Harford county trash pickup schedule 2022

Mail day! After waiting for a long time I finally got AJ Allmendingers portland win the damage is OUTSTANDING on this is my first xfinity 1/24th scale

2023.06.06 02:53 Fantastic_Screen_615 Mail day! After waiting for a long time I finally got AJ Allmendingers portland win the damage is OUTSTANDING on this is my first xfinity 1/24th scale

Mail day! After waiting for a long time I finally got AJ Allmendingers portland win the damage is OUTSTANDING on this is my first xfinity 1/24th scale submitted by Fantastic_Screen_615 to NASCARCollectors [link] [comments]

2023.06.06 01:17 _dqpb Reno events forecast June 5 through June 11

Skipped last week because it was a holiday weekend, we're back to the regularly scheduled forecasts. Many more venues/events sources are now being tracked, and new experimental adjustments have been made for supporting recurring events. Thanks for the continuous appreciation, and for all the suggestions of event websites/sources!

Monday, June 5

Tuesday, June 6

Wednesday, June 7

Thursday, June 8

Friday, June 9

Saturday, June 10

Sunday, June 11

More events

Other Resources

  • visitrenotahoe.com
  • thisisreno.com
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2023.06.05 23:05 Joadzilla Thousands are living in RVs on Los Angeles’ streets. Leaders want to shrink the number, but the solution is elusive

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/05/us/los-angeles-rv-dwellers/index.html
Los Angeles CNN —
Early one recent Friday morning, sanitation workers, homeless-outreach workers and LAPD officers arrived on a little street in the west of Los Angeles. Jasmine Avenue is lined with low-rise apartment blocks, an imposing Catholic Church, a school and a handful of dilapidated recreational vehicles.
That morning on Jasmine Avenue, RV residents were offered $500 gift cards and a motel room. The city also offered to tow and destroy their RVs. One RV managed to leave, under its own steam, with what smelled like sewage leaking along the road as it left. This clearance is one small part of what has been a piecemeal approach by officials trying to tackle a burgeoning phenomenon of people living permanently in RVs on these streets.
“I’ll take a motel room,” one RV owner told me as he packed up his belongings after about six months on Jasmine Avenue. “See what happens.” But he did not let the city tow and destroy his RV. He towed it elsewhere himself, using a chain and a beaten-up SUV. He wants to keep it.
“The idea sometimes our clients have is, ‘What if this doesn’t work? If this doesn’t work, then I’m back on the streets. I’m back to square one,’” said LaTonya Smith, interim CEO at the St. Joseph Center, a nonprofit that helps the city find accommodation for the unhoused. “People who are living in RVs consider themselves to be housed, and in order for them to leave that RV, sometimes we have to incentivize.”
There are, by the latest count, more than 11,000 people living in RVs across Los Angeles County. And that number has been rising. The Covid-19 pandemic forced more people into poverty. Some of the RV dwellers have jobs but either don’t want to pay apartment rent, or can’t afford to pay it, in a city where the average one-bedroom apartment costs around $2,500 a month.
Some RV dwellers own the vehicles, but others rent them to the monthly tune of a few hundred dollars to more than $1,000, city Councilwoman Traci Park told CNN.
In Los Angeles, you are allowed to sleep in a vehicle on some streets. There are, of course, parking restrictions on many streets. But as the number of RVs has grown, enforcing those restrictions has become harder. Large, immobile RVs require large tow trucks. And, according to the city, destroying a dilapidated RV that might contain harmful chemicals can cost up to $9,000 per vehicle.
Outreach workers from St. Joseph Center interact regularly with RV dwellers. A spokesperson told CNN: “Staff encounter a large percentage, probably safe to say as much as 80-85%, of individuals who are ‘leasing’ RVs or may have purchased an RV that is not suitable for habitation or a ‘legal’ sale.”
Park and others argue that these RVs endanger their residents and blight neighborhoods, acting as magnets for crime and damaging the environment. Some advocates for the unhoused agree the impact on city neighborhoods is an issue.
“There might be trash everywhere,” said Smith from the St. Joseph Center. “People come outside their neighborhoods and homes, that’s not something that they really want to see.”
In the five years since Los Angeles County commissioned one of many reports into the RV problem and potential solutions, the number of RVs on county streets has risen by more than 50% – from more than 4,500 in 2018 to more than 7,100 at last count. Reports are regularly requested and written by various city and county departments.
“I’m tired of studies and reports,” Park told CNN recently at her freshly painted City Hall office. She was elected last year on a platform dripping with intent to handle the various homelessness issues plaguing Los Angeles. Among her first targets: people she calls “vanlords,” some of whom, she says, rent out rotting, unsafe RVs. “There is a thriving trade in RVs being rented out as dwelling units on the internet,” Park said.
Park proposed a motion that would explicitly add RVs to part of the city code that, “Prohibits a person or entity from reserving any street, parking space, or other public space without written authorization from the City while conducting business pertaining to new and used vehicles.” The motion would also force RV owners to comply with a state law, “which requires that any RV offered for sale, sold, rented or leased within California meet the design safety standards of the American National Standards Institute and Fire Protection Association.”
Right now, she said, “Apparently anybody in the city of Los Angeles can buy a junker RV off of a salvage lot and without any oversight or regulation, rent that unsafe inoperable vehicle out to a vulnerable person as a dwelling unit.”
“The point here is not to criminalize homelessness. The point is to regulate what is currently an unregulated marketplace that is causing serious public safety and environmental impacts all over the city,” Park said.
“Too often, RVs that are used as dwellings on LA’s streets are in grave disrepair,” Park’s proposed motion reads, in part. “Meaning that people living in them face unsanitary and sometimes dangerous conditions.”
She has opposition.
“It’s actually good, to provide housing for people” even if it’s an RV, said Dmitry Korikov, a filmmaker who says he volunteers helping people – mainly refugees from Russia and Ukraine – navigate van life on the streets of Los Angeles. “I lived myself in a motor home for two years. So I know how things (work), how the system works.”
He tells RV dwellers which streets they can park on, and connects them with private companies that service the vehicles for a fee: filling up the freshwater tanks, emptying the sewage tanks and sweeping the sidewalks.
“Everyone should have a right to use public streets,” Korikov told CNN. “If you cannot give them an apartment or give them a job to be able to afford an apartment and you tell them that you need to be in tents on the street, but not renting someone’s motor home, that’s evil.”
CNN put Korikov’s points to Park.
“I understand the dilemma,” she said. “On the other hand, I have seen too many of these explosions and these fires and we have got to deal with the collateral impacts that these vehicles are causing in our neighborhoods.” A small number of people have died in RV fires on the streets over the past few years, according to local reports.
Park says she is concerned that the unhoused are being exploited by the vanlords. And she is concerned about the impact the vans are having on the neighborhoods in her district, which includes Venice and much of western Los Angeles, where homeless populations tend to be higher.
One Venice resident told me he returned home from work recently to discover that the sewage tank in an RV had been emptied into the road. He had to walk through human waste to get to his front door.
“We have not resolved the RV issue yet,” Mayor Karen Bass told The Los Angeles Times in March. “But we absolutely will because it’s a very serious issue.”
One of her first moves when she took office as mayor late last year was to declare a state of emergency on homelessness. Her first target was not the RVs on the streets, but the tents on the sidewalks. Her administration has swept over a dozen tent encampments and moved more than 1,200 people into temporary accommodation in motels, the city administrative officer has said. The operation is dubbed Inside Safe.
The idea is to eventually move all those people into permanent housing, in line with an increasingly popular doctrine among housing researchers known as “housing first.” The theory is that the most impactful move in saving someone from homelessness is to provide them housing, with other services such as mental health or substance abuse treatment to follow.
Bass’ office, the city administrator’s office and the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority cannot say how many of those people moved off those streets as part of Inside Safe are now in permanent housing. The mayor will hold a roundtable with the press in the coming weeks to discuss the data, her office said. The St. Joseph Center said is has found permanent housing for 32 people. A spokesperson told CNN the center expects those numbers to increase in June.
“I’m not going to leave people on the street while we’re building,” Bass told CNN this spring. “People die on these streets!”
When it comes to the RVs, a pilot program in one city council district has, over about 15 months, seen 41 RVs moved off the street and seven people moved into permanent housing. “That is why our program will be used as a model throughout the city, represented in the 2023-2024 budget adopted in May 2023,” Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez told CNN. That city budget includes $1.3 billion for the fight against homelessness.
City officials have approved a plan to deal with the RVs that includes concerted outreach to those living in them, incentivizing them to move into motel rooms, creating safe parking areas that can accommodate RVs, and finding permanent housing for those living in RVs. Now that plan needs to be implemented.
That final and fundamental piece of this puzzle is arguably the most challenging.
“We need more housing. We need more affordable safe housing,” Smith said. But housing is expensive and takes time to build. And for now, for thousands of people, an RV’s roof over their heads is all they can afford in Los Angeles.
​
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2023.06.05 20:06 _ezpzlemonsqueezy What to do with trash bins?

We just moved into a HOA community and are required to store our trash bins in our garage.
TRASH AND RUBBISH
  1. Section 6.12 of the CC&Rs sets forth trash restrictions. All trash or waste must be disposed of properly. All rubbish, trash, garbage or other waste material shall be kept in sanitary containers located in appropriate areas screened and concealed from view from the common areas or other separate interests. Trash containers may be placed out for pick up no earlier than 6:00 p.m. on the night before the scheduled trash pickup and must be removed and concealed from view not later than 8:00 a.m. on the day after the scheduled trash pick-up.
Our garage smells so bad because of this. We also have no where to clean the trash bins because there’s no yard or water or anything.
Does anyone have a solution to this?
submitted by _ezpzlemonsqueezy to fuckHOA [link] [comments]

2023.06.05 00:13 khank14 Received this letter and I'm confused

Hello I purchased AMC stock in 2021 and check my stock every few months. I just checked my mail and received this message..
aIn re AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. Stockholder Litigation, C.A. No. 2023-0215-MTZ THIS CARD PROVIDES ONLY LIMITED INFORMATION ABOUT THE LITIGATION PLEASE VISIT INVESTOR AMCTHEATRES.COM/NEWSROOM/DEFAULT.ASPX FOR MORE INFORMATION. The Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware (the "Court") has scheduled a hearing to consider whether to approve a proposed Settlement in the Action captioned above. The proposed Settlement would resolve all claims in the Action captioned above.
You received this notice because you may have held AMC common stock during the period from August 3, 2022 through and including the record time, expected to be set as of the close of business in accordance with any New York Stock Exchange and/or Depository Trust Company requirements or policies, on the business day prior to Conversion on which the Reverse Stock Split is effective (the "Class Period"), and you may be a Settlement Class Member The Settlement was reached between Usbaldo Munoz, Anthony Franchi, and Allegheny County Employees' Retirement System ("Plaintiffs") and Adam M. Aron, Denise Clark, Howard W Koch, Jr., Philip Lader, Gary F. Locke, Kathleen M. Pawlus, Keri Putnam, Anthony J. Saich, Adam J. Sussman, Lee Wittlinger, and AMC ("Defendants"), and consists of a payment to the record holders of common stock as of the Settlement Class Time of one share of common stock for every 7.5 shares of common stock owned by such holders (after giving effect to the Reverse Stock Split) (the "Settlement Payment"). No fractional shares of common stock will be issued. Record holders of common stock who would otherwise be entitled to receive a fractional share of the Settlement Payment will receive a cash payment in lieu thereof in the same manner as will be provided in connection with the Reverse Stock Split.
You can file a written statement in support of, or objection to, the Settlement that is required to be received no later than May 31, 2023, in accordance with the instructions set forth in the Notice and the letter that the Court published to AMC stockholders, which will be posted on the "Investor Relations" section of AMC's website, investor.amctheatres.com/newsroom/default.aspx
A hearing (the "Seulement Hearing") will be held before Vice Chancellor Morgan T. Zurn on June 29-30, 2023, at the Leonard L. Williams Justice Center, at 500 N. King Street, Wilmington, Delaware to, among other things: (1) determine whether the proposed Settlement is fair, reasonable, and adequate to the Settlement Class; (11) determine whether a Judgment, should be entered dismissing the Action with prejudice as against Defendants and lifting the Status Quo Order, (iii) determine whether the application by Lead Counsel for an award of attorneys fees and expenses and incentive awards should be approved; (iv) hear and rule on any objections to the proposed Settlement, Lead Counsel's application for an award of attorneys' fees and expenses, and/or Lead Counsel's application for incentive awards to Plaintiffs; and (v) consider any other matters that may properly be brought before the Court in connection with the proposed Settlement. Please visit the "Investor Relations" section of AMC's website, investor.amctheatres.com/newsroom/default.aspx, or Lead Counsel's websites, blbglaw.com, gelaw.com or fksfirm.com, for more information." a
Do I have a hearing I need to go to? I'm confused on what I did wrong.
submitted by khank14 to NoStupidQuestions [link] [comments]

2023.06.04 23:58 profeprofe Arranging Trash Pickup Services

We're relocating to St. Charles (county - not within city limits from what I can tell). Is Republic Services the best / cheapest option for trash and recycling? They want $80 just to deliver both containers and then it's $28/month. It looks like Waste Management would pick up at our location also ($30/month for just trash). The only guidance we received was 'check the county's website.'
tldr - Who do y'all use for trash and recycling pickup?
submitted by profeprofe to StCharlesMO [link] [comments]

2023.06.04 04:07 BigBlueMagic BE HEARD!!!! Last chance to stop TERRIBLE STADIUM HANDOUT!!!!

(I also posted this in /vegaslocals. If reposting here isn't allowed, I apologize, and feel free to take down).
Hey Everybody!!!
I just want to keep you in the loop on what’s going on with Oakland A’s owner John Fisher’s request to have the Nevada Legislature give him up to $380 million in public funds for a new stadium. The Legislative session ENDS MONDAY, which means that they will ram this through very quickly in the next 48 hours or so or call a special session.
NOW IS THE TIME FOR YOU TO SPEAK OUT!!!! I have put together a fairly well-documented argument below demonstrating that this is a bad deal and Fisher is a terrible partner. Please share this post and information as widely as you can! Most importantly, contact members of the Legislature and BE HEARD!!! Be sure to tell them that you live in Nevada!!!
Contact your Assemblyperson and State Senator!!
Assembly contact info: https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/LegislatoA/Assembly/Current
State Senate Contact info: https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/LegislatoA/Senate/Current
If you would like, you could use or modify this sample letter which contains URL links supporting the claims.
Dear Senator or Assemblyperson [Last Name], I am writing to express my strong opposition to the proposed public funding for John Fisher's baseball stadium in Nevada. I believe this project should be stopped for several reasons: Lack of transparency: Fisher and his team deliberately released funding details at the last minute and scheduled the only public hearing on Memorial Day evening, during a Golden Knights playoff game, limiting public awareness and participation. This is a shameful subversion of democracy and I hope you had no part in it. Neglected education system: Nevada ranks 49th out of 50 in educational attainment. Our focus should be on improving public schools, not funding a billionaire's stadium. Unrealistic economic projections: Expert analysis discredits the claim that the stadium will attract an additional 400,000 tourists, which, even if true, would only be a 1% increase on an annual basis. A Stanford economics professor expressed his belief that Fisher’s Stadium will result in the equivalent of a few hundred, permanent, long-term jobs. Fisher’s economic projections are detached from reality and unreliable. Fisher's history: His track record with the San Jose Quakes, another publicly funded stadium venture, raises concerns about his commitment to investing in player payroll and creating a competitive team. Fisher owns the Quakes. After he was given a public handout for a stadium, he did not change or competitively fund his soccer team. Troubled partnerships: Mark Davis of the Raiders, who shared the Oakland Coliseum with the A’s, has expressed frustration with Fisher's management group. MLB owners are also frustrated by doing business with Fisher. Nevada should expect to have the same experience if we proceed. I urge you to oppose public funding for John Fisher's stadium. Let's prioritize transparency, education, and responsible use of public funds for the benefit of all Nevada residents. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Please consider my perspective as you make your decision. Should you require further information or have any questions, I am available to discuss this issue. Sincerely, [Your Name]
Feel free to modify, expand or use as-is. You can also write your own letter too. I'm just trying to make this as easy as possible for everyone so that we are HEARD!
TLDR Bullet Points For Big Argument Below:
PUBLIC FUNDING FOR JOHN FISHER’S STADIUM MUST BE STOPPED!!!!
1. They Don’t Want to Hear From You
Fisher and Kaval strategically waited until the 11th hour to release details about the handout. From USA Today:
The A’s, their cadre of lobbyists in Nevada and friendly politicians and tourist officials are doing their best to hide the sausage, introducing, finally, legislation for state funding of myriad projects on the Friday night of a holiday weekend, and then offering public discussion on the evening of Memorial Day. Pretty slick! And it sounds like Gov. Joe Lombardo’s signature would be waiting.
The only public hearing on giving away hundreds of millions of dollars occurred on Memorial Day. And not just on Memorial Day — it was in the evening during Game Six of the Western Conference Finals where the Golden Knights punched their tickets to the Stanley Cup Finals. A hearing at 4:00 AM on Christmas morning would have received a higher profile and greater public scrutiny.
They didn’t want you to know about the hearing and your opportunity to be heard. And if, by chance you did hear about it, they didn’t want you to be able to show up and be heard. They are not very subtle about their preference to not hear from you, the unwashed masses.
Guess who else wasn’t there? A’s owner John Fisher and President Dave Kaval. I am not making this up. They didn’t bother to show up to the Memorial Day hearing. They want us to give them hundreds of millions of dollars, but couldn’t be bothered to show up at the hearing and answer questions themselves? Where were they Monday night? What was so important they couldn’t be bothered to show up for a public hearing to answer questions in public? Fisher and his army of lobbyists have had weeks to meet privately with lawmakers behind closed doors. Are you telling me Fisher couldn’t give us regular folks two hours in public?
2. What Are Our Priorities?
There’s no way to sugarcoat it. Nevada, and in particular the Clark County School District, fail to provide adequate public education. Nevada ranks 49th out of 50 for educational attainment. Of the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the United States, Las Vegas ranks second worst for schools. This is unacceptable, yet real education reform is never a priority for the same politicians who are willing to pull the Memorial Day/Stanley Cup Playoff hearing shenanigans for Fisher.
If our elected officials can turn on a dime to hand out hundreds of millions of dollars to a billionaire for a sports stadium, why can’t they act with similar urgency for our disastrous public school system?
Our failed public schools, especially CCSD, are the most significant impediment to economic growth and diversification. The number one reason companies and individuals are reluctant to relocate to Las Vegas are our terrible public schools. If we want to create economic growth, we need to fund and fix our public schools, not build another billionaire a sports stadium.
3. The Numbers Don’t Make Sense. They’re Basically Fraud.
Whenever a billionaire asks the public to finance his stadium, the ask is always accompanied by a series of fantastical economic projections. If you watched the Memorial Day/Stanley Cup Playoff hearing, you saw a powerpoint presentation made by Fisher’s hired lobbyists. The numbers presented by Fisher’s lobbyists aren’t simply slightly embellished, they are disconnected from reality.
First, there is the claim that Fisher’s publicly funded stadium will bring an additional 400,000 tourists. John Mehaffey breaks down this non-sensical claim in the Nevada Independent:
The 400,000 number seems inflated to me. The A’s host 81 baseball games per year. This projection assumes 4,938 tourists at each game that would otherwise not be in Las Vegas. Considering only one American League market is within a reasonable driving distance, most of these tourists would fly to see their home team. Many or most of these tourists would go to two or three games in a series to justify this travel. If the average number is two games, that puts 9,877 visitors in the stadium per home game. If those fans go to an entire three-game series, that number is 14,815. If the 1.8 million locals attendance prediction is accurate, and visiting fans tend to go to a series as opposed to just one game, the A’s project that they will sell out the stadium's 35,000-seat capacity every home game. If visitors go to only two games, that is 90 percent of capacity. That is a bold projection for a team that was last in attendance in 2022 and at the bottom so far in 2023, especially since no MLB team comes close to selling out all its home games. The lack of flights makes 400,000 new visitors seem impossible Most teams that would visit the Las Vegas A’s stadium are in the American League. Most are in the east where nonstop flights to Las Vegas are scarce. For example, I found five or fewer nonstop flights per day from six of the other 14 American League cities. Four of those six teams had home stadium attendance below 20,000 per game in 2022. It’s hard to imagine that 10,000 or 15,000 fans will fly across the country for a series when that is around the average attendance for the 81 home games in their own cities. Some displaced fans may be within driving distance, but the point is one that needs to be considered. Las Vegas would need dozens of flights per series that don’t exist to accommodate this prediction.
Mehaffey also points out that Miami, which recently built a publicly financed stadium, also has 40 million visitors a year, just like Las Vegas. However, the Miami metro is substantially larger than Las Vegas. “In 2022, the Miami Marlins averaged 11,204 per game. A market with a much larger metro population that posts similar tourism numbers does not come close to the A’s projections. There is no reason to think Las Vegas will be different.”
Stanford economics professor Roger Noll agrees with Mehaffey that the attendance numbers Fisher projects are not credible. From USA Today:
“Baseball is different than the NFL,” Roger Noll, professor of economics emeritus at Stanford University, tells USA TODAY Sports. “This notion that of those 162 baseball games, I've got to see those three that are between the A's and the Royals in Las Vegas - it's just nonsense, right? It's not true, it's not going to happen. “That's the fundamental reason why economists, when they do research on the impact of sports teams, typically find that the effect on local incomes and employment is slightly negative.”
But what about job creation?
Noll says the hours that stadium workers put in – for 81 games a year – computes to roughly 15% of a full-time job. “So the 500 people who work at the stadium on game day, you got to multiply that by .15 to get the number of full-time equivalent jobs, which means it's less than 100. Wow,” says Noll. “You know, $1.5 billion to create less than 100 jobs, right? Wow.”
4. Grossly Underfunded Payroll
The total payroll for the 2023 A’s is just $59,630,474, just 37% of the MLB average payroll of $116,112,414 and just 17% of the highest-spending New York Mets ($345,474,042). To provide context, the highest paid players in the league, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, will each make $43,333,333. Verlander’s salary, by itself, is 72% of the entire A’s roster!
This meager spending is by choice, not necessity. It’s a strategy that works. From Sports Illustrated:
The A's were a top-5 team in 2022. Not on the field. The A's finished with a 60-102 record, second-worst only ahead of the Washington Nationals. On the spreadsheets though, they netted $62.2 million according to a report from Forbes. The only teams they finished behind were the revamped Seattle Mariners who made the playoffs for the first time in two decades, the San Francisco Giants, the Boston Red Sox, and the Baltimore Orioles who had a Mariners-esque upswing and an A's-esque payroll.
When the A’s do develop talent, they quickly jettison those players to avoid paying them their true worth on the market. As Review-Journal columnist Ed Graney explained, when Fisher’s A’s have experienced success, the response has been to break down the team and sell off the parts. Graney concluded: “John Fisher is an owner with deep, deep pockets who (incredibly) has always acted in a way that he can’t afford to hand out exorbitant contracts to his best players. About him, an overwhelmingly popular opinion is that he simply doesn’t want to.”
Why do this? Wouldn’t a competitive team generate more revenue? In Major League Baseball, there is a revenue sharing agreement among the franchises, intended to help smaller markets field competitive teams. Fisher uses revenue sharing, and dumping talent, to be one of the most profitable owners in baseball. From the New York Post:
At least a few rival MLB club owners are annoyed at the Athletics for conducting a major fire sale to enhance their bottom line soon after being added as a new revenue-sharing recipient in a vote by owners. “The idea of revenue sharing is not to make money, it’s to field a competitive team,” one rival owner complained Thursday during the owners’ meetings at MLB headquarters in Midtown. “That money is supposed to go toward player salaries. [The A’s] took the money and put it in their pocket.” Yet another owner, also upset that the A’s didn’t use the money to buy new players, but instead did the opposite and sold three major stars and drastically cut their payroll, referred to the franchise generally as “a mess.”
Fisher will not fund a competitive team in Las Vegas if we give him a stadium handout. That would destroy his very profitable business strategy. Why would he do that? The payroll of the Las Vegas A’s will be 30th out of 30 MLB teams, just like the Oakland A’s.
5. History Repeating: Quakes Publicly Funded Stadium
There seems to be some hopeful thinking that if we give John Fisher a stadium handout, he will increase the A’s payroll to become more competitive. A’s President Dave Kaval stirred excitement when he insinuated that the franchise would bankroll a World Series championship team with a new stadium in Las Vegas. “But with more revenues, we want to turn a playoff team into a World Series team. That’s why we’re fighting so hard for a new stadium, whether it’s in Las Vegas or Oakland,” Kaval told the Review-Journal.
Many people, including our elected officials, want to believe this, in good faith. It would be awesome to have a Las Vegas MLB franchise win a World Series!
This isn’t Fisher’s first rodeo with a publicly funded stadium. Fisher is also the owner of the San Jose Quakes of Major League Soccer. From an Associated Press article in the May 25, 2006 Salinas Californian on public financing for a new Quakes stadium: “The Quakes won MLS championships in 2001 and 2003 led by former star forward Landon Donovan but attendance slid to an average of just 13,037 fans last season.” Sound familiar?
So what happened? Did Fisher increase player payroll once he obtained his publicly financed soccer stadium?
From the San Jose Mercury News:
Out of the 29 MLS teams, the Earthquakes rank 21st in guaranteed player compensation and base salary, both on a per-player and teamwide basis. The Earthquakes’ average salary came in at $434,079, nearly $100,000 lower than the overall average salary for an MLS player ($530,467). San Jose’s total spending ($13.022 million) comes in at more than $2.8 million below the average team spending across the league (15.822 million). It’s a continued trend for the Quakes, even after they moved into the state-of-the-art PayPal Park in 2015. The Earthquakes have consistently ranked in the bottom half of the league in spending, per Spotrac, even as the MLS has continued to add new expansion teams over the years. Earthquakes spending rank in MLS by year · 2015 (20 teams) — 15th · 2016 (20 teams) — 11th · 2017 (22 teams) — 16th · 2018 (23 teams) — 19th · 2019 (24 teams) — 19th · 2020 (26 teams) — 17th · 2021 (27 teams) — 24th · 2022 (28 teams) — 22nd · 2023 (29 teams) — 21st That has been reflected in on-field results, too. Since the Earthquakes moved into their new home, they have never finished a season with more wins than losses — the closest they came was in that first year, at 13 wins, 13 losses and eight draws.
Nevada should expect Fisher to act in the future as he has in the past. His business strategy is clear: spend as little as possible on player payroll regardless of venue. If Nevada gives Fisher a handout, nobody — nobody — can act surprised when his miserly payroll does not change.
The Raiders and A’s shared the Oakland Coliseum for decades. Aces and Raiders owner Mark Davis is very familiar with what it means to “partner” with John Fisher. Davis did not hold back when he spoke with the Review-Journal:
“I won’t forget what they did to us in Oakland. They squatted on a lease for 10 years and made it impossible for us to build on that stadium,” the Raiders owner said in a phone chat Thursday afternoon, referring to the stadium the A’s and Raiders once shared, the Oakland Coliseum. “They were looking for a stadium. We were looking for a stadium. They didn’t want to build a stadium, and then went ahead and signed a 10-year lease with the city of Oakland and said, ‘We’re the base team.’” … Davis was asked if he could envision an environment where the Silver and Black would cross-promote with the green-and-gold Las Vegas Athletics. “Not with that management group,” Davis said. “I just have, again, a lot of personal animosity toward the front office. But with a new management group? Absolutely.”
Mark Davis did business with John Fisher for decades. Davis knows Fisher. Nobody in Nevada has done business with Fisher as much as Davis. Davis’ reaction to Fisher, basically unfiltered instinctual revulsion, should be a massive red flag to our elected leaders who are being plied with sweet nothings by Fisher’s hired guns.
Sources:
“A’s Stadium Math Doesn’t Add Up.” The Nevada Independent, May 30, 2023. https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/as-stadium-math-doesnt-add-up.
Graney, Ed. “Graney: A’s Penny-Pinching a Reason for Las Vegas to Reassess.” Journal, March 18, 2022. https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/sports-columns/ed-graney/graney-as-penny-pinching-a-reason-for-las-vegas-to-reassess-2547852/.
Gutierrez, Ana. “Nevada Ranks as the Second Least Educated State in America.” KLAS, February 17, 2022. https://www.8newsnow.com/news/local-news/nevada-ranks-as-the-second-least-educated-state-in-america/.
Jenkins, Bruce. “MLB Has Punished Other Owners. Why Is A’s John Fisher Getting a Pass?” San Francisco Chronicle, June 3, 2023. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/jenkins/article/john-fisher-mlb-oakland-18130516.php.
Katsilometes, John. “Raiders Owner Rips Oakland Athletics’ Likely Move to Las Vegas.” Journal, April 27, 2023. https://www.reviewjournal.com/entertainment/entertainment-columns/kats/raiders-owner-rips-oakland-athletics-likely-move-to-las-vegas-2765229/?xxyy.
Lacques, Gabe. “Why A’s Las Vegas Stadium Gambit May Be a Losing Bet: ‘It’s Just Nonsense.’” USA Today, June 1, 2023. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/athletics/2023/06/01/oakland-as-move-las-vegas-stadium-gambit-losing-bet/70277528007/.
Lozito, Nick. “‘this Is Not Our Fault:’ Oakland A’s Fans Are Defending Their Image.” The Oaklandside, May 5, 2023. https://oaklandside.org/2023/05/01/oakland-athletics-leaving-las-vegas-john-fisher-dave-kaval-fans/.
“MLB 2023 Payroll Tracker.” Spotrac.com. Accessed June 3, 2023. https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/payroll/.
Oakland Athletics made over $60 million in 2023 - Sports Illustrated ... Accessed June 4, 2023. https://www.si.com/mlb/athletics/news/oakland-athletics-made-over-60-million-in-2023.
Shea, John. “Don’t Believe John Fisher’s Propaganda: A’s Fans Are the Best in Baseball.” San Francisco Chronicle, June 1, 2023. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/athletics/article/oakland-a-s-fans-aren-t-reason-team-las-vegas-18126429.php.
Simon, Alex. “Would New Oakland A’s Ballpark Lead to More Spending? John Fisher’s Other Team Shows That May Not Be the Case.” The Mercury News, May 17, 2023. https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/05/16/would-new-oakland-as-ballpark-lead-to-more-spending-john-fishers-other-team-shows-that-may-not-be-the-case/.
Wootton-Greener, Julie. “Las Vegas Area Schools Ranked Second-Worst in Nation for Quality.” Journal, December 9, 2021. https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/education/las-vegas-area-schools-ranked-second-worst-in-nation-for-quality-2493177/.
submitted by BigBlueMagic to Nevada [link] [comments]

2023.06.04 03:48 BigBlueMagic BE HEARD!!! Last Chance To Stop the Legislature From Giving Away Hundreds of Millions in Terrible Stadium Handout!!!!!!!

Hey Everybody!!!
I just want to keep you in the loop on what’s going on with Oakland A’s owner John Fisher’s request to have the Nevada Legislature give him up to $380 million in public funds for a new stadium. The Legislative session ENDS MONDAY, which means that they will ram this through very quickly in the next 48 hours or so or call a special session.
NOW IS THE TIME FOR YOU TO SPEAK OUT!!!! I have put together a fairly well-documented argument below demonstrating that this is a bad deal and Fisher is a terrible partner. Please share this post and information as widely as you can! Most importantly, contact members of the Legislature and BE HEARD!!! Be sure to tell them that you live in Nevada!!!
Contact your Assemblyperson and State Senator!!
Assembly contact info: https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/LegislatoA/Assembly/Current
State Senate Contact info: https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/LegislatoA/Senate/Current
If you would like, you could use or modify this sample letter which contains URL links supporting the claims.
Dear Senator or Assemblyperson [Last Name],
I am writing to express my strong opposition to the proposed public funding for John Fisher's baseball stadium in Nevada. I believe this project should be stopped for several reasons:
Lack of transparency: Fisher and his team deliberately released funding details at the last minute and scheduled the only public hearing on Memorial Day evening, during a Golden Knights playoff game, limiting public awareness and participation. This is a shameful subversion of democracy and I hope you had no part in it.
Neglected education system: Nevada ranks 49th out of 50 in educational attainment. Our focus should be on improving public schools, not funding a billionaire's stadium.
Unrealistic economic projections: Expert analysis discredits the claim that the stadium will attract an additional 400,000 tourists, which, even if true, would only be a 1% increase on an annual basis. A Stanford economics professor expressed his belief that Fisher’s Stadium will result in the equivalent of a few hundred, permanent, long-term jobs. Fisher’s economic projections are detached from reality and unreliable.
Fisher's history: His track record with the San Jose Quakes, another publicly funded stadium venture, raises concerns about his commitment to investing in player payroll and creating a competitive team. Fisher owns the Quakes. After he was given a public handout for a stadium, he did not change or competitively fund his soccer team.
Troubled partnerships: Mark Davis of the Raiders, who shared the Oakland Coliseum with the A’s, has expressed frustration with Fisher's management group. MLB owners are also frustrated by doing business with Fisher. Nevada should expect to have the same experience if we proceed.
I urge you to oppose public funding for John Fisher's stadium. Let's prioritize transparency, education, and responsible use of public funds for the benefit of all Nevada residents.
Thank you for your attention to this matter. Please consider my perspective as you make your decision. Should you require further information or have any questions, I am available to discuss this issue.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
Feel free to modify, expand or use as-is. You can also write your own letter too. I'm just trying to make this as easy as possible for everyone so that we are HEARD!
TLDR Bullet Points For Big Argument Below:
PUBLIC FUNDING FOR JOHN FISHER’S STADIUM MUST BE STOPPED!!!!
1. They Don’t Want to Hear From You
Fisher and Kaval strategically waited until the 11th hour to release details about the handout. From USA Today:
The A’s, their cadre of lobbyists in Nevada and friendly politicians and tourist officials are doing their best to hide the sausage, introducing, finally, legislation for state funding of myriad projects on the Friday night of a holiday weekend, and then offering public discussion on the evening of Memorial Day.
Pretty slick! And it sounds like Gov. Joe Lombardo’s signature would be waiting.
The only public hearing on giving away hundreds of millions of dollars occurred on Memorial Day. And not just on Memorial Day — it was in the evening during Game Six of the Western Conference Finals where the Golden Knights punched their tickets to the Stanley Cup Finals. A hearing at 4:00 AM on Christmas morning would have received a higher profile and greater public scrutiny.
They didn’t want you to know about the hearing and your opportunity to be heard. And if, by chance you did hear about it, they didn’t want you to be able to show up and be heard. They are not very subtle about their preference to not hear from you, the unwashed masses.
Guess who else wasn’t there? A’s owner John Fisher and President Dave Kaval. I am not making this up. They didn’t bother to show up to the Memorial Day hearing. They want us to give them hundreds of millions of dollars, but couldn’t be bothered to show up at the hearing and answer questions themselves? Where were they Monday night? What was so important they couldn’t be bothered to show up for a public hearing to answer questions in public? Fisher and his army of lobbyists have had weeks to meet privately with lawmakers behind closed doors. Are you telling me Fisher couldn’t give us regular folks two hours in public?
2. What Are Our Priorities?
There’s no way to sugarcoat it. Nevada, and in particular the Clark County School District, fail to provide adequate public education. Nevada ranks 49th out of 50 for educational attainment. Of the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the United States, Las Vegas ranks second worst for schools. This is unacceptable, yet real education reform is never a priority for the same politicians who are willing to pull the Memorial Day/Stanley Cup Playoff hearing shenanigans for Fisher.
If our elected officials can turn on a dime to hand out hundreds of millions of dollars to a billionaire for a sports stadium, why can’t they act with similar urgency for our disastrous public school system?
Our failed public schools, especially CCSD, are the most significant impediment to economic growth and diversification. The number one reason companies and individuals are reluctant to relocate to Las Vegas are our terrible public schools. If we want to create economic growth, we need to fund and fix our public schools, not build another billionaire a sports stadium.
3. The Numbers Don’t Make Sense. They’re Basically Fraud.
Whenever a billionaire asks the public to finance his stadium, the ask is always accompanied by a series of fantastical economic projections. If you watched the Memorial Day/Stanley Cup Playoff hearing, you saw a powerpoint presentation made by Fisher’s hired lobbyists. The numbers presented by Fisher’s lobbyists aren’t simply slightly embellished, they are disconnected from reality.
First, there is the claim that Fisher’s publicly funded stadium will bring an additional 400,000 tourists. John Mehaffey breaks down this non-sensical claim in the Nevada Independent:
The 400,000 number seems inflated to me. The A’s host 81 baseball games per year. This projection assumes 4,938 tourists at each game that would otherwise not be in Las Vegas.
Considering only one American League market is within a reasonable driving distance, most of these tourists would fly to see their home team. Many or most of these tourists would go to two or three games in a series to justify this travel.
If the average number is two games, that puts 9,877 visitors in the stadium per home game. If those fans go to an entire three-game series, that number is 14,815. If the 1.8 million locals attendance prediction is accurate, and visiting fans tend to go to a series as opposed to just one game, the A’s project that they will sell out the stadium's 35,000-seat capacity every home game. If visitors go to only two games, that is 90 percent of capacity.
That is a bold projection for a team that was last in attendance in 2022 and at the bottom so far in 2023, especially since no MLB team comes close to selling out all its home games.
The lack of flights makes 400,000 new visitors seem impossible
Most teams that would visit the Las Vegas A’s stadium are in the American League. Most are in the east where nonstop flights to Las Vegas are scarce. For example, I found five or fewer nonstop flights per day from six of the other 14 American League cities.
Four of those six teams had home stadium attendance below 20,000 per game in 2022. It’s hard to imagine that 10,000 or 15,000 fans will fly across the country for a series when that is around the average attendance for the 81 home games in their own cities.
Some displaced fans may be within driving distance, but the point is one that needs to be considered. Las Vegas would need dozens of flights per series that don’t exist to accommodate this prediction.
Mehaffey also points out that Miami, which recently built a publicly financed stadium, also has 40 million visitors a year, just like Las Vegas. However, the Miami metro is substantially larger than Las Vegas. “In 2022, the Miami Marlins averaged 11,204 per game. A market with a much larger metro population that posts similar tourism numbers does not come close to the A’s projections. There is no reason to think Las Vegas will be different.”
Stanford economics professor Roger Noll agrees with Mehaffey that the attendance numbers Fisher projects are not credible. From USA Today:
“Baseball is different than the NFL,” Roger Noll, professor of economics emeritus at Stanford University, tells USA TODAY Sports. “This notion that of those 162 baseball games, I've got to see those three that are between the A's and the Royals in Las Vegas - it's just nonsense, right? It's not true, it's not going to happen.
“That's the fundamental reason why economists, when they do research on the impact of sports teams, typically find that the effect on local incomes and employment is slightly negative.”
But what about job creation?
Noll says the hours that stadium workers put in – for 81 games a year – computes to roughly 15% of a full-time job.
“So the 500 people who work at the stadium on game day, you got to multiply that by .15 to get the number of full-time equivalent jobs, which means it's less than 100. Wow,” says Noll. “You know, $1.5 billion to create less than 100 jobs, right? Wow.”
4. Grossly Underfunded Payroll
The total payroll for the 2023 A’s is just $59,630,474, just 37% of the MLB average payroll of $116,112,414 and just 17% of the highest-spending New York Mets ($345,474,042). To provide context, the highest paid players in the league, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, will each make $43,333,333. Verlander’s salary, by itself, is 72% of the entire A’s roster!
This meager spending is by choice, not necessity. It’s a strategy that works. From Sports Illustrated:
The A's were a top-5 team in 2022.
Not on the field. The A's finished with a 60-102 record, second-worst only ahead of the Washington Nationals. On the spreadsheets though, they netted $62.2 million according to a report from Forbes. The only teams they finished behind were the revamped Seattle Mariners who made the playoffs for the first time in two decades, the San Francisco Giants, the Boston Red Sox, and the Baltimore Orioles who had a Mariners-esque upswing and an A's-esque payroll.
When the A’s do develop talent, they quickly jettison those players to avoid paying them their true worth on the market. As Review-Journal columnist Ed Graney explained, when Fisher’s A’s have experienced success, the response has been to break down the team and sell off the parts. Graney concluded: “John Fisher is an owner with deep, deep pockets who (incredibly) has always acted in a way that he can’t afford to hand out exorbitant contracts to his best players. About him, an overwhelmingly popular opinion is that he simply doesn’t want to.”
Why do this? Wouldn’t a competitive team generate more revenue? In Major League Baseball, there is a revenue sharing agreement among the franchises, intended to help smaller markets field competitive teams. Fisher uses revenue sharing, and dumping talent, to be one of the most profitable owners in baseball. From the New York Post:
At least a few rival MLB club owners are annoyed at the Athletics for conducting a major fire sale to enhance their bottom line soon after being added as a new revenue-sharing recipient in a vote by owners.
“The idea of revenue sharing is not to make money, it’s to field a competitive team,” one rival owner complained Thursday during the owners’ meetings at MLB headquarters in Midtown. “That money is supposed to go toward player salaries. [The A’s] took the money and put it in their pocket.”
Yet another owner, also upset that the A’s didn’t use the money to buy new players, but instead did the opposite and sold three major stars and drastically cut their payroll, referred to the franchise generally as “a mess.”
Fisher will not fund a competitive team in Las Vegas if we give him a stadium handout. That would destroy his very profitable business strategy. Why would he do that? The payroll of the Las Vegas A’s will be 30th out of 30 MLB teams, just like the Oakland A’s.
5. History Repeating: Quakes Publicly Funded Stadium
There seems to be some hopeful thinking that if we give John Fisher a stadium handout, he will increase the A’s payroll to become more competitive. A’s President Dave Kaval stirred excitement when he insinuated that the franchise would bankroll a World Series championship team with a new stadium in Las Vegas. “But with more revenues, we want to turn a playoff team into a World Series team. That’s why we’re fighting so hard for a new stadium, whether it’s in Las Vegas or Oakland,” Kaval told the Review-Journal.
Many people, including our elected officials, want to believe this, in good faith. It would be awesome to have a Las Vegas MLB franchise win a World Series!
This isn’t Fisher’s first rodeo with a publicly funded stadium. Fisher is also the owner of the San Jose Quakes of Major League Soccer. From an Associated Press article in the May 25, 2006 Salinas Californian on public financing for a new Quakes stadium: “The Quakes won MLS championships in 2001 and 2003 led by former star forward Landon Donovan but attendance slid to an average of just 13,037 fans last season.” Sound familiar?
So what happened? Did Fisher increase player payroll once he obtained his publicly financed soccer stadium?
From the San Jose Mercury News:
Out of the 29 MLS teams, the Earthquakes rank 21st in guaranteed player compensation and base salary, both on a per-player and teamwide basis.
The Earthquakes’ average salary came in at $434,079, nearly $100,000 lower than the overall average salary for an MLS player ($530,467). San Jose’s total spending ($13.022 million) comes in at more than $2.8 million below the average team spending across the league (15.822 million).
It’s a continued trend for the Quakes, even after they moved into the state-of-the-art PayPal Park in 2015. The Earthquakes have consistently ranked in the bottom half of the league in spending, per Spotrac, even as the MLS has continued to add new expansion teams over the years.
Earthquakes spending rank in MLS by year
· 2015 (20 teams) — 15th
· 2016 (20 teams) — 11th
· 2017 (22 teams) — 16th
· 2018 (23 teams) — 19th
· 2019 (24 teams) — 19th
· 2020 (26 teams) — 17th
· 2021 (27 teams) — 24th
· 2022 (28 teams) — 22nd
· 2023 (29 teams) — 21st
That has been reflected in on-field results, too. Since the Earthquakes moved into their new home, they have never finished a season with more wins than losses — the closest they came was in that first year, at 13 wins, 13 losses and eight draws.
Nevada should expect Fisher to act in the future as he has in the past. His business strategy is clear: spend as little as possible on player payroll regardless of venue. If Nevada gives Fisher a handout, nobody — nobody — can act surprised when his miserly payroll does not change.
The Raiders and A’s shared the Oakland Coliseum for decades. Aces and Raiders owner Mark Davis is very familiar with what it means to “partner” with John Fisher. Davis did not hold back when he spoke with the Review-Journal:
“I won’t forget what they did to us in Oakland. They squatted on a lease for 10 years and made it impossible for us to build on that stadium,” the Raiders owner said in a phone chat Thursday afternoon, referring to the stadium the A’s and Raiders once shared, the Oakland Coliseum.
“They were looking for a stadium. We were looking for a stadium. They didn’t want to build a stadium, and then went ahead and signed a 10-year lease with the city of Oakland and said, ‘We’re the base team.’”
…
Davis was asked if he could envision an environment where the Silver and Black would cross-promote with the green-and-gold Las Vegas Athletics.
“Not with that management group,” Davis said. “I just have, again, a lot of personal animosity toward the front office. But with a new management group? Absolutely.”
Mark Davis did business with John Fisher for decades. Davis knows Fisher. Nobody in Nevada has done business with Fisher as much as Davis. Davis’ reaction to Fisher, basically unfiltered instinctual revulsion, should be a massive red flag to our elected leaders who are being plied with sweet nothings by Fisher’s hired guns.
Sources:
“A’s Stadium Math Doesn’t Add Up.” The Nevada Independent, May 30, 2023. https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/as-stadium-math-doesnt-add-up.
Graney, Ed. “Graney: A’s Penny-Pinching a Reason for Las Vegas to Reassess.” Journal, March 18, 2022. https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/sports-columns/ed-graney/graney-as-penny-pinching-a-reason-for-las-vegas-to-reassess-2547852/.
Gutierrez, Ana. “Nevada Ranks as the Second Least Educated State in America.” KLAS, February 17, 2022. https://www.8newsnow.com/news/local-news/nevada-ranks-as-the-second-least-educated-state-in-america/.
Jenkins, Bruce. “MLB Has Punished Other Owners. Why Is A’s John Fisher Getting a Pass?” San Francisco Chronicle, June 3, 2023. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/jenkins/article/john-fisher-mlb-oakland-18130516.php.
Katsilometes, John. “Raiders Owner Rips Oakland Athletics’ Likely Move to Las Vegas.” Journal, April 27, 2023. https://www.reviewjournal.com/entertainment/entertainment-columns/kats/raiders-owner-rips-oakland-athletics-likely-move-to-las-vegas-2765229/?xxyy.
Lacques, Gabe. “Why A’s Las Vegas Stadium Gambit May Be a Losing Bet: ‘It’s Just Nonsense.’” USA Today, June 1, 2023. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/athletics/2023/06/01/oakland-as-move-las-vegas-stadium-gambit-losing-bet/70277528007/.
Lozito, Nick. “‘this Is Not Our Fault:’ Oakland A’s Fans Are Defending Their Image.” The Oaklandside, May 5, 2023. https://oaklandside.org/2023/05/01/oakland-athletics-leaving-las-vegas-john-fisher-dave-kaval-fans/.
“MLB 2023 Payroll Tracker.” Spotrac.com. Accessed June 3, 2023. https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/payroll/.
Oakland Athletics made over $60 million in 2023 - Sports Illustrated ... Accessed June 4, 2023. https://www.si.com/mlb/athletics/news/oakland-athletics-made-over-60-million-in-2023.
Shea, John. “Don’t Believe John Fisher’s Propaganda: A’s Fans Are the Best in Baseball.” San Francisco Chronicle, June 1, 2023. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/athletics/article/oakland-a-s-fans-aren-t-reason-team-las-vegas-18126429.php.
Simon, Alex. “Would New Oakland A’s Ballpark Lead to More Spending? John Fisher’s Other Team Shows That May Not Be the Case.” The Mercury News, May 17, 2023. https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/05/16/would-new-oakland-as-ballpark-lead-to-more-spending-john-fishers-other-team-shows-that-may-not-be-the-case/.
Wootton-Greener, Julie. “Las Vegas Area Schools Ranked Second-Worst in Nation for Quality.” Journal, December 9, 2021. https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/education/las-vegas-area-schools-ranked-second-worst-in-nation-for-quality-2493177/.
submitted by BigBlueMagic to vegaslocals [link] [comments]

2023.06.04 01:30 drumnerd Love/Hate Relationship with Community Garage Sales

Quick note: I'm located in NE Ohio, so what I experience may differ from your specific area.
This is my second year as a reseller, and I still get a surge of excitement whenever I see an ad for a community sale. The more homes participating, the more excited I get. "Saturday is going to be an awesome day for sourcing," I think to myself. I mean, in theory, it's great, right? A large assortment of sales all packed into one general area. No driving around the county to hit your quota.
However, after going to dozens of these community events in the past couple of years, I've reached a conclusion: they're (usually) extremely overrated. Here's why I've fallen out of love with these sales:
1: The crowds
2: Déjà vu, aka I've been to this sale before
So, are these events worth going to? Sometimes, yes, but the larger the area, the better. I've found that city-wide sales (or multi-city events like the Route 30 sale in Ohio) are usually a much better option. The crowds are more widespread, making it less likely for each sale to be packed full of people. Plus, you can actually move your car around without constantly fighting traffic.
I've taken notice of something interesting about these community events: because they draw in large numbers of resellers, the individual sales in other local areas can sometimes be overlooked. Going forward, I plan to prioritize building out my sale schedule with these individual houses first and letting the masses fight it out in the tight streets of some HOA neighborhood.
submitted by drumnerd to Flipping [link] [comments]

2023.06.03 15:38 obeliskposture Short story about bad times & bad jobs

I've shared fiction here before and it didn't go altogether too poorly, so I'm going to press my luck and do it again. This was written about a year ago, and I'm tired of trying to peddle it to lit magazines. Might as well share it here, know that it met a few eyeballs, and have done with it.
It's relevant to the sub insofar as it's about urban alienation and the working conditions at a small business run by IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE people. (I tried to pitch it as a story of the great resignation with a momentary flicker of cosmic horror.) It's based on a similar job I took on after getting laid off during the lockdown, and the circumstances of the main character's breakup are faintly similar to one I went through several years back (her job sucked the life out of her).
Without further ado:
* * *
It was getting close to midnight, and the temperature outside was still above 80 degrees. We’d locked up the shop at 10:15 and walked over to Twenty, the dive bar on Poplar Street, where a single wall-mounted air conditioner and four wobbly ceiling fans weren’t putting up much resistance against the July heat baking the place from the outside and the dense mass of bodies giving it a stifling fever from within.
Just now I came close to saying it was a Wednesday night, because that was usually when the cyclists descended upon Avenue Brew, the gritty-but-bougie craft beer and sandwich shop I was working at back then. Every Wednesday between March and November, about fifteen to twenty-five Gen Xers dressed in skintight polyester, all packages and camel toes and fanny packs, locked up their thousand-dollar bikes on the sidewalk and lined up for IPAs and paninis. They reliably arrived around 8:00, an hour before we closed, making it impossible to get started on the closing checklist and leave on time at 10:00. The worst of them were demanding and rude, and even the best got raucous and stubborn after a couple drinks. There were nights when bringing in the sidewalk tables couldn’t be done without arguing with them. Most were sub-par tippers, to boot.
After Wednesday came and went that week without so much as a single 40-something in Ray Bans and padded shorts stopping in to double-fist two cans of Jai Alai, we dared to hope the cyclists had chosen another spot to be their finish line from there on out. But no—they’d only postponed their weekly ride, and swarmed us on Friday night instead.
I was the last person to find out; I was clocked in as purchaser that evening. The position was something like a promotion I'd received a year earlier: for twenty hours a week, I got to retreat from the public and sit in the back room with the store laptop, reviewing sales and inventory, answering emails from brewery reps, and ordering beer, beverages, and assorted paper goods. When I put in hours as purchaser, my wage went up from $11 to $15 an hour, but I was removed from the tip pool. On most days, tips amounted to an extra two or three dollars an hour, so I usually came out ahead.
This was back in 2021. I don't know what Avenue Brew pays these days.
Anyway, at about 8:15, I stepped out to say goodbye to everyone and found the shop in chaos. Friday nights were generally pretty active, the cyclists' arrival had turned the place into a mob scene. The line extended to the front door. The phone was ringing. The Grubhub tablet dinged like an alarm clock without a snooze button. Danny was on the sandwich line and on the verge of losing his temper. Oliver was working up a sweat running food, bussing tables, and replenishing ingredients from the walk-in. The unflappable Marina was on register, and even she seemed like she was about to snap at somebody.
What else could I do? I stayed until closing to answer the phone, process Grubhub orders, hop on and off the second register, and help Danny with sandwich prep. After the tills were counted out, I stayed another hour to take care of the dishes, since nobody had a chance to do a first load. Oliver was grateful, even though he grumbled about having to make some calls and rearrange Sunday's schedule so I could come in a couple hours late. Irene and Jeremy, Avenue Brew's owners, would kick his ass if he let me go into overtime.
Danny suggested that we deserved a few drinks ourselves after managing to get through the shift without killing anyone. Not even Marina could find a reason to disagree with him.
The neighborhood had undergone enough gentrification to support an upscale brunch spot, an ice cream parlor, a gourmet burger restaurant, a coffee and bahn mi shop, and Avenue Brew (to name a few examples), but not yet quite enough that the people who staffed them couldn’t afford to live within a ten-minute walk from the main avenue where all these hep eateries stood between 24-hour corner stores with slot machines in back, late-night Chinese and Mexico-Italian takeout joints with bulletproof glass at the counters, and long-shuttered delis and shoe stores. Twenty on Poplar was the watering hole set aside for people like us. It was dim, a bit dilapidated, and inexpensive, and usually avoided by denizens of the condos popping up on the vacant lots and replacing clusters of abandoned row houses.
When we arrived, Kyle waved us over. He didn’t work at Avenue Brew anymore, but still kept up with a few of us. He was at Twenty at least four nights out of the week.
So there we all were. I sat with a brooding stranger freestyling to himself in a low mumble on the stool to my left and Oliver on my right, who tapped at his phone and nursed a bottle of Twisted Tea. To Oliver’s right sat Marina, staring at nothing in particular and trying to ignore Danny, who stood behind her, closer than she would have liked, listening to Kyle explain the crucial differences between the Invincible comic book and the Invincible web series.
I recall being startled back to something like wakefulness when it seemed to me that the ceiling had sprouted a new fan. I blinked my eyes, and it wasn’t there anymore. It reminded me of an incident from when I was still living with my folks in South Jersey and still had a car, and was driving home from a friend’s house party up in Bergen County. It was 6:30 AM, I hadn’t slept all night, and needed to get home so I could get at least little shuteye before heading to Whole Foods for my 11:00 AM shift. I imagined I passed beneath the shadows of overpasses I knew weren’t there, and realized I was dreaming at the wheel.
I was pretty thoroughly zombified at that point. Heather and I had broken up for good the night before, and I hadn't gotten even a minute of sleep. Calling out at Avenue Brew was tough. Unless you found someone willing to cover your shift on like six hours' notice, you were liable to get a writeup, a demotion, or your hours cut if you couldn't produce a doctor's note. So I loaded up on caffeine pills and Five-Hour Energy bottles at the corner store, and powered through as best I could.
I finished the last thimbleful of Blue Moon in my glass. Oliver wiped the sweat from the back of his neck with a napkin and covered his mouth to stifle a laugh at the KiwiFarms thread he was scrolling through. Pool balls clacked; somebody swore and somebody laughed. The TouchTunes box was playing Bob Dylan’s “Rain Day Woman #12 & 35,” and enough bleary 40-something men around the bar were bobbing their heads and mouthing the words to make it impossible to determine which one of them paid two bucks to hear it. A guy by the cigarette machine who looked like a caricature of Art Carney in flannel and an old Pixies T-shirt was accosting a woman who must have been a toddler when he hit drinking age, and she momentarily made eye contact with me as she scanned the area for a way out. Danny was shouting over the bartender’s head, carrying on a conversation with the Hot Guy from Pizza Stan’s, who was sitting on the horseshoe’s opposite arm.
I never got his name, but when Oliver first referred to him as the Hot Guy from Pizza Stan’s, I knew exactly who he meant. Philly scene kid par excellence. Mid-20s, washed-out black denim, dyed black hair, thick bangs, and dark, gentle eyes. He was only truly alluring when he was on the job, because he seldom smiled then—and when he smiled, he broke the spell by exposing his teeth, stained a gnarly shade of mahogany from too much smoking and not enough brushing.
“How’s Best? Marcus still a joker?” Danny asked him.
“Yeah, you know Marcus. You know how he is.”
So the Hot Guy had been working at Best Burger (directly across the street from Avenue Brew) ever since Pizza Stan’s owners mismanaged the place unto insolvency. (Afterwards it was renovated and reopened as a vegan bakery—which incidentally closed down about a month ago.) Danny used to work at Best Burger, but that ended after he got into a shouting match with the owner. I happened to overhear it while I was dragging in the tables and collecting the chairs from the sidewalk the night it happened. It wasn’t any of my business, and I tried not to pay attention, but they were really tearing into each other. A month later, Oliver welcomed Danny aboard at Avenue Brew. I hadn’t known he’d been interviewed, and by then it was too late to mention the incident. But I’d have been a hypocrite to call it a red flag after the way I resigned from my position as Café Chakra's assistant manager two years earlier—not that we need to go dredging that up right now. Let's say there was some bad blood and leave it at that.
Anyway, I was thinking about giving in and buying a pack of cigarettes from the machine—and then remembered that Twenty didn’t have a cigarette machine. I looked again. The Art Carney-lookalike was still there, fingering his phone with a frown, but the girl was gone—and so was the cigarette machine.
I had only a moment to puzzle over this before Danny clapped me on the shoulder and thrust a shot glass in front of me.
“Starfish!” he said. (Danny called me Starfish. Everybody else called me Pat.) “You look like you need some juice.”
He distributed shots to everyone else. Marina declined hers, but changed her mind when Kyle offered to take it instead.
She and Kyle had stopped sleeping together after Kyle left Avenue Brew to work at the Victory taproom on the Parkway, but Marina was still concerned about his bad habits, which Danny delighted in encouraging.
We all leaned in to clink our glasses. Before I could find an appropriate moment to ask Marina if I could bum a cigarette, she got up to visit the bathroom. Danny took her seat and bowed his head for a conspiratorial word with Kyle.
I watched from the corner of my eye and tried to listen in. Like Marina, I was a little worried about Kyle. He got hired at Avenue Brew around the same time I did, just before the pandemic temporarily turned us into a takeout joint. He was a senior at Drexel then, an English major, and sometimes talked about wanting to either find work in publishing or carve out a career as a freelance writer after graduating. But first he intended to spend a year getting some life in before submitting himself to the forever grind.
He read a lot of Charles Bukowski and Hunter Thompson. He relished the gritty and sordid, and had already been good at sniffing it out around the neighborhood and in West Philly before Danny introduced him to cocaine, casinos, strip clubs, and a rogue’s gallery of shady but fascinating people. (None were really Danny’s friends; just fellow passengers who intersected with the part of his life where he sometimes went to Parx, sometimes came out ahead, sometimes spent his winnings on coke, and sometimes did bumps at titty bars.) Kyle recounted these adventures with a boyish enthusiasm for the naked reality of sleaze, like a middle schooler telling his locker room buddies about catching his older brother in flagrante and seeing so-and-so body parts doing such-and-such things.
Marina hated it. She never said as much to me, but she was afraid that the template Kyle set for his life during his “year off” was in danger of becoming locked in. The anniversary of his graduation had already passed, and now here he was trying to convince Danny to contribute a couple hundred dollars toward a sheet of acid his guy had for sale. He wasn't doing much writing lately.
I was the oldest employee at Avenue Brew (as I write this I’m 37, but fortunately I don’t look it), and when Kyle still worked with us I felt like it was my prerogative to give him some advice. The longer he waited to make inroads, I once told him, the more likely he’d be seen as damaged goods by the publishing world. He needed to jam his foot in the door while he was still young.
I could tell the conversation bored him, and didn’t bring up the subject again.
The bartender took my glass and curtly asked if I’d like another drink.
“No thanks, not yet,” I answered.
She slid me my bill.
I missed the old bartender, the one she’d replaced. I forget her name, but she was ingenuous and energetic and sweet. Pretty much everyone had some sort of crush on her. Sometimes she came into Avenue Brew for lunch, and tipped us as well as we tipped her. Maybe three months before that night—Danny witnessed it—she suddenly started crying and rushed out the door. Everyone at the bar mutely looked to each other for an explanation. (Fortunately for Twenty, the kitchen manager hadn’t left yet, and picked up the rest of her shift.)
She never came back. None of us had seen her since. But drafts still had to be poured and bottlecaps pulled off, and now here was another white woman in her mid-twenties wearing a black tank top, a pushup bra, and a scrunchie, same as before. Twenty’s regulars grew accustomed to not expecting to see the person she’d replaced, and life went on.
“How’re you doing?” I asked Oliver, just to say something to somebody, and to keep my thoughts from wandering back to Heather.
“Just kind of existing right now,” he answered. His phone lay face-up on the counter. He was swiping through Instagram, and I recognized the avatar of the user whose album he hate-browsed.
“And how’s Austin been?” I asked.
“Oh, you know. Not even three weeks after getting over the jetlag from his trip back from the Cascades, he’s off touring Ireland.” He shook his head. “Living his best life.”
He’d hired Austin on a part-time basis in September. We needed a new associate when Emma was promoted to replace a supervisor who'd quit without even giving his two weeks. There was a whole thing. I'm having a hard time recalling the guy's name, but I liked him well enough. He was a good worker and he seemed like a bright kid, but he was—well, he was young. Naïve. One day he found Jeremy sitting in the back room with his laptop, and took advantage of the open-door policy to ask why the store manager and supervisors didn’t get health benefits or paid time off. Jeremy told him it "was being worked on," and that he couldn’t discuss it any further at that time. I understand the kid got argumentative, though I never knew precisely what was said.
Irene started visiting the shop a lot more often after that, almost always arriving when the kid was working. No matter what he was doing, she’d find a reason to intervene, to micromanage and harangue him, and effectively make his job impossible. A coincidence, surely.
It’s something I still think about. By any metric, Jeremy and Irene have done very well for themselves. They’re both a little over 40 years old. I remember hearing they met at law school. In addition to Avenue Brew, they own a bistro in Francisville and an ice cream parlor in Point Breeze. They have a house on the Blue Line, send their son to a Montessori school, and pull up to their businesses in a white Volkswagen ID.4. But whenever the subject of benefits, wages, or even free shift meals came up, they pled poverty. It simply couldn’t be done. But they liked to remind us about all they did to make Avenue Brew a fun place to work, like let the staff pick the music and allow Oliver and me to conduct a beer tasting once a day. They stuck Black Lives Matter, Believe Women, and Progress flag decals on the front door and windows, and I remember Irene wearing a Black Trans Lives Matter shirt once or twice when covering a supervisor's shift. None of the college students or recent graduates who composed most of Avenue Brew's staff could say the bosses weren't on the right team. And yet...
I'm sorry—I was talking about Austin. He was maybe 30 and already had another job, a “real” job, some sort of remote gig lucrative enough for him to make rent on a studio in the picturesque Episcopal church down the street that had been converted into upscale apartments some years back. Austin wasn’t looking for extra cash. He wanted to socialize. To have something to do and people to talk to in the outside world. He wanted to make friends, and all of us could appreciate that—but it’s hard to be fond of a coworker who irredeemably sucks at his job. Austin never acted with any urgency, was inattentive to detail, and even after repeated interventions from Oliver and the supervisors, he continued to perform basic tasks in bafflingly inefficient ways. Having Austin on your shift meant carrying his slack, and everyone was fed up after a few months. Oliver sat him down, told him he was on thin ice, and gave him a list of the areas in which he needed to improve if he didn’t want to be let go.
When Austin gave Oliver the indignant “I don’t need this job” speech, it was different from those times Danny or I told a boss to go to hell and walked out. Austin truly didn’t need it. He basically said the job was beneath him, and so was Oliver.
It got deep under Oliver’s skin. He did need the job and had to take it seriously, even when it meant being the dipshit manager chewing out a man four or five years his senior. He earned $18 an hour (plus tips when he wasn’t doing admin work), had debts to pay off, and couldn't expect to get any help from his family.
The important thing, though, the part I distinctly remember, was that Oliver was looking at a video of a wading bird Austin had recorded. An egret, maybe. White feathers, long black legs, pointy black beak. Austin must have been standing on a ledge above a creek, because he had an overhead view of the bird as it stood in the water, slowly and deliberately stretching and retracting its neck, eyeing the wriggling little shadows below. As far as the fish could know, they were swimming around a pair of reeds growing out of the silt. The predator from which they extended was of a world beyond their understanding and out of their reach.
The video ended. Oliver moved on to the next item: a photograph of the bird from the same perspective, with a fish clamped in its beak. Water droplets flung from the victim's thrashing tail caught the sunlight. And I remember now, I clearly remember, the shapes of like twelve other fish stupidly milling about the bird's feet, unperturbed and unpanicked.
Danny peered at Oliver’s phone and observed a resemblance between the bird—its shape and bearing, and the composition of the photograph—and a POV porn video shot from behind and above, and he told us so. Elaborately. He made squawking noises.
“And mom says I’m a degenerate,” Oliver sighed. “Can you practice your interspecies pickup artist shit somewhere else?” Oliver flicked his wrist, shooing Danny off, and held his phone in front of his face to signal that he was done talking.
Danny sagged a little on his stool and turned away. I sometimes felt bad for him. For all his faults, he had the heart of a puppy dog. He really did think of us as his tribe. There was nobody else who’d only ever answer “yes” when you asked him to pick up a shift, and he did it completely out of loyalty.
He was turning 29 in a week. I wondered how many people would actually turn out to celebrate with him at the Black Taxi. Kyle probably would—but even he regarded Danny more as a source of vulgar entertainment than a friend.
Then it happened again. When I turned to speak to Oliver, there’d been a pair of pool cues leaning side-by-side against the wall a few stools down. Now they were gone.
This time it might have been my imagination. Somebody passing by could have casually snatched them up and kept walking.
But a moment later I seemed to notice a second TouchTunes box protruding from the wall directly behind me. I let it be.
Marina returned from the bathroom. Danny rose and offered her back her seat with an exaggerated bow. Before she got settled, I asked if she’d like to step outside with me. She withdrew her pack of Marlboro Menthols from her canvas bag, which she left sitting on the stool to deter Danny from sitting back down.
Marina never minded letting me bum cigarettes from time to time. I couldn’t buy them for myself anymore; it’s a habit I could never keep under control, and was only getting more expensive. Like everything else in the world. About once a month I reimbursed her by buying her a pack.
The air out on the sidewalk was as hot as the air inside Twenty, but easier to breathe. After lighting up, Marina leaned against the bricks and sighed.
“I wish Oliver would fire Danny already and get it over with.”
I nodded. Marina rarely talked about anything but work.
“He sneaks drinks and doesn't think anyone notices he's buzzed,” she went on. “He steals so much shit and isn’t even a little subtle about it. He’s going to get Oliver in trouble. And he’s a creep.”
“Yeah,” I said. These were her usual complaints about Danny, and they were all true. “At least he’s better than Austin.”
“That’s a low bar.”
Three dirt bikes and an ATV roared down the lonely street, charging through stop sign after stop sign, putting our talk on hold.
“Remind me. You’ve got one semester left, right?” I asked after the noise ebbed.
“Yep.”
Marina was a marketing major at Temple. She’d had an internship during the spring semester, and her boss told her to give her a call the very minute she graduated. Her parents in central Pennsylvania couldn’t pay her rent or tuition for her, so she was a full-time student and a full-time employee at Avenue Brew. Her emotional spectrum ranged from "tired" to "over it." She’d been waiting tables and working at coffee shops since she was seventeen, had no intention of continuing for even a day longer than she had to, and feared the escape hatch would slam shut if she dallied too long after prying it open.
She’d considered majoring in English, like Kyle. She went for marketing instead. I couldn’t blame her.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You’ve been kind of off all day.”
“I’m terrible.”
“Why?”
I gave dodgy answers, but she asked precisely the right follow-up questions to get me going about what happened with Heather the night before.
It was the new job. Before the pandemic, Heather worked as a server at a Center City bar and grill. (That's where I met her; we were coworkers for about a year, and then I left to work Café Chakra because it was quieter and closer to where I lived.) When the place closed its doors and laid everyone off during the lockdown, she got a stopgap job at the Acme on Passyunk, and hated it. Then in March, she found a bar-and-lounge gig in a ritzy hotel on Broad Street. Very corporate. Excellent pay, great benefits. Definitely a step up. But her new employers made Irene and Jeremy look like Bob and Linda Belcher by comparison. It was the kind of place where someone had recently gotten herself fired for leaving work to rush to the hospital after getting the news that her grandmother was about to be taken off life support, and not finding someone to come in and cover the last two hours of her shift.
Heather seldom worked fewer than fifty-five hours a week, and her schedule was even more erratic than mine. At least once a week she left the hotel at 1:00 or 2:00 AM and returned at 9:00 the next morning. Neither of us could remember the last time she’d had two consecutive days off, and it had been over a month since one of mine overlapped with one of hers. She’d spent it drinking alone at home. All she wanted was some privacy.
I’d biked to South Philly to meet her when she got home at 1:30. The argument that killed our relationship for good began around 2:30, when I complained that we never had sex anymore. Heather accused me of only caring about that, when she was so exhausted and stressed that her hair was falling out in the shower. Quit the job? She couldn’t quit. The money was too good. She had student loans, medical bills, and credit card debt, and for the first time in her life she could imagine paying it all off before hitting menopause.
So, yeah, I was cranky about our sex life being dead in the water. Say whatever you like. But at that point, what were we to each other? We did nothing together anymore but complain about work before one or both of us fell asleep. That isn’t a relationship.
She said my hair always smelled like sandwiches, even after bathing, and she was done pretending it didn’t turn her off. I told her she was one to talk—she always reeked of liquor. As things escalated, we stopped caring if her roommates heard us. “You want to be a father?” she shouted around 4:00 AM. “Making what you make? That poor fucking kid.”
We fought until sunrise, and I left her apartment with the understanding that I wouldn’t be coming back, wouldn’t be calling her ever again. I biked home and sat on the steps facing the cement panel that was my house’s backyard. After my phone died and I couldn’t anaesthetize myself with dumb YouTube videos or make myself feel crazy staring at the download button for the Tinder app, I watched the sparrows hopping on and off the utility lines for a while.
At 11:40 I went inside. One of my roommates was already in the shower, so the best I could do was put on a clean Avenue Brew T-shirt before walking to the shop and clocking in at noon to help deal with the lunch rush.
“That’s a lot,” Marina finally said. “Sorry.”
I don’t know what I was expecting her to say. She was sixteen years my junior, after all, and just a coworker. She didn’t need to hear any of this, and I definitely didn't need to be telling her. But who else was there to tell?
She’d already finished her cigarette. I still had a few puffs left. She went inside.
I decided to call it a night.
The second TouchTunes box was gone—naturally. Danny had taken my stool, and regarded my approach with a puckish you snooze you lose grin. I wasn’t going to say anything. I’d just pay my bill, give everyone a nod goodnight, and walk the five blocks back home.
And then Danny disappeared.
One second, he was there. The next—gone.
Danny didn’t just instantaneously vanish. Even when something happens in the blink of an eye, you can still put together something of a sequence. I saw him—I seemed to see him—falling into himself, collapsing to a point, and then to nothing.
You know how sometimes a sound is altogether inaudible unless you’re looking at the source—like when you don’t realize somebody’s whispering at you, and can then hear and understand them after they get your attention? I think that was the case here. I wouldn't have known to listen if I hadn't seen it happen. What I heard lingered for two, maybe three seconds, and wasn't any louder than a fly buzzing inside a lampshade. A tiny and impossibly distant scream, pitchshifted like a receding ambulance siren into a basso drone...
I don’t know. I don’t know for sure. I’m certain I remember a flash of red, and I have the idea of Danny’s trunk expanding, opening up as it imploded. A crimson flower, flecked white, with spooling pink stalks—and Danny’s wide-eyed face above it, drawn twisting and shrinking into its petals.
For an instant, Twenty’s interior shimmered. Not shimmered, exactly—glitched would be a better word. If you’re old enough to remember the fragmented graphics that sometimes flashed onscreen when you turned on the Nintendo without blowing on the cartridge, you’ll have an idea of what I mean. It happened much too fast, and there was too much of it to absorb. The one clear impression I could parse was the mirage of a cash register flickering upside-down above the pool table.
Not a cash register. The shape was familiar, but the texture was wrong. I think it was ribbed, sort of like a maggot. I think it glistened. Like—camo doesn’t work anymore when the wearer stops crouching behind a bush and breaks into a run. Do you get what I’m saying?
Nobody else seemed to notice. The pool balls clacked. A New Order track was playing on the TouchTunes box. A nearby argument about about Nick Sirianni continued unabated.
Finally, there was a downward rush of air—and this at least elicited a reaction from the bartender, who slapped my bill to keep it from sailing off the counter.
“Danny,” I said.
“Danny?” Kyle asked me quietly. His face had gone pale.
“Danny?” Oliver repeated in a faraway voice.
After a pause, Kyle blinked a few times. “You heard from him?”
“God forbid,” said Marina. “When he quit I was like, great, I can keep working here after all.”
“Oh, come on—”
“Kyle. Did I ever show you those texts he sent me once at three in the morning?” The color had returned to Oliver’s face.
“No, what did he say?”
Oliver tapped at his phone and turned the screen toward Kyle.
“Oh. Oh, jeez.”
“Right? Like—if you want to ask me something, ask me. You know? Don’t be weirdly accusatory about it…”
I pulled a wad of fives and ones from my pocket, threw it all onto the counter, and beelined for the exit without consideration for the people I squeezed through and shoved past on the way.
I heard Marina saying “let him go.”
I went a second consecutive night without sleep. Fortunately I wasn’t scheduled to come in the next day.
The schedule. It’s funny. Oliver was generally great at his job, and even when he wasn’t, I cut him a lot of slack because I knew Irene and Jeremy never gave him a moment’s peace. But I could never forgive him those times he waited until the weekend to make up and distribute the schedule. This was one of those weeks he didn’t get around to it until Saturday afternoon. When I found it in my inbox, Danny’s name wasn’t anywhere on it.
As far as I know, nobody who hadn’t been at Twenty that night asked what happened to him. We were a bit overstaffed as it was, and everyone probably assumed Danny was slated for the chopping block. The part-timers were, for the most part, happy to get a few additional hours.
Oliver abruptly quit around Labor Day after a final acrimonious clash with the owners. I never found out the details, and I never saw him again. Jeremy and Irene took turns minding the store while a replacement manager was sought. None of the supervisors would be pressured into taking the job; they knew from Oliver what they could expect.
About three weeks after Oliver left, I came in for my purchasing shift and found Jeremy waiting for me in the back room. I knew it was serious when he didn’t greet me with the awkward fist-bump he ordinarily required of his male employees.
“You’ve seen the numbers,” he said. Business for the summer had fallen short of expectations, it was true, and he and Irene had decided to rein in payroll expenses. My purchaser position was being eliminated. Its responsibilities would be redistributed among the supervisors and the new manager, when one was found. In the meantime, I'd be going back to the regular $11 an hour (plus tips of course) associate position full-time.
Jeremy assured me I'd be first in the running for supervisor the next time there was an opening.
I told him it was fine, I was done, and if he’d expected the courtesy of two weeks’ notice, he shouldn’t have blindsided me like that.
“Well, that’s your choice,” he answered, trying not to look pleased. His payroll problem was solving itself.
I racked up credit card debt for a few months. Applied for entry-level museum jobs that might appreciate my art history degree. Aimed for some purchasing and administrative assistant gigs, and just for the hell of it, turned in a resume for a facilitator position at an after-school art program. Got a few interviews. All of them eventually told me they’d decided to go in a different direction. I finally got hired to bartend at Hops from Underground, a microbrewery on Fairmount.
I’m still there. The money’s okay, but it fluctuates. Hours are reasonable. I’m on their high-deductible health plan. There’s a coworker I’ve been dating. Sort of dating. You know how it goes. In this line of work you get so used to people coming and going that you learn not to get too attached. I walk past Avenue Brew a few times a week, but stopped peering in through the window when I didn't recognize the people behind the counter anymore.
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2023.06.03 00:58 ToastTurtle Transcript from the May 31st, 2023, Q3 Webinar Update for those who like to read rather than watch.

Reliq Health Technologies Inc. (RHT:TSXV) (OTCPK:RQHTF) Q3 2023 Earnings Call May 31, 2023 12:00 PM ET
Company Participants
Lisa Crossley - Chief Executive Officer
Lisa Crossley
Thank you for joining us. Today is May 31, 2023. Its 12 noon Eastern Time and 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time. This is Reliq Health Technologies’ Corporate Update. I am Lisa Crossley, the CEO. And, this will be an overview of our Q3 financials as well as outlook forward.
Please review the forward-looking statements disclaimer at your leisure and interpret any remarks from today's presentation in that context. For today's webinar, I'm going to provide a brief overview of the Q3 fiscal year 2023 financials, for the period ending March 31, 2023. I'll provide an outlook for the remainder of the calendar year, and then go through some very quick shareholder FAQs and the upcoming webinar dates subsequent to this one.
Overall, what I except to cover during this webinar is fairly brief. As you all know, we made some substantive changes to our business model beginning in January of this year, and the quarter that we're reporting on here, which was two months ago, it ended was really the quarter where we first started to implement those changes. So, not a lot of the progress that we made is reflected in these financials, but will certainly be reflected in future financials.
Let's jump into the Q3 results. So, the highlights for the quarter ending March 31, were an increase in revenue of over 88% to roughly $4.7 million. We also increased our revenue from the higher margin software and services sales by 69% to about $1.8 million. You will definitely see much more significant increases in software sales going forward. This quarter, we were a little bit hampered by the hardware orders that we'll talk about a little more in a little more detail in subsequent slides, but because we had some large hardware orders that were deferred, the software revenues associated with those hardware orders, were also deferred.
As I've disclosed before. And, but you will certainly begin to see much more significant growth on the software side over the rest of this year and beyond. This was our first profitable quarter, and I think that definitely does reflect some of the changes that we've made to the business model. We had a net gain of $731,000 and our adjusted EBITDA has improved by over 2000% relative to the same period last year, and that's primarily just adjusting for non-cash expenses. They're very small, non-recurring expenses in that adjustment.
During the last three months, we certainly made some significant progress on the business development front. We continue to expand the skilled nursing facility space, adding over a 120 new skilled nursing facilities over the last five months, actually, the quarter ending March 31 and subsequent. And we also signed new contracts with some very significant large healthcare organizations, one of which was a large U.S. Healthcare System that operates over 1,200 care centers across seven U.S. states, including the skilled nursing facilities, hospitals, home health agencies, hospice agencies, and primary care clinics. And they have over 10 million patient encounters a year across their network, and they and the other large clients we've signed, do very extensive due diligence before they select a company to be their partner for remote patient monitoring, behavioral health integration, chronic care management, transitional care management, etcetera.
So, it is really a testament to our unique value proposition in this space and to the future potential for this Company. We’ve also signed a new contract with a large U.S. Health Plan that operates accountable care organizations in five U.S. states with over 3,000 doctors and more than a million patients, and this client, in particular, it's our first health plan, but they are also subsidiary of one of the nation's largest providers of hospital and healthcare services, who is also a Fortune 500 company.
So, we really are getting into some of the blue chip clients. And I think it's important to remember that with these very large clients, they like to start out with a phase deployment, I’ve talked about that a lot over the years, and that's very typical in healthcare for healthcare software deployments that they will start small rollout to a specific geography or a specific type of facility or even to a subset of patients from a given facility, and then expand from there.
So, the initial deployments that we've announced with these large clients are relatively small compared to their patient population overall, but they are the first step in phase deployments. So as we have more details, more established implementation plans with these larger clients, we’ll be able to provide updates, but certainly our expectation is that we will see significant growth from these new clients beyond the initial phase. So, what we've announced today is really effectively the tip of the iceberg.
The outlook for the remainder of the year and beyond, as you all know, historically, the Company has been very focused on new business development and capturing market share that real estate grab that we talk about. But as of the beginning of this year, we really expanded our focus to include real significant efforts towards improving profitability and cash flows. I think you can see the improvement in profitability very clearly in these financials.
The cash flows are going to come as collections pickup and certainly so are the topline revenues associated with improved adherence, but I'll discuss that a little bit further in subsequent slides.
As we've disclosed on previous webinars, the Company has $15 million in contracted hardware sales. So we've received orders from clients for $15 million worth of hardware, and we've started shipping the hardware, which is the point at which we can recognize revenue, but the majority of the orders are expected to be fulfilled by the end of the fiscal year. So we'd started shipping in the quarter ending March 31, but the bulk of that revenue will land in the current quarter, which ends June 30.
As you know, hardware sold on 12 month to 24 month payment plans, so we've had some of the initial scheduled payments for the hardware that's already been shipped come in, but we'll see those payments ramp up significantly in the second half of the calendar year, once we've been able to ship all of that hardware in the current fiscal year. And then all of those hardware orders will translate to subsequent software revenue. So, it is a very meaningful order for the Company not just in terms of the hardware revenue, but in terms of the software and services revenue that will follow behind.
Since January 1, Company has been very focused on improving patient adherence by taking over adherence management from clients. And I want to address this particular topic in some detail, because I think there's an expectation in some quarters that when we say we're taking over managing adherence, that we flip a switch and that happens overnight. And that's certainly not the case. We made some good progress in Q1 getting percentage of our patient’s population or client population moved over to Reliq handling the adherence management. But even once we get those patients, it does take a month or two, but most three for us to get those patients on-boarded and, well they're already on-boarded, but comfortable with us managing the adherence and actually start to improve.
So, we do see dramatic improvements in adherence in these patients, once we've taken over managing that piece from their clinicians, but it's not an instantaneous or overnight change. So you aren't going to see much of an impact on topline revenues in the quarter ending March 31, that our results of improving the adherence. You will start to see the impact of the improvements in adherence management in the quarter ending June 30, but where you'll really start to see the significant increases, and the impact on revenues will be in the second half of the year.
So, certainly, it'll be a much more significant impact. It'll have much more significant impact on the quarter that will report or that is ending June 30, but it will continue to improve beyond that. So, the average adherence is expected to exceed 70% by the end of the calendar year.
Adherence levels interestingly appear to be consistently higher with the patients from the larger healthcare organizations than from the individual physician practices. So historically, we have had a customer base that was primarily individual physician practices and home health agencies beginning late last year 2022, we started to acquire more and more of these larger healthcare clients, skilled nursing facilities, accountable care organizations, and other health plans, etcetera. And we find with those groups that they have resources, for example, with the skilled nursing facility, where they will have these patients trained in using the system before they even are discharged, which really helps with adherence levels, but also their performance metrics are so well aligned with what we do as a business that we see more, I'll call it motivation from the larger clients to really work with patients and to commit whatever is necessary in order to ensure that their patient population is adherent.
It's a little bit different from the way that the individual physician practices in the home health agencies approach, RPM and CCM. So, that's to our benefit because going forward, we expect that the majority of our clients will be these larger health care organizations, certainly the majority of patients that we have on our platform will come from the large clients. So, that's going to make it easier for us to improve adherence levels even beyond the 70% level as we move into 2024 and beyond.
Collections, again, I want to emphasize it's something that we put a lot of effort into and that is improving dramatically, but we really didn't start to see the impact of our efforts, the account manager's efforts, until March. So, there's not a lot of collections that are reflected in the financials ending March 31, but you will certainly see a significant impact of our efforts in accelerating collections in the quarter ending June 30. And by the time we get to the end of June, we should have all of our clients caught up on all of their receivable, all of our receivables, their payables. And then going forward, we will be able to keep all of our clients on a regular payment schedule so that they, we don't have that same issue where we have these aging receivables.
Remind everyone that there will always be a portion of our receivables that will relate to hardware that's on 12 month to 24 month payment plans. So, there will always be a fairly large receivable number on our books, but there will be essentially no stale receivables, and/or these very aging receivables that we see around the software and services revenue where clients have needed a little bit of nagging in order pay. And because we are going to be receiving or collecting or have started to collect all of the receivables that are expected by the end of June. We will be in a much better cash position going forward, for the second half of the year and beyond.
Just some very brief shareholder FAQs, we have been getting a lot of questions about Accountable Care Organizations, with ACOs. These are groups of physicians and sometimes other healthcare providers, who aren't necessarily located in the same facility or even in the same city, but they've effectively banded together on a back office basis, to form Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services approved entity that is compensated based on value.
Now for CMS, value means patients have better health outcomes, and therefore lower health care costs. So, CMS financially incents the ACOs to reduce health care costs by using a shared savings model. So, the ACO members will receive a portion of the cost savings that they achieve for patients. And the best way to reduce costs for these patients is by reducing hospitalizations. That's really where the bulk of the costs for the chronic disease patients come from, these exacerbations that translate to a hospital stay.
Our platform, iUGO Care platform has been proven to reduce hospitalizations and the associated health care costs by over 80%. So, our solutions are perfectly aligned with the ACO's performance metrics, as they are also very well aligned with skilled nursing facilities and many of these other large healthcare organizations.
So, we expect that we will start to see increasing traction with the ACOs now that we've landed our first really very large and multistate ACO. This is not raised. This next point has a question, but it is something that we are asked consistently. So I just want to repeat that we don't expect to need to raise capital or take on debt to fund operations. And we expect to initiate a share buyback program later this year. So, soon as we have sufficient free cash flow, we will pull the trigger on that, because obviously we want to initiate the share buyback at a compelling price point for the Company.
Upcoming webinar, so as I've said repeatedly, I think there will be a lot more meaningful data that will demonstrate the improvements in adherence and collections, but when we close out the quarter that ends June 30, now obviously that's our fiscal yearend. So, we will be issuing the Annual Audited Financials or filing them in October of this year, but we will hold an interim webinar on well, in the middle of July, the exact date will be determined in June, and we'll announce that date in probably early July.
And at that point, I think we'll be able to get a lot more granular with our reporting and sharing the various metrics with all of you, so that it's easier to build your models. I know it's been a bit frustrating, but the Company has been very focused on making the necessary changes, so that the business model going forward really supports and not just the really strong revenue growth, but profitability and strong cash flows.
So, we've needed do that work, and I think we'll be at a point where we have all of the clients moved over to us managing adherence and that will allow us, I think, going forward to provide more details in our reporting [interim] (ph), probably help some of you construct the models that you, I know, like to work on.
And so as I say, we are filing the Annual Audited Financials in October, we'll do this interim progress update webinar in July, but we'll also do a second update webinar in early September, and again exact date is to be determined, but that will provide another touch point between now and when we do file the Annual Audited Financials, so that we can share the meaningful progress that we'll be able to show from here going forward and without having to wait months, and months, and months to file that those Annual Audited Statements.
Thank you very much for joining us. We greatly appreciate your time. The webinar will be available on our website later today, as soon as we are able to get it up which is sometimes in our control and sometimes not depending on the webinar provider, but we will get that up as soon as we can.
So, again, thank you very much for joining us.
Link to the webinar: https://www.reliqhealth.com/investors/#single/0
submitted by ToastTurtle to ReliqhealthStock [link] [comments]

2023.06.02 23:39 Ok-Supermarket4492 Introducing Seattle City Council Newsletter

Hi Reddit! My name is Sharon, and I am a college student interested in civic engagement and politics. I have been working on a project with some other students to make the Seattle City Council meetings more accessible by putting them into short summaries. I have put an example from last week below, though the real thing has a bit more formatting that doesn't translate into Reddit.
This project is relatively new, so we would really appreciate any feedback you may have and hope to make it as informative and accessible as possible! If you're interested in getting these newsletters every week, please click here: https://forms.gle/Yxo5fevVhVWmwcB78.
Example newsletter:
Seattle City Council Meeting Summaries - Week of May 22
Council Briefing 5/22/2023 (Duration: 1h50min)
Council Meeting 5/23/2023 (Duration: 2h56min)
Councilmember Updates
Legislation Updates
State Legislation Update: The Office of Intergovernmental Relations (OIR) director Gael Tarleton, State Relations Director Samir Junejo, and State Legislative Liaison Anna Johnson gave a presentation on legislation regarding climate and environment, healthcare and behavioral health, housing and homelessness, labor and commerce, public safety, drug possession and treatment, social programs and education, the capital budget, transportation.
Proclamations:
Public Comments:
Resources:
submitted by Ok-Supermarket4492 to Belltown [link] [comments]

2023.06.02 23:38 Ok-Supermarket4492 Introducing Seattle City Council Newsletter

Hi Reddit! My name is Sharon, and I am a college student interested in civic engagement and politics. I have been working on a project with some other students to make the Seattle City Council meetings more accessible by putting them into short summaries. I have put an example from last week below, though the real thing has a bit more formatting that doesn't translate into Reddit.
This project is relatively new, so we would really appreciate any feedback you may have and hope to make it as informative and accessible as possible! If you're interested in getting these newsletters every week, please click here: https://forms.gle/Yxo5fevVhVWmwcB78.
Example newsletter:
Seattle City Council Meeting Summaries - Week of May 22
Council Briefing 5/22/2023 (Duration: 1h50min)
Council Meeting 5/23/2023 (Duration: 2h56min)
Councilmember Updates
Legislation Updates
State Legislation Update: The Office of Intergovernmental Relations (OIR) director Gael Tarleton, State Relations Director Samir Junejo, and State Legislative Liaison Anna Johnson gave a presentation on legislation regarding climate and environment, healthcare and behavioral health, housing and homelessness, labor and commerce, public safety, drug possession and treatment, social programs and education, the capital budget, transportation.
Proclamations:
Public Comments:
Resources:
submitted by Ok-Supermarket4492 to udub [link] [comments]

2023.06.02 23:37 Ok-Supermarket4492 Introducing Seattle City Council Newsletter

Hi Reddit! My name is Sharon, and I am a college student interested in civic engagement and politics. I have been working on a project with some other students to make the Seattle City Council meetings more accessible by putting them into short summaries. I have put an example from last week below, though the real thing has a bit more formatting that doesn't translate into Reddit.
This project is relatively new, so we would really appreciate any feedback you may have and hope to make it as informative and accessible as possible! If you're interested in getting these newsletters every week, please click here: https://forms.gle/Yxo5fevVhVWmwcB78.
Example newsletter:
Seattle City Council Meeting Summaries - Week of May 22
Council Briefing 5/22/2023 (Duration: 1h50min)
Council Meeting 5/23/2023 (Duration: 2h56min)
Councilmember Updates
Legislation Updates
State Legislation Update: The Office of Intergovernmental Relations (OIR) director Gael Tarleton, State Relations Director Samir Junejo, and State Legislative Liaison Anna Johnson gave a presentation on legislation regarding climate and environment, healthcare and behavioral health, housing and homelessness, labor and commerce, public safety, drug possession and treatment, social programs and education, the capital budget, transportation.
Proclamations:
Public Comments:
Resources:
submitted by Ok-Supermarket4492 to Washington [link] [comments]

2023.06.02 23:36 Ok-Supermarket4492 Introducing Seattle City Council Newsletter

Hi Reddit! My name is Sharon, and I am a college student interested in civic engagement and politics. I have been working on a project with some other students to make the Seattle City Council meetings more accessible by putting them into short summaries. I have put an example from last week below, though the real thing has a bit more formatting that doesn't translate into Reddit.
This project is relatively new, so we would really appreciate any feedback you may have and hope to make it as informative and accessible as possible! If you're interested in getting these newsletters every week, please click here: https://forms.gle/Yxo5fevVhVWmwcB78.
Example newsletter:
Seattle City Council Meeting Summaries - Week of May 22
Council Briefing 5/22/2023 (Duration: 1h50min)
Council Meeting 5/23/2023 (Duration: 2h56min)
Councilmember Updates
Legislation Updates
State Legislation Update: The Office of Intergovernmental Relations (OIR) director Gael Tarleton, State Relations Director Samir Junejo, and State Legislative Liaison Anna Johnson gave a presentation on legislation regarding climate and environment, healthcare and behavioral health, housing and homelessness, labor and commerce, public safety, drug possession and treatment, social programs and education, the capital budget, transportation.
Proclamations:
Public Comments:
Resources:
submitted by Ok-Supermarket4492 to seattlewomen [link] [comments]

2023.06.02 23:35 Ok-Supermarket4492 Introducing Seattle City Council Newsletter

Hi Reddit! My name is Sharon, and I am a college student interested in civic engagement and politics. I have been working on a project with some other students to make the Seattle City Council meetings more accessible by putting them into short summaries. I have put an example from last week below, though the real thing has a bit more formatting that doesn't translate into Reddit.
This project is relatively new, so we would really appreciate any feedback you may have and hope to make it as informative and accessible as possible! If you're interested in getting these newsletters every week, please click here: https://forms.gle/Yxo5fevVhVWmwcB78.
Example newsletter:
Seattle City Council Meeting Summaries - Week of May 22
Council Briefing 5/22/2023 (Duration: 1h50min)
Council Meeting 5/23/2023 (Duration: 2h56min)
Councilmember Updates
Legislation Updates
State Legislation Update: The Office of Intergovernmental Relations (OIR) director Gael Tarleton, State Relations Director Samir Junejo, and State Legislative Liaison Anna Johnson gave a presentation on legislation regarding climate and environment, healthcare and behavioral health, housing and homelessness, labor and commerce, public safety, drug possession and treatment, social programs and education, the capital budget, transportation.
Proclamations:
Public Comments:
Resources:
submitted by Ok-Supermarket4492 to SeattleEvents [link] [comments]

2023.06.02 23:30 Ok-Supermarket4492 Introducing Seattle City Council Newsletter

Hi Reddit! My name is Sharon, and I am a college student interested in civic engagement and politics. I have been working on a project with some other students to make the Seattle City Council meetings more accessible by putting them into short summaries. I have put an example from last week below, though the real thing has a bit more formatting that doesn't translate into Reddit.
This project is relatively new, so we would really appreciate any feedback you may have and hope to make it as informative and accessible as possible! If you're interested in getting these newsletters every week, please click here: https://forms.gle/Yxo5fevVhVWmwcB78.
Example newsletter:
Seattle City Council Meeting Summaries - Week of May 22
Council Briefing 5/22/2023 (Duration: 1h50min)
Council Meeting 5/23/2023 (Duration: 2h56min)
Councilmember Updates
Legislation Updates
State Legislation Update: The Office of Intergovernmental Relations (OIR) director Gael Tarleton, State Relations Director Samir Junejo, and State Legislative Liaison Anna Johnson gave a presentation on legislation regarding climate and environment, healthcare and behavioral health, housing and homelessness, labor and commerce, public safety, drug possession and treatment, social programs and education, the capital budget, transportation.
Proclamations:
Public Comments:
Resources:
submitted by Ok-Supermarket4492 to WestSeattleWA [link] [comments]

2023.06.02 23:28 Ok-Supermarket4492 Introducing Seattle City Council Newsletter

Hi Reddit! My name is Sharon, and I am a college student interested in civic engagement and politics. I have been working on a project with some other students to make the Seattle City Council meetings more accessible by putting them into short summaries. I have put an example from last week below, though the real thing has a bit more formatting that doesn't translate into Reddit.
This project is relatively new, so we would really appreciate any feedback you may have and hope to make it as informative and accessible as possible! If you're interested in getting these newsletters every week, please click here: https://forms.gle/Yxo5fevVhVWmwcB78.
Example newsletter:
Seattle City Council Meeting Summaries - Week of May 22
Council Briefing 5/22/2023 (Duration: 1h50min)
Council Meeting 5/23/2023 (Duration: 2h56min)
Councilmember Updates
Legislation Updates
State Legislation Update: The Office of Intergovernmental Relations (OIR) director Gael Tarleton, State Relations Director Samir Junejo, and State Legislative Liaison Anna Johnson gave a presentation on legislation regarding climate and environment, healthcare and behavioral health, housing and homelessness, labor and commerce, public safety, drug possession and treatment, social programs and education, the capital budget, transportation.
Proclamations:
Public Comments:
Resources:
submitted by Ok-Supermarket4492 to SeattleWA [link] [comments]

2023.06.02 23:27 Old_Heart_7780 Search warrant(s) for Allen’s property

It’s a slow day. Thought I’d make it a two post day just because. I was reading some comments about the search warrants for Allen’s property, and just decided I have to throw my two cents in- again. I say again because I’m aware I tend to repeat myself. But alas I think the matter of the search warrants are critically important to understand what’s going on. And I don’t say that as a fact, rather I’m just giving my speculation what happened that October 13, 2022 at Richard Allen’s property on Whiteman Road in Delphi.
I just read a comment where someone suggested there was a lot of mess ups with the search warrant for Allen’s property. I disagree. I think the ISP investigators were able to secure a warrant for Allen’s property shortly after having left the two guys from Peru, Indiana’s mothegrandmothers backyard. We do know ISP investigators were in this little old ladies burn/trash pit just prior to looking in Allen’s burn pit. They were obviously looking in this little old ladies trash burn pit ashes because someone told investigators something was burned there. They could not have procured legal access to that little old ladies burnt trash on a whim. They had to have had someone say they knew something vital to the Delphi murder investigation was thrown in that pit and burned. This little old lady had absolutely nothing to do whatsoever with what happened in Delphi on Ron Logan’s land— as we all know. Who could have known something important was burned there— let alone snitched to the ISP something was in that pit?
So the ISP investigators were able to secure a search warrant probable cause affidavit to search her trash dump. There are published news stories that confirm the ISP investigators were there just one short week after the Wabash River search concluded on and early Monday afternoon. The published reports specifically say they were “sifting through ashes”.
No sooner were those ISP investigators done sifting through granny’s garbage/ashes, and the next thing we know they are seen in the PREDAWN hours sifting though a pile of ashes in Allen’s backyard behind a shed. So we can conclude the ISP investigators wrapped up in Peru and headed straight to Allen’s house. This is the kind of dramatic stuff movies are made of.
Just like granny’s backyard burn pit limited search warrant probable cause affidavit— Richard Allen is handed the same limited search warrant PCA to search his backyard for any signs of something burned. I suspect they banged on his door early that morning on October 13, 2022— long before the sun came up. They were in Allen’s backyard using “flashlights to sift through ashes” behind his shed. That’s a fact. There are numerous published eyewitness accounts from Allen’s neighbors stating that’s what the plain clothes investigators were doing.
So it is safe to assume there were TWO search warrant served on Richard Allen and his wife that day—- October 13, 2022. The first search warrant gave investigators a very limited scope of what they could look for in this guys backyard. A guy with a clean criminal record, and trusty worthy enough to have been a licensed pharmacy Technician in the State of Indiana. A guy nobody knew about until several weeks later when he was arrested for the murders of Abby and Libby.
We also know there was a lull in the search that day. Eyewitness reports tell of the Allen’s sitting outside their house along with an idle group of ISP investigators. I have to suspect they found exactly what they were looking for in the small pile of ashes behind his shed. There are published photos of that pile of ashes online and easy to find.
iSP Investigators waited patiently with the Allen’s outside the house while Tony Liggett was dispatched with the CC prosecutor (I would also assume) to go back to the judge for the SECOND search warrant PCA that day. The second search warrant PCA would include the right to search Allen’s house, and I think it’s safe to say— look for a large frame semiautomatic handgun and a box of .40 S&W bullets. As someone once pointed out to me— Richard Allen’s SIG Sauer P226 .40 S&W was on file in the Carroll County Courthouse file on Conceal Carry weapons, which Richard Allen had legally registered to carry his big gun. They knew he had the gun— they needed a witness to say he used it that day, and he burned bloody evidence in his backyard.
I could be wrong— but I speculate there were two search warrant PCA’s served on Richard Allen on that that date- October 13, 2022. It explains the “flashlights” in the early morning while sifting through ashes of all things. It also explains the Allen’s and the plainclothes investigators all standing around while seemingly waiting for something. It explains Richard Allen’s wife seen sitting the couples vehicle while I’m sure Ricky was nervously pacing around the driveway. It’s very possible he put that gun back up in his closet shelf never using it again— and never realizing he’d ejected a bullet on Logan’s land found 2’ from Libby. That second search warrant PCA is the reason he’s been sitting in jail the past 8 months with no bail, and now he’s even given up asking for bail at the present time.
I don’t know why but I think of that song by Drowning Pool when I think of Richard Allen. The song Let the Bodies Hit the Floor it’s that crazy little dance he does for his wife while playing pool and wearing that hat I swear is the hat BG was wearing that day. He’s got that nervous explosive energy thing going on with him— when he walks past his wife and does that crazy spasmodic mosh pit dance thing…
*Let the bodies hit the floor Let the bodies hit the floor Let the bodies hit the floor Let the bodies hit the floor
Beaten, why for Can't take much more (Here we go, here we go, here we go now)
One, nothing wrong with me Two, nothing wrong with me Three, nothing wrong with me Four, nothing wrong with me
One, something's got to give Two, something's got to give Three, something's got to give now
Let the bodies hit the floor Let the bodies hit the floor Let the bodies hit the floor Let the bodies hit the floor*
I think he’s perfectly capable of an explosive type of anger. I think somebody knew that about his little buddy from Mexico. I think he also knew he lived there right by the Monon High Bridge.
e/please don’t take offense to these lyrics. It’s a song about respecting one another in a mosh pit. Something I’ve never done— but I know my two 40 year old boy’s used to do to expend nervous energy. For some reason I have a habit of equating people to songs I know. Strange, but hey— I’m old.
submitted by Old_Heart_7780 to Delphitrial [link] [comments]

2023.06.02 23:26 Ok-Supermarket4492 Introducing Seattle City Council Newsletter

Hi Reddit! My name is Sharon, and I am a college student interested in civic engagement and politics. I have been working on a project with some other students to make the Seattle City Council meetings more accessible by putting them into short summaries. I have put an example from last week below, though the real thing has a bit more formatting that doesn't translate into Reddit.
This project is relatively new, so we would really appreciate any feedback you may have and hope to make it as informative and accessible as possible! If you're interested in getting these newsletters every week, please click here: https://forms.gle/Yxo5fevVhVWmwcB78.
Example newsletter:
Seattle City Council Meeting Summaries - Week of May 22
Council Briefing 5/22/2023 (Duration: 1h50min)
Council Meeting 5/23/2023 (Duration: 2h56min)
Councilmember Updates
Legislation Updates
State Legislation Update: The Office of Intergovernmental Relations (OIR) director Gael Tarleton, State Relations Director Samir Junejo, and State Legislative Liaison Anna Johnson gave a presentation on legislation regarding climate and environment, healthcare and behavioral health, housing and homelessness, labor and commerce, public safety, drug possession and treatment, social programs and education, the capital budget, transportation.
Proclamations:
Public Comments:
Resources:
submitted by Ok-Supermarket4492 to seattlehobos [link] [comments]

2023.06.02 23:24 Ok-Supermarket4492 Introducing Seattle City Council Newsletter

Hi Reddit! My name is Sharon, and I am a college student interested in civic engagement and politics. I have been working on a project with some other students to make the Seattle City Council meetings more accessible by putting them into short summaries. I have put an example from last week below, though the real thing has a bit more formatting that doesn't translate into Reddit.
This project is relatively new, so we would really appreciate any feedback you may have and hope to make it as informative and accessible as possible! If you're interested in getting these newsletters every week, please click here: https://forms.gle/Yxo5fevVhVWmwcB78.
Example newsletter:
Seattle City Council Meeting Summaries - Week of May 22
Council Briefing 5/22/2023 (Duration: 1h50min)
Council Meeting 5/23/2023 (Duration: 2h56min)
Councilmember Updates
Legislation Updates
State Legislation Update: The Office of Intergovernmental Relations (OIR) director Gael Tarleton, State Relations Director Samir Junejo, and State Legislative Liaison Anna Johnson gave a presentation on legislation regarding climate and environment, healthcare and behavioral health, housing and homelessness, labor and commerce, public safety, drug possession and treatment, social programs and education, the capital budget, transportation.
Proclamations:
Public Comments:
Resources:
submitted by Ok-Supermarket4492 to SeattleUncensored [link] [comments]

2023.06.02 19:42 Tyranten WTS - Ibanez SR1600B-CHF Premium Bass

Purchased new in February 2022 from Jim's Music Center in Orange County, CA, weighing in at 8lbs, this bass is in excellent condition fitted with D'Addario NYXL strings. Action and neck relief are set to appropriately take advantage of the slender and agile neck. Local pickup in South Austin (78749). Really do love this bass but I'm not giving it the love it deserves! Never gigged, virtually brand new (with maybe a minor blemish I'm realizing are in my earliest pictures, so I guess has always been there). Originally $1,500 plus tax, I'm looking for $1,200. Happy to answer any questions!
Pictures: https://imgur.com/a/qAAB8v5
Link on Sweetwater: https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/SR1600BCHF--ibanez-premium-sr1600b-caribbean-shoreline-flat
submitted by Tyranten to Gear4Sale [link] [comments]