented with some different options last year, finally settling on the product we are releasing today, she said.

The public will have access to the accounts payable reports prepared for the Board of Supervisors which shows spending by county department and separate government agencies for which the county provides accounts payable services. Also included will be Board reports for county spending by purchase cards. The separate government agencies include Scott County Assessor, Scott County Library, Scott Emergency Communications Center, Davenport City Assessor and some payments for the Iowa Department of Human Services based in Scott County.

The reports will be displayed in a searchable PDF format. They will include an alphabetic listing of vendors as well as a departmental report.

Scott County will be the first major county in Iowa to provide its "checkbook" on-line for the general public to see. "We are joining a growing number of counties and cities in the nation in providing better transparency for local government," Moritz said. "Providing this information to the public will help Scott County to meet a Board goal of regional leadership," she added.