February 9, 2009

IN THIS ISSUE

• ERM Volunteers Working Together to Preserve Palm Beach County
• Office of Community Revitalization Offering Free, Interactive Web Sites
• Cooperative Extension Hosting Workshop on Food Safety
• County Seeking Candidates for Animal Kindness Award

For more information about Palm Beach County’s programs and services, visit us online at www.pbcgov.com. During hurricanes or other activation events, Public Affairs will email releases to Count-e-News subscribers. If you have any questions or to provide feedback, you can email us at countenews@pbcgov.com or call (561) 355-2754. To unsubscribe from Count-e-News, click here. 

ERM Volunteers Working Together to Preserve Palm Beach County

The numbers have been crunched, and the results are outstanding. Department of Environmental Resources Management (ERM) volunteers donated more than 5,600 hours toward preserving Palm Beach County’s environment during 2008. This equates to a savings of more than $61,900 to taxpayers.

More than 1,700 volunteers worked on 68 habitat restoration projects in natural areas and restoration areas throughout Palm Beach County. Volunteers removed 35,173 pounds of trash and invasive exotic plants from woods, scrublands, and along the Intracoastal Waterway. The trash varied in size from golf balls and aluminum cans to washing machines and car transmissions.

Volunteers planted 6,000 sea oat seedlings, 16,200 freshwater wetland grass seedlings, and 1,345 native trees, shrubs, and upland grasses at restoration projects in Jupiter Beach Park, Jupiter Inlet Natural Area, Delaware Scrub Natural Area and Limestone Creek Natural Area in Jupiter, Jackson Riverfront Pines Natural Area in Tequesta, Juno Dunes Natural Area in Juno Beach, High Ridge Scrub Natural Area in unincorporated Palm Beach County, and Yamato Scrub Natural Area in Boca Raton.

Volunteers also maintained 1.25 miles of hiking trails and built a 200-foot elevated boardwalk along a portion of the Ocean-to-Lake Trail that runs through the Loxahatchee Slough Natural Area.

ERM’s volunteer program is a valuable tool that offers land managers a large supply of energetic workers willing to fight the heat, insects, and terrain to protect the county’s natural treasures. For more information on joining ERM’s volunteer program, please visit www.co.palm-beach.fl.us/erm or send an e-mail to amathews@co.palm-beach.fl.us.

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Office of Community Revitalization Offering Free, Interactive Web Sites

The Office of Community Revitalization (OCR) has teamed up with Neighborhood Link, a national Internet-based community network, to provide free, interactive Web sites where community groups and organizations can share ideas online with residents, county commissioners, school officials and police.

“We believe that Neighborhood Link will allow us to maintain complete lists of all neighborhood associations or groups in our Countywide Community Revitalization Team areas,” said OCR Director Houston Tate. “We hope it will make it easier for Palm Beach County to communicate with neighborhoods and for neighborhoods to communicate with each other.”

The unique service, offered for the first time in Palm Beach County, helps neighborhood and community organizations keep in touch and informed about issues affecting their communities. The goal of the partnership is to bring people together within their neighborhoods, offering residents a chance to build a stronger sense of community and a closer link to the local civic community.

Neighborhood Link's focus is on community, home, and family. Once residents or community groups sign up, they will be given neighborhood coordinator access, which will allow users to access the site to provide and obtain useful information regarding events and meeting schedules, important notices, their group's newsletter, local school listings, connections to the Sheriff's Office, community newspapers, interactive maps, additional pages for special-interest groups, interactive discussion areas and much more.

The Web site will give neighbors the ability to create faxable forms that will allow them to instantly send faxes directly from the Web sites. Forms can be created and used to start petitions, send messages to the local newspaper, or simply communicate with any fax machine in the area. They will even have the ability to create links to fax machines at their local police station, enabling anyone to fax information (such as anonymous crime tips) directly to appropriate authorities.

Neighborhood Link has been programmed to make it very simple and fast for neighborhoods to maintain their Web sites. The neighborhood sites are maintained using simple Web forms into which information can be typed or copied and pasted. These Web pages are automatically created or updated.

Here is a sample of one site that has been already created: http://www.neighborhoodlink.com/pbc/rpe/.

A stronger neighborhood is just 15 minutes away!

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Cooperative Extension Hosting Workshop on Food Safety

If your church, synagogue, community group or other volunteer affiliation is involved in providing, serving or storing food for those in need, this program is for you! Learn the basics of preventing food-borne illnesses, avoiding cross contamination, understanding time and temperature relationships, and storing and serving food safely.

What: Food Safety for Volunteer Groups

When: Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009

Time: 9 to 11 a.m.

Where: UF/IFAS Extension Service - Palm Beach County
Cooperative Extension Service, Exhibit Hall A
559 N. Military Trail
West Palm Beach, FL 33415

Please RSVP by calling the Palm Beach County Cooperative Extension Service at 561-233-1742.

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County Seeking Candidates for Animal Kindness Award

Palm Beach County’s Animal Care and Control Division is seeking outstanding individuals or groups who have shown commendable care and devotion to animals, domestic or wild, for gggnomination of the 2009 Animal Kindness Award.  Those nominated for the award must be Palm Beach County residents whose good deeds to animals have taken place in this county.

All of the nominations will be reviewed, and the most worthy person will be selected for the award.  The honoree will be recognized before the Board of County Commissioners for a special presentation.

Nomination forms are available at the Animal Care and Control shelter, 7100 Belvedere Road in West Palm Beach, or from the Web site: www.pbcgov.com/pubsafety/animal.

If you would like a form mailed to your home, please call (561) 233-1222.  Forms must be returned to Animal Care and Control by the deadline of Sunday, March 15, 2009.

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