Citizens Wow Over Fireworks
It was 30 minutes of amazing explosions as thousands of people crowded into Old Town last night for the annual fourth of July fireworks display. The night was clear and free from fog, and as promised, the chamber of Commerce delivered on a larger, well positioned, display of pyrotechnics. Several hours before the ten o’clock show people began showing up filling up the parking lots and available street spaces. One local resident even said that he arrived at 10 am to secure a parking spot next to the river where about 12 of his friends eventually gathered. There were shouts of oohs and ahhs ringing up and down the boardwark as people stood, sat, and even reclined in the grass. After the display was a mass exodus that choked the Old Town Streets for about an hour as people found their way home. The Florence police reported several incidents of illegal fireworks yesterday and you could even hear the loud booms late into the evening.
Retirement Options for Workers
Oregon is stepping up to provide workers with another option for retirement savings. The state-facilitated OregonSaves retirement plan began a pilot program on July 1st, making Oregon the first state in the nation to get a savings program of this kind up and running. OregonSaves is designed to give workers without access to retirement plans through their jobs a low-fee option to save for their future. Oregon State Treasurer Tobias Read says the funds will also be portable.
| 201 “As they start their careers and move from job to job, taking these dollars, these accounts and these habits with them, that can only accrue – to their benefit and to ours. (:09) We all have a stake in this, of course, because when people retire with assets, it relieves some of strain on our already-stretched state budgets.” |
Employees also will be able to opt out of the program at any time. The program will expand to larger employers in November. More information is online at ‘oregonsaves.com.’ The new program is expected to especially help small businesses that struggle to provide retirement plans for their workers, since finding and managing plans can be costly and time-consuming. Critics of state-facilitated programs are concerned it could compete with private-sector workplace plans – but Read says the program is solving a gap in the market.
| “Nearly half the people who are working in Oregon – almost a million people – haven’t had access, and there’s nothing that’s been preventing the private sector from serving that segment up until now; they haven’t done it. So, I think we’re filling a gap.” |
Under the OregonSaves program, employees will automatically contribute five-percent of their paycheck into a Roth I-R-A. Contributions will then increase annually to 10-percent of eligible pay. However, employees can change the amount they contribute at any time.
New Oregon Climate Change Organization
Oregon businesses are partnering to fight climate change with a new organization called the Oregon Business Alliance for Climate. The alliance supports pricing policies for carbon emissions in Oregon. Its 27 founding members span industries from restaurants and real-estate companies to software and technology companies such as Uber and Airbnb. Head of the design firm Neil Kelly Company, Tom Kelly, chairs the alliance. He says fighting climate change is good for business.
“The basic thing about business and being in business is (that) certainty is important, and until we can really effectively address climate change, our economy in the state, our economy as a country and the economy of the whole world is threatened.”
The state has set goals for reducing carbon emissions. However, a report from the Oregon Global Warming Commission in February says the state won’t reach its goals of reducing emissions below 75-percent of 1990 levels by 2050 on its current trajectory. Carbon pricing and cap-and-trade bills failed in the state Legislature this year and were opposed by the state’s two largest business organizations. However, members of the alliance believe they can help the state commit to reducing emissions going forward. Steve Clem is a vice president of construction company Skanksa U-S-A, a founding member of the alliance that also works with green building technologies. He says the state can become a leader on environmental issues and innovative solutions to the climate-change challenge.
“The idea that we come up with a mechanism that is a win-win for the environment and for business is something that we could take to other places and demonstrate that it can be done.”
Efforts to fight climate change fell largely to states and cities after President Donald Trump pulled out of the Paris Accord.
