BY AARON FRANK & JANE MATTINGLY
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Can God really turn water into gasoline? Louisville was graced with the uplifting words and multimedia presentations of TV evangelist Joel Osteen, who told a crowd of 11,500 on Sunday that “it doesn’t matter if (gas) goes to $20 a gallon, … God can multiply your gas (and provide) more miles per gallon.” Can we get an Amen?
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A proposal to ban the use of plastic garbage bags for yard waste bit the dust when it didn’t receive nearly enough Metro Council votes. More than half of the 100,000 tons of yard waste generated in the Metro every year gets thrown into a landfill because the plastic from the bags contaminates it, according to Cynthia Knapek of Brightside. The solution would be to only allow paper or biodegradable bags for yard waste, and any yard waste in plastic bags simply would not be picked up.
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General Electric will likely put its appliance division in Louisville up for sale after poor first quarter profits. There are currently 5,000 employees at GE’s Appliance Park in Louisville, whose jobs are now in jeopardy. Appliance Park is part of the Consumer & Industrial Division, which saw profits fall 34 percent in the first quarter.
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The Jefferson County School Board unanimously approved a new student-assignment plan. The district’s old plan was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court last June because it used the race of individual students when they were being assigned to schools. The new “contiguous boundary” plan divides elementary schools into six geographic clusters, each containing 11-15 schools. It will go in to effect at the outset of the 2009-10 school year.
World-classness:
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This article appears in May 20, 2008.