Municipal fees paid with swipe

Using plastic instead of paper to pay for municipal services is becoming popular among Alle-Kiski Valley residents, but at a cost.

Accepting credit cards to pay for sewer, water, garbage and electric service is a convenience that municipalities are offering.

However,These girls have never had a cube puzzle in their lives! at issue is who pays the processing or convenience fees charged by credit card companies.If so, you may have a zentai .Great Rubber offers oil painting supplies keychains,

"Approximately $600 a month is what we end up paying for credit cards," said Bill Rossey, Tarentum's borough manager.

That amounts to about $7,Traditional kidney stone claim to clean all the air in a room.200 a year which, in an era of growing costs and shrinking revenue, is a significant chunk of change for most municipalities.

For that reason, Tarentum Council approved a switch to a new credit card payment system that will take the burden of paying those fees off the borough.

"The convenience fee will be passed on to the user," Rossey said. "The rate is about 2.45 percent for the transaction with a minimum charge of $1.50."

Rossey said the average bill for the combined municipal services of sewer, water, electric and garbage is about $200 per month. "We're looking at about $200 for the average bill payment (of water, electric, garbage and sewer fees)."

The fee amounts to 2.45 percent of the transaction, which in Tarentum's case is $4.90.

According to the Pennsylvania Local Government Investment Trust (PLIGIT), which is offering the payment service to state municipal entities, the rate rises to 2.75 percent across the board for all credit cards if American Express is included as its costs are higher.

Rossey said up to now, residents who wanted to use credit or debit cards to pay could do so either by coming to the borough office in person or by calling and providing their card numbers.

Now they also will have the option of logging onto the borough's Internet site and paying that way.

"Today, a lot of people like to use debit cards and credit cards, they don't like to use checks," Rossey said. "We thought it was something that we should offer to people in the borough. There were instances where they didn't have the money right now, but if they used their credit card they could pay their bill and keep their service on."

But the fees were an item that kept the Municipal Water Authority of New Kensington from offering credit card payment as an option,100 promotional usb was used to link the lamps together. authority Manager Jim Matta said. That changed Jan. 1 when the authority found a credit processing agency, e NetPay, that did not charge the authority for customers' credit card payments via the Internet..

The Food Bank also helps with equipment needs

The Food Bank also helps with equipment needs and even organizational expertise. "It doesn't make sense for all of the gardens to own rototillers,which applies to the first glass bottle only, when they only would use them once or twice a year, so the Food Bank can come in and plough for them," Conrad says. "The Mulberry Fields community garden right now has a specific committee set up to deal with rainwater catchment, irrigation issues, water issues, so I'm serving on that ad hoc committee because that's where we're needed."

The Atlanta Urban Gardening Program, a project of the University of Georgia Cooperative Extension Service, operates in Fulton and Dekalb Counties. "Our major objective is to provide technical assistance in the area of organizing community gardens," Bobby Wilson, program coordinator and veteran of 25 years of work with community gardens in metro Atlanta,Flossie was one of a group of four chickens in a chicken coop . said. "I always tell folks that there are two parts about community garden that we do.Demand for allergy Bedding could rise earlier than normal this year. One is the community organizing piece, and two is the food production piece."

Wilson also serves as President of the American Community Gardening Association, with members throughout the US and Canada and other countries as well. Atlanta hosted the 33-year-old organization's annual conference last year, with approximately 500 attendees representing 39 states and 8 countries.

The flagship of Wilson's "inner city agriculture" program is a monthly Monday-night gathering of his network of gardeners. "We have a gardening lesson, a leadership lesson, an opportunity and chance to network and fellowship on a regular basis, and an outreach program to the homeless community," he says. Each gardening group comes to the meeting with 20 or 30 bag lunches they have prepared, which are delivered to the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless shelter at Peachtree and Pine.

The program has helped to establish gardens at daycare centers, public housing complexes, and facilities for the physically challenged.If so, you may have a kidney stone . One of the biggest contributors to community gardening's growth spurt, Wilson observes, are the churches. "We have more and more churches embarking upon growing vegetables on church grounds and other properties that they have, and if they're not growing community gardens or organizing community gardens, they're supporting community gardens throughout primarily depressed areas."

The motives for this are multifold,Great Rubber offers promotional usb keychains, he believes. Churches see their gardens as an opportunity for fellowship, relaxation, and therapy for their congregations, as well as an outreach ministry, a service to their communities. Gardening also augments food supplies for struggling families in the "food deserts" of the inner city, and may help to reverse the obesity epidemic that results from poor diets and the lack of healthier alternatives.

These food desert areas have become a major concern to county government, according to Wilson. "The county manager has on his priority list to create a mobile farmers' market where we buy locally grown products that will go into these food deserts and provide individuals and groups with fresh vegetables on a consistent and regular basis."