Office News

If your drive to work consists of dodging around potholes then you’ll be pleased to hear that the NY Department of Transportation is taking full advantage of the mild winter to get some much needed road repairs taken care of.

Using specially designed Pothole Killer vehicles, Patch Management has been contracted to fill in the thousands of potholes that plauge New York’s drivers. Repairs are already underway in Long Island’s Nassau and Suffolk Counties with more teams due to be dispatched throughout the state over the coming weeks and months.

The innovative Pothole Killer system only requires one operator and is much faster, safer and more environmentally friendly than the traditional method of using crews to combat the dreaded holes. Requiring less than two minutes per pothole, the road is then ready for traffic again – no mess, no fuss, no waiting.

And New York isn’t the only state benefiting from this time and cost saving technology. Patch Management has used their Pothole Killers to repair roads in DC, Pennsylvania, New Orleans and Chicago.

Do you know of a pothole that could use some technologically advanced attention? Call the hotline on 1-800-Pothole or email Patch Management.

5. Eugene, Oregon

Eugene, Oregon,  is in the top five for a number of reasons, but the biggest of these reasons has to do with electricity. The city of Eugene gets almost half of its electricity from renewable resources. Most of western Oregon gets around 34% of its energy from hydroelectric dams, but Eugene takes things a step further by adding on 9% from wind farms. The city’s water utility– EWEB– even buys back excess energy produced by residential solar arrays.

4. Oakland, California

The city of Oakland, in the state of California, has been long-heralded as one of the most forward-thinking cities in the US on the environmental front, and that has helped to drive new technologies in Oakland. The most impressive of these technologies are the hydrogen-powered buses that roam the streets. These buses have significantly cut down the pollution in the city, and have helped to develop this technology into a more economical form.

3. Boston, Massachusetts

Boston has a highly developed public transit system, as well as an impetus toward innovation and new technologies. This is highly evidenced by the unique system that Boston is implementing to help produce methane for generators. They are using bacteria within residential glass clippings to produce the methane. This is a fuel source that is readily available, and which would only be going to waste otherwise. Modest projections state that the system has the potential to create enough methane to power 1.5 megawatts of electricity. At the end of the composting cycle, the grass and leaves will have turned into a source of fertilizer that can be used for residential or farm fertilizer.

2. San Francisco, California

San Francisco, California, is another of the cities with a highly developed transportation sector. Public transportation is a large part of how people get around here, and it has a significant impact on the air quality and health of the people living here. Also, San Francisco has one of the most aggressive large-scale photovoltaic projects in the country, with massive potential for both environmental and financial benefits.

1. Portland, Oregon

Portland, Oregon, is the most eco-friendly city in the United States. While it lags behind other cities in terms of energy and electricity, it blows past them on things like public transit and green construction. 35 buildings in Portland are certified by the U.S. Green Building council, and a quarter of workers in Portland commute by bike or public transit.

According to a recent survey conducted by Gallup Daily Tracking, around six percent of workers are employed by the State of California, which goes up to twelve percent if you include local and federal workers. More than sixteen percent of workers in America were employed by the government last year.

The state with the highest percentage of government workers goes to Hawaii, which employs over twelve and a half of the state’s workforce.  Alaska came second, employing eleven and a half percent of workers, followed by West Virginia, coming in at just over eleven and a half percent.

According to the survey, the US states employing the least number of government workers were New Hampshire, with just over four percent, Pennsylvania, with just under four and half percent and Maryland and Ohio, with both states employing just under five percent of workers.

Due to the expansion of the technology industry in California’s Silicon Valley, office occupancy has increased in the last year, which is good news for real estate agencies and office space providers.

According to Colliers International, forecasts show that office space and research facilities could increase by five million square feet this year, which would be in addition to the three and a half million square feet increase in office and research space net occupancy in 2011.

The technology companies who are leading this expansion in Silicon Valley include mobile application businesses, cloud computing providers and social networking companies. It is hoped that the technology surge is only just beginning, and that 2012 should bring another strong year for commercial leasing.

According to Colliers International, office space vacancies were down from 16 % at the end of last year compared to 20.2 % in 2010. In addition research and development space vacancies were down 13.7 % at the end of last year, down from 16.2 % in 2010.

Friday February 17 is the first day of a week long gourmet fest featuring fixed price meals at more than 250 Chicago restaurants.

For as little as $22 for lunch or $44 for dinner you can try hundreds of different eateries around the city, sampling cuisine from all American steakhouse grills to Nepalese curries, French bistros to Mexican cantinas along with everything else in between.

Looking for somewhere different to go during the office lunch hour? Check out all of the participating restaurants here - but hurry, reservations are first come, first served and the restaurants are booking up fast!

According to this newly released report by the Tax Foundation the 2012 tax figures for states might not be all they seem. Even in states that do not have a state sales tax the local taxes can add up considerably.

So what states score highest and lowest if you consider the combined rate of state and local sales taxes?

Winners:
Delaware with no state or local sales tax at all!!!
Montana residents benefit from the same as those in Delaware and pay no sales tax at all in state.
New Hampshire has the same deal.
Oregon also provides its residents the “no sales tax” lifestyle.

5 States with the Lowest Combined Sales Tax:
Alaska has no state sales tax but does have an average local sales tax of 1.77% – not much to worry about.
Hawaii has the lowest state sales tax at 4% (a figured it shares with several other states) and its local sales taxes are also low so it scores second cheapest state to buy things in (or would if everything wasn’t more expensive anyway due to having to be imported into the islands).
Main and Virginia tie at number 3 with a flat 5% state sales tax and no local sales taxes.
Wyoming is next with a 4% state tax and an average local tax rate of 1.34%.

5 States with the Highest Combined Sales Tax:
Tennessee carries the flag proudly proclaiming the highest sales tax at a combined rate of 9.45%!
Arizona comes next with 9.12%.
Louisiana is third with 8.85% as despite Louisiana’s low state sales tax the average local sales taxes are 4.85%!
Washington isn’t far behind with a state sales tax of 6.5% and a average local sales tax of 2.3%.
Oklahoma scores at number 5 for the highest combined sales tax with 8.66% (4.5% state and 4.16% local).

Read the report for all the figures and an interesting map of the US color coded according to the combined sales tax rates (personally I think they could have used a few more colors!).

According to the Peninsula press, at the recent 2012 Silicon Valley Conference panelists agreed that despite the rise in venture capital investment for clean technology we still have a long way to go. The old saying that “charity begins at home” is being paraphrased by the panelists who want to see a push to bring clean technology straight into homes by showing households how much they can save by using greener appliances and solar energy.

The mayor of San Jose, Chuck Reed, insisted that the constant innovation taking place in Silicon Valley makes it an ideal candidate for the development and refinemnet of green technology, adding “that’s the easy part….it’s just going to happen.”