1.) Social Engagement – Brings people of all ages together to create engaged communities. A splash pad is a low maintenance, environmentally friendly project that will be available to children and adults of all abilities and financial means. 2.) Safe Play – Zero-depth spaces eliminate drowning risk and staffing needs. A splash pad will provide recreational opportunities to the residents as a safe and healthy outdoor water recreation option. 3.) Inclusive Play – Encourages physical, functional and social development in children and adults of all abilities. 4.) Stimulates Imagination & Creativity – Unscripted free play encourages children and adults to create their own play experiences. Playing with water provides important sensory integration and development; splash pads provide a great way to do this. Water play can help improve balance and strength. Playing in water is like playing on a brand-new playground where even the simplest activities, like clapping your hands or jumping, are a whole new sensory experience. 5.) Sustainable & Eco-Friendly – Innovative re-circulation and capture and re-purpose water management systems reduce water consumption. 6.) Integrates with Surroundings – Splash pad features and color options ensure that they always compliment the surrounding landscape & facilities. Splash pads offer many design options. Coloring of pad surface and spray elements of all sizes, shapes, and colors allow for endless design and theming opportunities. These options can help a community tie into existing design elements or create a new sense of place. They can be big or small to fit any space and budget, and future play elements can be added. Light mists, jets, flowing and sprinkling effects combine to keep play experiences fresh and entertainment value high. Lighting elements extend the hours of usage and create a stunning architectural piece during evening hours.

We the residents of Whiteside County, IL demand that the Whiteside County Board adopt and adhere to the language as stipulated in "IL Public Act 098-0643 HB5354 Enrolled LRB098 19952 RPM 55177 b" commonly known as the Cupcake Law, which was signed into law by Governor Quinn in June of 2014. Attached: CUPCAKE LAW: Public Act 098-0643 HB5354 Enrolled LRB098 19952 RPM 55177 b AN ACT concerning public health. Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois, represented in the General Assembly: Section 5. The Food Handling Regulation Enforcement Act is amended by adding Section 3.4 as follows: (410 ILCS 625/3.4 new) Sec. 3.4. Home kitchen operation. (a) For the purpose of this Section, "home kitchen operation" means a person who produces or packages non-potentially hazardous food in a kitchen of that person's primary domestic residence for direct sale by the owner or a family member, or for sale by a religious, charitable, or nonprofit organization, stored in the residence where the food is made. The following conditions must be met in order to qualify as a home kitchen operation: (1) Monthly gross sales do not exceed $1,000. (2) The food is not a potentially hazardous baked food, as defined in Section 4 of this Act. (3) A notice is provided to the purchaser that the product was produced in a home kitchen. (b) The Department of Public Health or the health department of a unit of local government may inspect a home kitchen operation in the event of a complaint or disease outbreak. (c) This Section applies only to a home kitchen operation located in a municipality, township, or county where the local governing body has adopted an ordinance authorizing the direct sale of baked goods as described in Section 4 of this Act. Section 99. Effective date. This Act takes effect upon becoming law. Effective Date: 6/10/2014

New Jersey could become a national model for smart, socially just cannabis laws. A coalition of small farmers and other New Jersey residents have compiled the following strong recommendations: 1. Ensure that people of color benefit from the economic opportunities resulting from the end of cannabis prohibition, which brings immense and disproportionate harm to communities of color. 2. Bring justice to all those convicted of non-violent marijuana-related offenses in the form of amnesty — commuted sentences, expunged criminal records — because no one should benefit from legalized cannabis while so many still suffer from its illegality. 3. Allow small farmers — many of whom are struggling — to grow and sell marijuana and hemp, either as individual businesses or as members of larger cooperatives. 4. Permit cannabis to be grown in soil and exposed to direct sunlight, and not only in warehouses. 5. Sanction only the organic production of cannabis, in order to establish both marijuana and hemp as safe and sustainable crops (in contrast to chemical-intensive industrial crops which cause so much damage to human health, natural ecosystems, and the global climate). 6. Pursue legal action to force the federal government to remove cannabis from the "Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act" list, which is supposed to be reserved for drugs with no medical use. 7. Facilitate the creation of industry standards for the production of safe medicine from cannabis, a key issue as unsafe, unregulated cannabis products (in the form of CBD oil) become available across the United States. It is critical that we refuse to allow entrenched interests (such as the liquor lobby or pharmaceutical companies) to dictate the future of cannabis in New Jersey and across the United States. The war against cannabis prohibition may be coming to an end, but it will be a false victory unless the benefits of legalization are widely shared.

Indiana currently has no state law mandating that employers pay their workers sick pay. This is more than just a hardship for the workers on the lower end of the pay scale, this has real world consequences when you consider the plight of the low wage employees in the food service and healthcare industries. When most poor employees get sick they have to try to work or they won't be able to make rent. Trust me, I know! I'm being sued for eviction right now for getting the flu at work and somehow after almost 5 years of full time work I still don't earn the right to get sick even though I work in a nursing home as a CNA. This issue isn't just affecting me this way, it is the plight of many workers in the state of Indiana working in healthcare care or in our food service industry. It's surprising that we still haven't figured out why so many people die from infections they have acquired during their stay in a healthcare setting where the employees working first hand with them are so poverty stricken that they can't even afford to go home when they have something contagious or why so many viruses are spread through our food. This is why some towns and counties in Indiana have passed local laws requiring mandatory sick pay for the workers in their towns. But the big business interests that run this state have responded by passing a reactionary and unconstitutional law allowing for the state to restrict individual towns from setting their own laws about this. Fight back and tell your Indiana state senator to fight back for public health and workers rights! Look up your state senator here (http://iga.in.gov/legislative/2014/legislators/)

Dear New York City Councilmembers; We the undersigned are residents of the proposed NID. We ask you to stop the Hudson River Park authorities from imposing an extra tax on blocks near the river, from the Battery to 59th Street. There are six reasons this tax is unreasonable and unfair:
 1. Hudson River Park is used heavily by out-of-town tourists and other residents of the city. This is not a neighborhood park - it is a city-wide open space, like Central Park. Do blocks near Central Park pay an extra tax? No. 2. The Hudson River Park administration overspent on deluxe, high-maintenance landscaping and decoration, but failed to budget for maintenance, and failed to plan for rising sea levels. The have too many staff and are always over budget. Now they want nearby residents to pay extra, forever, for their mismanagement. 
 3. They are calling it a Neighborhood Improvement District (NID), but that is not true. The Battery to 59th Street is not a neighborhood - it touches on nine or ten different neighborhoods. And with a real NID, neighborhood residents decide what to spend the money on - but this Hudson River Park tax would simply go to the Hudson River Park Trust authorities without any direct oversight by residents. 4. They claim that the Park increases the property values of nearby blocks – (which we dispute on factual grounds), and so an extra tax is fair. But even if it were hypothetically true that property values are higher, then normal property taxes are higher too. An extra tax beyond that higher normal tax would be completely unfair. 5. Our property taxes already rise year after year. 6. The governance system is not a one person one vote system. Co-ops do not have the same voting rights at condos.

At the end of 2011, Chicago's 163 tax increment financing (TIF) accounts had $1.7 billion in property taxes sitting in them. We, the residents of Chicago, demand a full accounting of these funds. The city has showered public dollars on such large companies as Sears, Kmart, Target, Hyatt Hotels, Home Depot, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Coca-Cola, UPS, the company that bought the Sears Tower, and even Wal-Mart, the world's largest corporation. Hundreds of millions of our dollars have been given to major downtown developers with no strings attached. If these companies want to do business in Chicago, let them purchase sites and build their facilities using THEIR dollars, not ours. Public dollars should be used ONLY to enhance the PUBLIC sector. Every dollar of our property taxes that goes to a Kmart, a Wal-Mart, or a Coca-Cola is ONE LESS dollar that gets distributed to our public schools, the CTA, the public library, the Chicago Park District, or Cook County. Since 1986, TIFs have extracted over $5 BILLION in property taxes. As far as we can tell, well over 50% of that money was given to private companies with no strings attached. In the light of school closings, cuts in public transit service, closing of vital public health facilities, the shuttering of public housing, and the scaling back of city services on every front, we demand a stop to the use of our property taxes to enrich private businesses—to essentially bribe them to do what they're supposed to do: take risks, make investments, and reap profits if they supply a needed service. We want all TIF dollars currently sitting in TIF balance accounts to be released to the local units of government that SHOULD HAVE received those dollars in the first place.

The sound of gunfire from gun range located in the heart of Anthony Chabot Regional Park, a wilderness park in the Oakland hills, is destructive to the park experience for this park’s many users and neighbors. The East Bay Regional Park District’s contract with the Chabot Gun Club expires in 2014. We urge the elected Board of Directors of the East Bay Regional Park District not to renew this contract for the following reasons: 1. The noise from the gun range destroys the peace and serenity that park users seek in coming to a wilderness park. Gunfire is audible in at least half of this 5,000 acre park, on its numerous hiking and equestrian trails, the adjacent family campground, and to the boaters and fishing enthusiasts at Lake Chabot. 2. The sound of gunfire is audible in many neighborhoods in the Oakland and Castro Valley hills. 3. In 2012 and 2013 two bald eagles built a nest and successfully fledged young eaglets. Their nest is just over a mile from the gun range. Contamination from the lead bullets is a threat to these eagles and to other wildlife in the park. 4. The gun range is in an area that drains directly into Lake Chabot, which is an emergency drinking water supply for the East Bay. At the behest of the East Bay Municipal Utility District, the Park District has been collecting data for some time on how much of the lead from the bullets used at the gun range reaches the lake. 5. Anthony Chabot Regional Park is a particularly vital part of Oakland because it is the primary access to the Oakland hills wilderness area for the citizens of underserved neighborhoods in nearby Oakland troubled all too often by the sound of gunfire in their daily lives. By choosing to put the only gun range in its entire system in Anthony Chabot Park the East Bay Regional Park District is being insensitive to the rights and needs of the members of these communities.

Dear Legislators, We know that New Mexico is faced with deepening drought from average temperature rise and declining precipitation caused by climate change. We also know that this means greater risk of catastrophic wildfires for our state. We want to honor the brave men and women who risk their lives to protect us from the threat of wildfires and who stand at the front lines of climate change by solarizing all Santa Fe County fire stations. Solar installations at our fire stations will reduce the use of coal electricity that is the largest contributor to carbon pollution in the state and is increasing the frequency and severity of wildfires. Solar energy systems will also save money - allowing funds previously used to pay utility bills - to be used for the purchase of fire safety equipment and essential fire station operating needs. Please contribute your discretionary funds to support one of the County's top 5 Infrastructure and Capital Improvement Projects: The Solarization of All Santa Fe County Fire Stations. By deploying solar systems on all Santa Fe County fire stations you will: 1) Stimulate local economic development; 2) Make the needed transition from fossil fuel dependency to renewables; 3) Protect the air, water, and land we love; and 4) Enable all County fire departments to repurpose money previously designated for utility bill payment to fire safety and protection. Now is the time to lead by example! As a resident of Santa Fe County, I am asking that solar installations for the County’s fire stations be included among your capital outlay projects. Please invest at least 25,000 dollars to solarize all of Santa Fe County’s fire stations; Santa Fe has the potential to be a clean energy leader – let’s actualize that potential.

National Citizens Initiative for Democracy The National Citizens Initiative for Democracy (NCID) is a fundamental legislative proposal that will allow citizens, independent of Representative Government (Congress, Executive and the Judiciary), to propose and vote on laws. NCID consists of a Constitutional amendment and a federal statute. The Citizens Amendment, a proposed amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America: 1.recognizes the legislative power of the people to make laws 2.permit the people to amend the constitution by holding two successive elections, more than six months but less than one year apart 3.creates the Citizens Trust to administer the procedures established by the Citizens Amendment and Citizens Legislative Procedures Act, 4.outlaws the use of funds from non-natural persons (for example corporate funds) in initiative elections under this article, and 5.outlaws non-natural persons (e.g. corporations and unions) from sponsoring or contributing to initiatives. The Citizens Legislative Procedures Act, a proposed federal law: 1.sets out deliberative procedures to be used by citizens to create laws by initiative, 2.describes the key responsibilities of the Citizens Trust which shall administer the initiative process on behalf of the people, and 3.appropriates funds for the Citizens Trust from the United States Treasury The National Citizens Initiative for Democracy does not change or eliminate Congress, the President, or the judicial system. Laws created by initiative must still be adjudicated by the courts just like laws created by Congress. The National Citizens Initiative for Democracy adds an additional check –– the People –– to our system of checks and balances, while setting up a governing partnership between the People and their elected representatives. The full text of the proposed Amendment and Act are available here: •The Citizens Amendment (366 words, 6 paragraphs) •The Citizens Legislative Procedures Act (4,927 words, 59 paragraphs)

Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the past, present and future members of the US Presidents, House/Senate, Congress, Speaker of the House, Majority/Minority Leaders. Congress shall make no law that applies to current, past and future Senators or Representatives, which includes US Presidents, House/Senate, Congress, Speaker of the House, Majority/Minority Leaders that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States of America. This will include the following: 1. Effective immediately and indefinitely all past, present and future: US Presidents, House/Senate, Congress, Speaker of the House, Majority/Minority Leaders will be put on the same medical benefits as those who serve our country (Veterans). The current benefit plan for all past, present and future: US Presidents, House/Senate, Congress, Speaker of the House, Majority/Minority Leaders will be eliminated permanently; and this applies to their spouse and families as well if they currently receive benefits. 2. Effective immediately and indefinitely all past, present and future: US Presidents, House/Senate, Congress, Speaker of the House, Majority/Minority Leaders lifetime salaries will be eliminated permanently; and 3. Effective immediately and indefinitely all past, present and future: US Presidents, House/Senate, Congress, Speaker of the House, Majority/Minority Leaders will be on the same government retirement system (CalPERS) as government workers. 4. Effective immediately and indefinitely all past, present and future US Presidents, House/Senate, Congress, Speaker of the House, Majority/Minority Leaders will receive the same COLA as government workers (CalPERS). 5. Congress will not be allowed to receive bonus or pay increases, unless the government workers (CalPERS) receive the same bonus or pay increase. 6. Only the people, by majority vote may modify this law.