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Special session: Quick, clean tax relief
The Mississippi Legislature came to Jackson Thursday to consider a tax cut on modular homes. Amazingly, lawmakers met and completed the work on Gov. Haley Barbour's proposal in record time, about an hour and 45 minutes. Veteran lawmakers called it a record. Considering that legislators can argue anything ad nauseam, it was indeed a feat. Unfortunately, solving the Gulf Coast's housing problems won't be happening anytime soon. Housing remains the No. 1 issue for recovery from Hurricane Katrina. With more than 80,000 units destroyed or damaged, it will take years to replace needed housing. This tax break for modular housing will help. Modular houses are built in factories and assembled on home sites, which can cut the time of obtaining one to about a month, when it can take up to a year for a conventional site-built home.
Curbed LA Interviews: Siegel Speaks
The second in our semi-regular series of interviews with the architects, planners and thinkers who are shaping the future of Los Angeles. Today, on this most holy of days, we atone for McMansions, unsustainable development, and overpriced real estate with an interview with Jennifer Siegal of the Office of Mobile Design, known for its innovative green prefab design. Let's begin with pre-fab first. What is the typical cost of an OMD pre-fab home? How long does it take to construct? What is the ratio of land costs to labor and materials cost today? Most of the homes we are designing are customized for the client and the specific site. The homes are California manufactured steel dwellings and offer cutting edge sustainable material surfaces. We can put these 'mods' together to form any size house: 1 or 2 stories; choice of interior and exterior finishes; wired for security, sound and internet; all kitchen, bath, appliances; fireplaces; and as many 'green' and 'sustainable' materials as you like.
Growth prompts vote in Smyrna
Smyrna High School students fill the cafeteria. The school was designed to hold about 1,100 students. But, there are about 1,150 students there, and Smyrna district officials support a referendum to ease the overcrowding. (Buy photo) The News Journal/BOB HERBERT .
Estimation Launches TransferKey
/24-7PressRelease/ - LINTHICUM HEIGHTS, MD, October 13, 2006 - The latest software application designed specifically for the mobile contractor. TransferKey provides the contractor the ability to easily transfer their Estimation Logistics Software license from one computer system to another without requiring the purchase of another license. Therefore, the contractor saves the cost of buying additional license(s) for their home office, or jobsite, yet they are still able to fully use Logistics software to win their bids. Not only does TransferKey provide the flexibility required, it also maintains the integrity of the Estimate and Job files by allowing only one contractor at a time to have access while they are checked out, therefore prohibiting multiple versions of the same file in the system.
Coburn pushes for another legislative special session
Coburn and fellow conservative lawmakers began a move for another special session within two weeks to deal with the state Supreme Court's Sept. 8 ruling that threatened a judicial takeover of the state's adequate education funding system if lawmakers fail to fix it by next June 30. They want the special session called to pass to the voters a proposed constitutional amendment barring an income or sales tax. It would not be called specifically to take the court out of the education funding issue. Coburn's petition said that without a constitutional ban on broad-based taxes, "the Supreme Court will impose fiscal burdens on the state so immense that they can be satisfied only by a broad-based tax of the nature rejected by the political branches of this state since colonial times." Although Coburn and Democratic Gov.
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