Note: Though this only covers a week of news, there are many articles I felt needed to be included for the long and broad view. You will find many are  just the ...  phrase ... the Google search term captured. I view 500+ articles an issue.  Though cryptic, I’ve included those that have some small point of value to those pursuing regional perspectives. One thing you might note is the publication source and the locality for the story – without global search, many of these articles would never be found. The prime goal of this effort is to make the existing  regional networking organizations visible. Given the importance of information and language,  some might want to look at 16. a). In the U.S. this relates to the present National Infrastructure for Community Statistics effort.  Please forward this to any who might benefit from this mix – and contribute to it. Suggestions always welcome.  Ed.

 

 1. Council of Governments marks milestone - Kilgore News Herald - Kilgore, TX, USA

 

East Texas Council of Governments (ETCOG) celebrated its 35th anniversary Thursday with a party at the office on Stone Road.

 

ETCOG was established June 8, 1970 in Kilgore by 32 local governments representing the 14-county East Texas region. Although many changes have occurred over the past 35 years, the initial goal of “local governments working together to solve common problems,” still remains the same.

 

The 14 counties of Anderson, Camp, Cherokee, Gregg, Harrison, Henderson, Marion, Panola, Rains, Rusk, Smith, Upshur, Van Zandt and Wood and 18 cities formed the initial membership of ETCOG. Since that time, an additional 55 cities, 31 independent school districts and 14 special purpose districts have joined the voluntary association making ETCOG the second largest council of governments in the State of Texas.

...

 

 2. Catalyst for global stability - The Japan Times – Japan

 

Asia's rapid economic growth, vast population and strategic geographical location are among the factors suggesting that the region should play a more prominent role in the international community. To cite but one example of Asia's influence on global issues, it is predicted that the rapid growth of energy use in Asia will make this region the source of nearly half of global greenhouse gas emissions by 2010.

 

To help the world cope with such problems, Asian countries must raise their own political consciousness and prepare themselves to make a greater contribution to the international community. The creation of an Asian regional grouping and heightened regional consciousness could serve as effective catalysts for Asian countries to play a more positive and active role in world affairs.

 

A regional grouping of Asian countries, particularly those of East Asia, could serve to make China more conscious of its international responsibilities without feeling "pressured" by the rich industrial "West." ...

 

 3. Our Opinion: Transportation is too expensive to do nothing - Tucson Citizen - Tucson, AZ, USA

 

Tucson Citizen

 

So you thought you were saving money by voting - four times - to reject a sales tax to fund transportation improvements?

Turns out, you were wrong. Those "no" votes actually resulted in a far larger hit to your pocketbook.

 

Nearly two-thirds of Tucson's major streets are in poor or mediocre condition, according to TRIP, a Washington, D.C.-based transportation research group. At the other end of the scale, less than one-quarter are in good condition.

 

And those shoddy streets are costing you money - an extra $400 a year for the average car's maintenance necessitated by damage caused by potholes and cracks. Compare that with the estimated $29 a year you saved by voting against a half-cent sales tax increase to pay for a menu of transportation improvements.

 

Rejecting the sales tax was a bad deal financially.

 

And compare the additional maintenance costs for a Tucson vehicle with those of a Phoenix vehicle. Maricopa County voters last year OK'd a 20-year extension of a transportation sales tax that had been in place for 20 years, meaning Phoenix streets are in better condition. The research group estimated that a Phoenix driver spends $77 a year in vehicle maintenance to fix damage caused by bad roads.

...

The Pima Association of Governments, which has been designated the regional transportation authority for the county, is winding up work on a plan that would be funded by the sales tax.

...

 

 4. Regionalism not quid pro quo - Kentucky Post - Covington, KY, USA

 

Boone County officials say they might pull out of the regional health district because their residents are providing 41 percent of the district's local funds and are not getting an equitable percent of the services in return.

 

Why stop there?

 

If government is going to operate on a quid pro quo basis that begins and ends at the county line, then why don't officials broaden their evaluation to other services?

 

At some point Boone County should try to figure out what percentage of the 150,000 or so cars that travel the Brent Spence Bridge every day come from the county and then offer to pay that percentage of the $750 million for the new span. ...

...

RC: Northern Kentucky Area Development District

 

 5. Dalia Grybauskaitė, European Commissioner for Financial Programming and Budget - EUpolitix - Brussels, Belgium

...

Question: Talking to EU diplomats, or national officials, they say from both ends, say that waiting benefits the six, that a longer deal always benefits people who are net contributors rather than recipients.  Is this true?

 

Dalia Grybauskaitė:  Partly yes. The big losers in a  late deal will be the cohesion countries.  That means not only new member states, but also practically half of the so-called EU15 member states.  All cohesion countries, all countries that receive funding for multi-annual programming, including rural development, and all external actions which are based on multi-annual programming will be affected. That means that practically every member state will be affected by a late deal.

If the agreement is not struck in time the execution of the European budget in these areas will be delayed. We will not be able to execute the budget from January 2007.

...

 6. Branding

 

      a) Radcliff agencies divided over logo - Elizabethtown News Enterprise - Elizabethtown, KY, USA

...

City officials may use the logo, but in a way that won't take away from the existing city seal: a circle with a picture of the state and a star marking the town.

 

Kelly Barron, executive director of the Radcliff and Fort Knox Tourism Commission, also plans to keep her agency's logo, which features a cannon and tree. It would be expensive to replace on signs and brochures.

 

The "R" doesn't say anything about Fort Knox, which is home to the area's biggest tourist attraction: the Patton Museum, she said.

 

The agency has used the image for 14 years.

...

      b) The Death of 'Positioning' & the Birth of Wikification - Emediawire (press release) - Ferndale, WA, USA

 

For almost 30 years, companies have relied on “positioning,” a marketing theory that seeks to “own” a favorable image within target market minds, to increase sales. But the author of a forthcoming book on brand metrics claims that “positioning” no longer reflects current customer, economic or market realities, pointing to such major firms as McDonald's who have abandoned the theory. Instead, companies are adopting a new strategy that recognizes the impact of the Internet and globalization on purchasing and business behavior.

The signs of "positioning's" demise are everywhere. The number of branding failures, many based on "positioning," exceeds 90%, according to the consultancies Ernst & Young and McKinsey & Co. McDonald's, the premier mass market branding giant, has announced that it no longer subscribes to the “positioning” theory. Says Larry Light, McDonald's chief global marketing officer: "Identifying one brand position, communicating it in a repetitive manner is old-fashioned, out of date, out of touch." Even more bluntly, Light highlights "the end of brand positioning as we know it," calling it "marketing suicide." Echoing the developing consensus, top executives at Leo Burnett and other global agencies have said, "the old ways of marketing are not working any more."

...

 7. Meramec talks to commission - Richland Mirror - Richland, MO, USA

 

Representatives of the Meramec Regional Planning Commission (MRPC) attended the Monday, June 6 Pulaski County Commission meeting to discuss the commission's plans for the county to join the organization.

 

The board of the MRPC will officially consider the request during its June meeting at 7:30 p.m Thursday, June 9 at the MRPC's office, 4 Industrial Drive in St. James.

 

In May, the Pulaski County Commission hand-carried its request for membership to the MRPC board. After an informal discussion, the board asked Executive Director Richard Cavender to research the impact the additional county would have on MRPC and to make contact with the Lake Ozark Council of Governments, MRPC's counterpart at Camdenton to which Pulaski County currently is a member. If the MRPC board approves the request, the question would then be sent to the governor for final decision on changing the RPC boundaries. It is not known how long it would take for the decision to be made.

...

 

 8. NADO Applauds Senate Support for Regional Councils in First Responder Reform Bill  – NADO News, Washington, D.C.

...

The Senate committee adopted the first responder reform bill (S. 21) on April 13, 2005.  However, the accompanying committee report  (Senate Report 109-71) was released today. ...

 

Specifically, the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee report states:

The Committee recognizes that there is a long-standing, well established network of councils of governments, regional planning commissions, regional planning organizations, development districts and other multi-purpose associations of local governments that have the capability and expertise necessary to coordinate regional emergency response plans. The composition of these entities varies widely. These organizations, collectively known as Regional Councils, are multi-purpose, multi-jurisdictional public organizations created by local governments to respond to Federal and State programs. Many of them are bi-state or even tri-state and are officially recognized in the states and localities they serve. Regional Councils have a long history of working with each other on projects that cross regions and cross state lines. Having more than 40 years of experience in planning economic development, disaster recovery, and transportation and infrastructure analysis, they serve as conveners that bring together the public, private, and civic sectors. These Regional Councils may already be in a unique position to fill a void in planning and coordinating homeland security plans across jurisdictional boundaries while providing an unbiased and apolitical environment capable of analyzing needs based on merit alone without creating another layer of government bureaucracy. The Committee urges the Department to fully utilize Regional Councils in the grant-making process.

...

 

 9. Will rail help Tysons or gridlock it? – TimesCommunity.com - Virginia

 

The reality of commuter rail coming to Tysons Corner is that it could bring more traffic congestion than it cures, cost more than has been set aside to pay for it, and operate at a deficit, according to two speakers at the annual membership meeting of the McLean Citizens Association (MCA) last week.

 

Two others said rail will help ease gridlock and provide another alternative for commuters.

 

Bill Vincent of Breakthrough Technologies, a nonprofit organization that supports a non-rail transportation system known as bus rapid transit, or BRT, said a proposed silver line that would slice through McLean en route to Dulles Airport is too expensive and might actually make congestion worse. He said other technologies, principally bus rapid transit, could help commuter traffic work better at a much lower cost.

...

 

Dulles Corridor - Tysons PowerPoint  Bus Rapid Transit Policy Center   RCs: Northern Virginia Regional Commission   Metropolitan Washington COG  

 

10. Collaborate for success - Gainesville Sun - Gainesville, FL, USA

 

Madison officials and business representatives stressed collaboration among government, business and other interests when they spoke to their counterparts from Alachua County Thursday.

 

"The art of collaboration is looking at the different goals and finding creative ways to achieve both of them," said Kay Plantes, part of the core team behind Madison's "Collaboration Council."

 

The council is a partnership designed to preserve important features unique to Madison and the surrounding Dane County while providing an environment conducive to economic growth.

 

About 35 officials representing governments, businesses, educational institutions and development interests in Alachua County traveled to Madison Wednesday on a Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce trip to study the city's successes in economic development, university-related business creation and establishing a thriving downtown area.

...

The Collaboration Council, a nongovernment body, has been playing a role in trying to meet the needs of various constituencies in Madison, Plantes said. The goal of the group is to identify important aspects of Madison's environment that should be protected while meeting the needs of its business community, she said.

...

Cooperation has not always worked in Dane County. Several years ago, a county-wide planning committee was abolished, eliminating a means of cooperative planning among the several dozen municipalities and other government units in the area.

...

RC: North Central Florida Regional Planning Council - Region III

 

11. Paris rated the most vital hub - MercoPress, Uruguay 

 

The city of light is also the city of flight, says a new study listing Paris as the most vital connecting point for international air travel.

 

Anchorage, Alaska, places a surprising second on the list, followed by London, Singapore and New York.

 

The connections among 3,883 communities with airports around the world were analyzed by a team of researchers led by Luis Amaral of Northwestern University. The results were published in Tuesday’s issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

 

The air transportation network is like the Internet, the study concluded, with networks and hubs funnelling traffic around the world.

 

The findings are important in understanding the flow of travellers and in studying the potential movement of new diseases, Amaral said.

 

In addition, the analysis could help regulators determine airports where more competition is needed, and study of the network could even shed light on the functions of biological networks within the human body, according to Amaral, an associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.

...

 

12. Permanent deep-sea seismic sensors - innovations report - Bad Homburg, Germany

 

A submarine seismic sensor was recently set in place at 2400 m depth, off Toulon. The instrument was attached to a neutrino telescope developed by the international scientific programme Antares (1) . For the first time in Europe, this sensor, designed by a partnership between Géosciences Azur (Mixed Research Unit IRD/CNRS/UPMC/UNSA, Villefranche sur Mer)(2) and Guralp System (United Kingdom), with the financial support of INSU, Villefranche Oceanological Observatory and the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Regional Council, can send real-time deep-sea seismic activity data recorded for the region and for the whole world.

 

Deployment of this broad-band sensor ...

13. Straight from Google.

 

      a) Regional partnership to expand Racine County technology initiative - Milwaukee Business Journal - Milwaukee, WI, USA

... (WCEDC) to create a regional organization, the Greater Milwaukee Committee and WCEDC said Wednesday. Michael Grebe, president of ...

 

      b) Chinese vice premier urges stronger China-Russia regional ties - Xinhua - Beijing, China

IRKUTSK, Russia, June 7 (Xinhuanet) -- Visiting Chinese Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan called for a strengthening of regional cooperation between China and Russia on ...

 

      c)   Moss heads new board - The Powell River Peak - Powel River, BC, Canada

Powell River Regional Economic Development Society (PRREDS) has a new president and new ... businessman, is taking over the reins of the organization from Arlette ...

 

      d) Regional planning official suspended amid criminal case - Penn Live - Harrisburg, PA, USA

OIL CITY, Pa. (AP) -- A regional planning commission official has been suspended over accusations that he threatened someone who had fired his wife. ...

 

      e) Southwest Michigan First Announces New CEO Ronald Kitchens - Money Plans - Mumbai, India

... Kitchens said Southwest Michigan is actually larger than Corpus Christi and has the potential to lead a national trend toward regionalism in economic ...

 

      f) The African Union is a Federal Republic, Not an Intergovernmental Organization - Mathaba.Net – Africa

In the continuing struggle over the survival and perfection of our national political life, it is important to acknowledge what has been accomplished. ...

 

      g) Parish moves to put brakes on RTA plan - Times Picayune - New Orleans, LA, USA

... Campbell said he will file a formal protest with the metropolitan Regional Planning Commission, which is charged with dispersing about $14 million in Federal ...

 

      h) More rural communities to get broadband thanks to EEDA funding - eGov monitor - London, UK

... has been tendered using the Adit network set up in partnership with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) to ...

 

      i) Servicing the regional community through research - Times of Malta - Valletta, Malta

... a number of contributions that highlight the way universities can be mobilised to support development goals of the wider regional and international community. ...

 

      j) Chickasaw court records going electronic - Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal - Tupelo, MS, USA

... Charlotte Williams, project coordinator with Three Rivers Planning and Development District, said the change will allow the county to put old records on the ...

 

      k) Home builders get stewardship award - Kansas City Star - MO,USA

The Mid-America Regional Council, a metro planning agency, is honoring the Greater Kansas City Home Builders Association with a regional leadership award ...

 

      l) Study ties lake pollution to area growth - Boston Globe - Boston, MA, USA

... With roadways and other areas being paved, contaminants are being swept into the lake by stormwater, a report by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council said. ...

 

      l) Commissioners Introduced To Sheriff's Interns - Warsaw Times Union - Warsaw, IN, USA

... Approved Lee Taylor's request to officially name a street "Maple Run" in the Maple Run subdivision. Taylor works for the Area Planning Commission. ...      

 

      l) Mapping, Addressing For 9-1-1 Underway - Sequoyah County Times, OK 

Sequoyah County 9-1-1 has entered into a contract with the Eastern Oklahoma Development District (EODD) in Muskogee to begin mapping and addressing the central ...

 

      l) Board Seeks NOVA Hearing On DOD Move - Leesburg Today - Leesburg, VA, USA

... Board Vice Chairman Bruce E. Tulloch (R-Potomac) requested the board send a letter modeled on one created by the Northern Virginia Regional Commission. ...

 

      l) Summit of togetherness: Officials from around Southern Illinois gather to learn - The Southern - Carbondale, IL, USA

... Lisa Thurston, executive director of the Southern 5 Regional Planning Commission, who explained the role the four area commissions can play in economic development ...

 

14. Other in the news:

 

      a) Connecting the Dots : The Emerging Science of Conservation Medicine Links Human and Animal Health with the Environment – E/The Environment Magazine

...

Hantavirus in the U.S. and Nipah virus in Malaysia are different in many ways, but both bring together human health, animal health and environmental factors, the three interlocking circles of “conservation medicine.” As reported in Environmental Health Perspectives, 19th century health-care practitioners were expected to have training in the natural sciences (as did Charles Darwin, making his pioneering work possible), but specialization in the 20th century drove the two fields apart. Today, doctors rarely talk to veterinarians, and neither has much interaction with wildlife biologists. Conservation medicine (some like the phrase “ecological medicine” better) is an attempt to bring them back together. The term “conservation medicine” was first used by M. Koch in a 1996 paper entitled “Wildlife, People and Development,” and the field has grown dramatically since then.

 

The emerging field of conservation medicine carries with it a sense of urgency, prompted by a wholesale destruction of ecosystems that were still intact in Darwin’s day. Diseases shared by humans and animals are called “zoonoses,” and three quarters of all emerging diseases are zoonotic. “Diseases are moving from animals to humans and from one animal species to another at an alarming rate,” says Lee Cera, a veterinarian at the Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine and a principal with the Conservation Center of Chicago. “When I went to school we were told, ‘This disease won’t go from a dog to a cat.’ Then all of a sudden a dog virus decimated the lions of the Serengeti. How did it happen? When did it happen?”

...

      b) Opinion - Magnus Linklater - Times Online – UK

... spent. Only those agencies that have shown themselves to be truly independent of governments will be allowed to administer funds. ...

 

      c) A watershed in Syria - Asia Times Online - Kowloon, Hong Kong

... Author of Libya and the United States: Two Centuries of Strife (Penn Press, 2002), his latest book, Revolution, Reform and Regionalism in Southeast Asia ...

 

      d) Oil and Renewables Don't Mix - RenewableEnergyAccess.com - Peterborough, NH, USA

... This nascent sector should not have to endure another "boom and bust", as wind and solar energy experienced in the 1980's, when the hype supporting renewables ...

 

      e) Subir Gokarn: European lessons - Business Standard – India

 
... The re-drawing of state boundaries in 1956, predominantly on linguistic criteria, created a very Europe-like scenario within our national boundaries. ...

 

      f) Military Cultural Education - United States Army (press release) – USA

... Cultural competency accepts and creates an environment that allows each culture to contribute its values, perspectives, and behaviors in constructive ways to ...

 

      g) The Slow Road Home - Embassy - Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

... of the Assembly of First Nations said, "We went to Aceh in February, at the invitation of the indigenous organizations there, the regional organization in Aceh ...

 

15. Announcements

 

       a) Texas Transportation Summit – eRegions - NARC, Washington, D.C.

 

The National Association of Regional Councils (NARC) is a cosponsor of the 2005 Transportation Summit August 9 to 12 in Irving, Texas.  This 8th Annual Texas Transportation Summit will begin with a general session to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Interstate Highway Act. The multimodal conference will also feature tracks for surface transportation; air, sea & rail; transit; and governance. For more information regarding participation and/or sponsorship, visit http://www.texastransportationsummit.com or contact Trudy Hester at 214.750.0123

 

       b) Seventh International Permanent Culture Congress in Motovun (Croatia) - OneWorld.net - London, England, UK

 

The Congress is organized by the European Perm-Culture Institute from Denmark, in cooperation with Bio Istra association from Porec, Green Network of Activist Groups ZMAG and Society for Culture and Co-Existence with Nature Kneja from Cakovec. The goal of IPC7 is to distribute information, as well as discussion and implementation of new directions in the development of perm-culture, such as the alternative economic system LETS, urban ecology, bio-regionalism and other forms of “permanent agriculture”.

       c) Request for Proposals: Innovations in Safety and Security in Transportation Planning -  aMPO eMAIL – Washington, D.C.

 

AMPO has partnered with FTA to award incentive grants to MPOs to undertake innovative safety and security transportation planning initiatives.  Through this project, AMPO will make up to five awards, ranging in size from $25,000 - $75,000 per award.  A 100% match is required by the MPO.  The match can be dollars, in-kind, or a combination.   An RFP for grants has just been issued.  Applicants must be Metropolitan Planning Organizations and do not have to be AMPO members.  RFPs are due by August 5, 2005.  Contact Rich Denbow at rdenbow@... with questions about this program or other AMPO technical programs. 

 

 

16. Information Technology

 

      a) The Metaphors of the Net - Global Politician - Brooklyn, NY, USA

 

A decade after the invention of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee is promoting the "Semantic Web". The Internet hitherto is a repository of digital content. It has a rudimentary inventory system and very crude data location services. As a sad result, most of the content is invisible and inaccessible. Moreover, the Internet manipulates strings of symbols, not logical or semantic propositions. In other words, the Net compares values but does not know the meaning of the values it thus manipulates. It is unable to interpret strings, to infer new facts, to deduce, induce, derive, or otherwise comprehend what it is doing. In short, it does not understand language. Run an ambiguous term by any search engine and these shortcomings become painfully evident. This lack of understanding of the semantic foundations of its raw material (data, information) prevent applications and databases from sharing resources and feeding each other. The Internet is discrete, not continuous. It resembles an archipelago, with users hopping from island to island in a frantic search for relevancy.

 

Even visionaries like Berners-Lee do not contemplate an "intelligent Web". ...

 

      b) Wal-Mart To Suppliers: Clean Up Your Data - InformationWeek - Manhasset, NY, USA

 

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. wants suppliers to clean up product data and establish uniform product descriptions based on industry standards, all in the name of improved communications and more-efficient supply chains.

...

The retailer is synchronizing product data such as packaging dimensions, color, and weight with about 800 suppliers across 2,000 product categories and 60,000 unique items. Five suppliers on average join the effort each week--a marked improvement from a total of eight suppliers in 2002.

...

Wal-Mart plans to expand its data-synchronization efforts to the United Kingdom, Mexico, and Canada this year, most likely starting with multinational suppliers ...

 

17. Subscription link stories 

 

      a) Local leaders eye Portland's idea - Atlanta Journal Constitution (subscription) - GA,USA

 

PORTLAND, Ore. — This is the only major metro area in the United States that elects regional leaders to govern beyond narrow political boundaries.

 

The idea was so appealing to some members of a delegation of 100 Georgia leaders visiting Portland last month that many want to explore a similar concept for the Atlanta region.

 

"We have so many jurisdictions that it's just so hard to get people thinking regionally," says Craig Lesser, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development.

 

Sonny Deriso, chairman of the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority, agrees.

 

"Having an elected regional body that focuses on regional issues with elected officials accountable on a regional basis and not to a particular municipality — I want to see us really give that some serious thought," Deriso says. "It would solve a lot of our problems."

 

Metro, Portland's regional government body, was created in 1979 to implement its urban growth boundaries. Metro's role in the region has since expanded beyond regional planning and now includes parks, trails, green space, solid waste, recycling, the Oregon Zoo, the convention center and the performing arts center.

 

The Atlanta Regional Commission is the closest comparable body, but none of its 39 board members are elected regionally. Instead, the board includes elected officials from particular cities and counties, as well as appointed citizen members.
...

 

      b) 'Smart-growth' hub hit by law - Atlanta Journal Constitution (subscription) - GA,USA

 

PORTLAND, Ore. — Contained within its unique urban growth boundaries, Portland, for three decades, has been heralded as the national anti-sprawl model.

 

The boundaries were set to contain cities and towns to areas where there was water, sewer and transit, and at the same time, preserve farmland and open space outside those lines.

 

But on Nov. 2, 2004, voters in Oregon approved Measure 37, which was designed to protect the private property rights of those outside the boundaries.

 

That measure, approved by an overwhelming 61 percent of voters, has rocked the very foundation of Portland's "smart-growth" model and has sent the region into a morass of confusion and legal entanglements.

...

      c) Tony Hartzel: Area to test lane limits for trucks - Dallas Morning News (subscription) - TX, USA

 

In just a few months, two local interstates will become the first in North Texas to restrict big-rig truck travel in specific lanes.

 

Houston has had lane restrictions for trucks on Interstate 10 near downtown for years. In the Austin area, similar restrictions on Interstate 35 were enacted last fall.

 

Starting Oct. 1, Interstate 20 in southwest Dallas County and Interstate 30 in Tarrant County are expected to adopt limits.

 

The restrictions are part of a test by the North Central Texas Council of Governments, a regional planning agency.

...