Baseball and Soccer Registration for Springville Youth Incorporated

Baseball and soccer registration will be at the Springville Town Hall on the following dates:

Saturday, February 7th - 9:00 - 12:00

Wednesday, February 11th - 6:00 - 8:00

Saturday, February 14th - 9:00 - 12:00

Late Sign - Up Date: Saturday, February 28th - 9:00 - 12:00

Play ball!

Food Bankin' Bins

Two plastic bins will be available before Wednesday's Board Meeting with signs for the Trading Post in Springville and the Chaffee Baptist Church up in Chaffee.

Food items - canned goods, canned or boxed juices, pasta and meals-in-a-box - are needed for the Church's pantry.

Food and children's items, including baby formula - are apprecitaed for the Trading Post.

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Community Service Math

2008's election saw 1400 go to the polls in Sardinia.

The average American watches 4 hours of television per week.

If each Sardinian of voting age volunteered four of those television watching hours to community efforts each month - in a school, with a neighbor in need, at a library, at local food pantries, local non-profits - that would equal 67200 hours in a year (4 hours per month x 12 months x 1400 people).

Say there's about 50 full work-weeks in a calendar year: that's 1344 hours/week, and at 40 hours/week, that would be the equivalent of nearly 34 volunteers working full-time to better the town of Sardinia and the surrounding area.

I don't like math, but I do like those numbers. 

Is anyone else willing to commit to 4 hours/month? I'm sure there are many people in Sardinia who already contribute much more than 4 hours, but some of us need to start slow.

Lead is bad but federal regulations are worse

After February 10, 2009, any consumer item intended for use by children under the age of 12 must be tested for lead. Read the latest news on the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) at Google News, or see the CPSIA regulation for yourself.

That sounds like a good thing, until you think of all the items that will be effected.

Handmade toys, clothing and books.

Hand-me-down toys, clothing and books.

Thrift store toys, clothing and books.

Donations to thrift stores and "community closets."

Items sold on Ebay/half.com/Amazon/craigslist.

Items sold at garage sales.

Large manufacturers won't have a problem with this regulation. Economies of scale will allow them to do testing and labelling en masse and they'll just pass the cost on to consumers. Small manufacters and small business will have a problem with this - CPSIA is one more nail in the coffin for entrepreneurs.

Many of the children's clothing pieces that have made their way through my house got minimal use - this regulation means that I'd be violating the law if I buy a hand-knitted sweater on etsy.com, or sold some gently-used books to a consignment shop. My grandma will be breaking the law when she knits caps for newborns in local hospitals, or sews small quilts for use by kids in domestic violence shelters. 

I want to protect kids from the dangerous health effects of lead exposure, but COME ON! The set of never-used onesies that I want to give to the Salvation Army shouldn't make me a criminal. 

I'm steamed. And I plan on regularly breaking this law. I emailed my local Congressional representative to ask what he is doing to protect local businesses and non-profit outreach from this POS regulation. (I didn't phrase it that way, though). Those in Mr. Higgins' district can do the same through his web site.

Update: a Florida newspaper has an early word on clarification of the regulation from the CPSC (Consumer Product Safety Commission),  which sales consignment and thrift stores are not effected.

Thank goodness!

ZBA and Planning Board Openings

Per advertisements in the Springville Pennysaver (among other places?):

The Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) and Planning Board are accepting applications for open positions. Send resumes to the Town Hall, 12320 Savage Road, Sardinia, New York 14134.

Sardinia Event Calendar

I've added a Google Calendar for Town of Sardinia Events and Board Meetings - it's available in the sidebar of this site, and at its own web page.

I'll add any event that's sent to me by email - please include the who, what, where, when, and a little bit of how and why.

Freepeats for Buffalo

I'm subscribed to a few parent-oriented web sites, most of which focus on time- and money-saving tips. One of them clued me in earlier this week to a site called freepeats.org, where you can register to give and receive "baby, kid and maternity stuff." 

A new "chapter" has opened up for Buffalo, and you can join for free until January 15, 2009. If you're a parent or grandparent who has some gently-used kid stuff, coupons or formula samples to unload, or who wants to pick up some extra gear, this is another opportunity.

Freepeats looks like a discussion-board version of other services like freecycle (which is email-based). Once it establishes a larger user base I think it will turn into a very useful site for parents, grandparents and parents-to-be.

Site Stats, December 2008

Just for some general statistics about the use of this site - I use a service called Google Analytics which tells me how many people have visited townofsardinia.blogspot.com and some other basic information about the site's usage. 

The site had:

• 333 visits and 168 unique visitors. Given that Sardinia had about 1500 voters in the 2008 election, if I were to assume that even half of the visitors live in the Town of Sardinia -  I've reached about 5% of the town's resident voters. Sweet.
• The average time a person spent on the site was 4 minutes.
• More than half the site's visitors used Internet Explorer, with the rest split between Firefox and Google Chrome, and a tiny handful of Mac users.
• The site had 821 page views.
• The most popular posts were Next Town Board Meeting, Chaffee-Sardinia Kiwanis Club, and Food at Town Board Meetings.

I wonder what January 2009 will bring!

Welcome to 2009!

I'm interested to hear what Sardinians are looking forward to in 2009, and what they hope to see locally! 

There's a technology/culture site I like to read called boingboing, and it has a list of 2009 predictions on a more global scale that I enjoyed reading through. Is that our future?