Category Archives: Progress

In about three weeks, construction crews will finish pouring for the concrete roof of The Waterfront Vancouvers next high-rise, Kirkland Tower.

But as soon as next week, workers will begin placing panes of the hotels glass curtain wall, a new trend in modern high-rises.

The panels are silver-gray. Theyre really nice looking, said Dean Kirkland, chairman of Kirkland Development. Theres no trim in between them.

The buildings target opening date is now late fall 2020, said Kirkland.

The future condominium tower is attached to the eight-story Hotel Indigo, also under construction.

Construction crews on Tuesday poured the cement mixture for the concrete on the 11th floor of the tower, and Kirkland expects to have floor 13, the roof, done in about three weeks. The Hotel Indigos nine floors eight floors and the roof have all been poured, Kirkland said, and crews will begin stringing giant tension cables between the floors soon.

Kirkland also said that the Hotel Indigos roof will feature a public rooftop bar.

In addition to El Gaucho steakhouse and Naked Winery, a coffee shop will also be among the tenants in the buildings retail space, said Kirkland; he did not share additional details.

The leasing rate of the towers 40 condominiums is about 20 percent, Kirkland said. Kirkland hired Beverly-Hills-based The Agency Development Group to handle the brokerage. He also hired local contractor Axiom Luxury Homes for the interior design of the buildings, he said.

The hotel is scheduled to open in late fall 2020, Kirkland said. The sales office for the condos will open in February, with units move-in ready next summer, he said. The prices of the condominiums are not publicly available.

Overall, its probably one of the most exciting things for our hometown, he said.

Kirkland said the project is expected to cost $108 million, about $8 million more than previously expected.

The tower crane at the Kirkland Tower was meant to come down by the end of October because planes flying into Pearson Field would need the clearance during the winter months. But Kirkland said he was able to work out a deal with the city of Vancouver, the Federal Aviation Administration and Pearson Field to keep the crane up for an extended time.

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Concrete progress seen at Kirkland Tower, Hotel Indigo site - The Columbian

Air Force leaders said they are closer to formally accepting a new GPS III satellite and a new ground system program into day-to-day operations after an upgrade allowed the control system to connect to the space vehicle on orbit.

The successful test, held Oct. 21, used the contingency operations upgrade to the GPS ground system and was part of an Air Force experiment to determine whether it can accept the GPS III satellite in December. The service subsequently plans to accept the ground system for contingency operations in April 2020.

The GPS III satellites will eventually replace the legacy satellites with a positioning, navigation and timing signal that is three times more accurate and eight times stronger than the current system. They will also provide M-code, a unique, highly secure PNT signal for military use.

But the next generation satellites need a next generation ground system to control them and to take full advantage of some of the more advanced features like M-code. However, that ground system is years behind schedule. According to the Government Accountability Office, Raytheons GPS Operational Control System (OCX), a $6.2 billion program, is already five years behind schedule. The GAO warned in a report that more delays are likely, though Raytheon has vigorously opposed those claims.

Meanwhile, the first GPS III satellite was launched Dec. 23, 2018 and the Air Force needs a ground system capable of interacting with both the new GPS III satellites and the legacy systems in the here and now. The Air Force contracted with Lockheed Martin to develop temporary upgrades to the legacy GPS ground system that will allow it to operationally command and control all of the GPS satellites in orbit until OCX is ready.

That interim solution, known as GPS III Contingency Operations, was delivered by Lockheed Martin back in May, and the Air Force claimed the program has achieved several successes since then. In May the program completed software testing and verification, followed by final system test completion in June. The contingency operations system was then approved for installation at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colorado and at Vandenberg, Air Force Base near Lompoc, California.

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The Air Force sees progress in a GPS ground station test - C4ISRNet

The Blue Planet Foundation, an environmental non-profit, lowered Hawaiis overall clean energy grade from a B- to a C.

The foundation releases energy report cards semi-yearly to grade the states progress to 100% renewable energy.

Only projects currently operating, and not proposed ones, such as the controversial Na Pua Makani wind farm in Kahuku, factor into the report card grades.

The last report card the foundation released was in 2017 and gave Hawaii an overall grade of B-.

The grades are based off of five different categories: transportation, efficiency, renewables, smart grid and economics.

Managing Director at Blue Planet Foundation, Melissa Miysashiro explained that the transportation category was the main reason that the states overall grade dropped.

Thats the lowest grade in all the report card so were actually headed in the wrong direction, she said. Fossil fuel transportation hasnt gone down. It still accounts for almost two-thirds of our fossil fuel consumption and we have a lot of work to do.

The report shows that people are choosing less energy efficient vehicles, increasing their driving mileage and using public transportation less.

Public bus ridership has dropped about five percent since 2014. Miyashiro explained that new forms of public transportation, such as bike sharing hasnt been able to make up for that deficit.

Most of the public transit options beyond the bus are concentrated in the urban core of Honolulu, she said. Those living outside of urban Honolulu where homes are more affordable dont have public transit options so as people move outside the urban core, theyre driving more.

The renewable energy category also had a lower grade from the 2017 report. Miyashiro mainly attributes the states stalled progress to the closing of the Puna Geothermal plant on Hawaii Island after lava threatened the facility.

Two areas where the state improved is in its ability to store clean energy for later use and the declining price of renewable energy.

Miyashiro says that we are generally on track, to fulfill the states goal of having 100% renewable energy by 2045.

As the cost of renewables and particularly battery storage continues to drop, we think that will accelerate even more quickly, she said.

Hawaiian Electric Company Vice President of Corporate Relations, Jim Kelly thought the state deserved a higher grade.

We see a lot of positive momentum behind these numbers and some challenges, too, which the report points out, he said. When you consider Hawaii has more than doubled use of renewable energy and cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20% in just a few years, we think thats better than C work.

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The State Receives a C Grade in its Progress to 100% Renewable Energy - Hawaiipublicradio

ITTSBURGH Under siege and under the microscope in recent weeks, President Donald Trump came to the erstwhile Steel City espousing the energy industry and his energy initiatives, while displaying an abundance of energy himself.

I came here three years making promises, and youre a lot happier now, much wealthier and youre producing a lot of energy, he said Wednesday afternoon, during his keynote address at the Shale Insight conference, a natural gas industry-related event at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center downtown.

We are making a great energy superpower in the world.

He addressed a crowd estimated at 9,000, a large grouping that was loud at times but controlled except for a solitary protester who got in and directed a derogatory remark at Trump before being jeered and chased by nearby presidential supporters.

Protesters did gather outside during the event, resulting in a reported dozen or so arrests.

Trump, a Republican, was the first president to attend the ninth-annual conference, an autumnal event. He did, however, make closing remarks at the 2016 Shale Insight, when he was campaigning the occasion to which he was referring on the promises.

This was the commander in chiefs second visit to Western Pennsylvania in 72 days. He spoke Aug. 13 at the petrochemical cracker plant that Shell Chemicals is building in Potter Township, Beaver County.

Trump is facing an inquiry by the U.S. House as to whether he sought Ukraines assistance in investigating his political opponents, in exchange for U.S. funding. Some observers, as a result, were anticipating venomous attacks toward Democrats. He did dash the Dems a number of times, but in a calmer manner than he did at the cracker plant.

He stuck to his agenda of touting energy development in the United State, generating manufacturing jobs and lauding workers from Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia three states he carried in 2016, en route to the White House. He, in fact, praised workers and residents of those states all swing states for the 2020 election over and over.

Nobody does it better than people in Marcellus Shale country, the 45th president said. It would be nice if New York (a state that bans fracking and pipelines) would allow pipelines so people in New England could get much lower gas prices.

The president said he promised to unleash American resources (oil and gas) like never before. They belong to the people of this country.

Trump had three speakers individually join him at the dais, including Bonnie Moore, a lifelong Washington County resident and farm owner.

Until this administration, she said, I lived in an area that was declining and the population was declining. Under this administration, Ive seen growth, job growth and residents letting oil and gas companies use their land.

I want to thank President Trump for revitalizing our area and America.

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Trump touts economic progress in Pittsburgh | News, Sports, Jobs - The Review - The Review

Farmers throughout the Midwest have been dealt a rough hand in 2019, with those in Illinois having been particularly unlucky. That's why a week-long dry spell was received by farmers with open arms, as it allowed many to make some rather significant progress in harvesting their corn and soybean crops.

Nationwide, 30% of the corn crop has been harvested as of Sunday. That's up from 22% a week ago, but down from 48% this time last year and the 47% average since 2014. In Illinois, more significant progress was made last week, but the disparity between this year's harvest and the five-year average remains extremely high. 36% of Illinois farmers' corn crop has now been harvested, up significantly from last week's 23% figure. But, considering that by this time last year 80% had been harvested, and that, on average, since 2014, 70% was harvested by this time, there's still a lot of work left to be done. In Wisconsin, just 7% of the corn crop has been harvested, well behind last year's 29% pace.

There's been much more significant progress in the soybean harvest in the past week. Nationwide, 46% of the soybean crop has been harvested, up from 26% last week, and just slightly behind last year's 51% pace by this time. Compared to the five-year average, farmers are still running rather far behind the 64% pace, but another dry week could allow them to close that gap.

In Illinois, there's been tremendous progress as well! According to the USDA, 52% of the Illinois soybean crop has been harvested, nearly double the 27% that had been harvested as of last week. It's not all that far off from the five-year average of 68% by this point in the season. In Wisconsin, farmers are faring awfully similar compared to last year, with 32% of the 2019 soybean crop harvested, as opposed to the 34% harvested by this time in 2018.

Overall, the pattern over the coming week is likely to be a fairly dry one for most of the Midwest, offering farmers continued optimism for ample time to continue their harvest before the weather takes a turn for the much colder as November arrives.

See more here:

Farmers Reporting Progress in Crop Harvest in Past Week - WIFR

Natural language processing, the latest advancement in business intelligence and analytics applications, provides an easier way to access quality data and derive deeper insights. But because of its sophistication and nuances, NLP progress has been limited as well.

There's a very good reason why BI and analytics have traditionally required some level of expertise. People don't intuitively understand how to query machines.

Querying a SQL database in the traditional way, for example, requires an understanding of the SQL language and how it works. By comparison, NLP can take a natural language query, translate it into a SQL query and communicate the result back to the user in natural language. That scenario involves three different natural language technologies, all of which fall under the general category of NLP:

Tableau Software has a new capability in beta called Ask Data, which enables users to ask questions about sales, profitability, etc. and receive a natural language answer. Both Tableau and Qlik have Narrative Science extensions that automatically supplement their respective charts and graphs in dashboards with a natural language narrative. Microsoft Power BI supports natural language queries, although reports and dashboards haven't achieved feature parity as yet.

While these examples demonstrate general BI and analytics platforms taking advantage of NLP, a separate issue is using NLP to do particular types of analytics. The Lexalytics Intelligence Platform, for instance, analyzes unstructured text databases, data warehouses, data lakes, search engines, social media and web crawlers. Probably one of the more talked-about use cases for unstructured text analysis is social media sentiment analysis.

Typically, when data scientists want to understand unstructured data, they use one of two techniques: Classification uses supervised machine learning to separate text into predefined or labeled classes such as positive and negative sentiment, while clustering uses unstructured machine learning to separate text into groups without using predefined labels.

Lendio, a small business loan marketplace, is considering applying clustering analysis to customer service call transcripts to identify common issues, customer sentiment and trends so service representatives won't have to listen to the calls, according to Lendio data analyst Katherine Chandler.

"We currently have some transcripts that we give to people in our call center, but if we have access to all the calls that have ever happened, we're hoping we could develop some better transcripts," Chandler said. "Our first goal is to use this tool to ensure compliance. Our second goal is to develop better call transcripts."

Similarly, a multinational technology service provider wanted to improve customer experiences, but it could track only 5% of customer interactions using surveys and manual quality control. The company worked with customer experience analytics platform provider Summatti to improve the quality of insights.

To prepare for the platform's ongoing monitoring and analysis of text, the company analyzed six months of customer relationship management and interactive voice response data to identify positive and negative experiences. It also incorporated customer service success metrics (key performance indicators). After setup, the platform monitored and analyzed customer interactions via phone, email and chat so the company could identify and proactively address issues, monitor employee performance and improve channel retention rates.

End users tend to expect more from NLP than it can deliver because human language is a more natural form of communication than SQL queries or Boolean searches. There's also a common misconception that AI in all its offshoots, including NLP, is a general form of machine intelligence that can be simply applied to narrow problems. Narrow AI is the current state of the art, so a product built to do sentiment analysis is very effective at doing sentiment analysis but not contract review.

"It's important for vendors to educate their users on what is and is not possible," said Brian Atkiss, director of omnichannel analytics at digital experience consultancy and reseller Anexinet Corp., which uses NLP to understand customer interactions. "[If you just want to know] how many customers or how many prospects my team reached out to today, that's probably possible, but a root cause analysis, the more advanced types of analytics are a bit further off."

To help set users expectations when he's conducting demos, Steven Mills, associate director of machine learning and AI at Boston Consulting Group, makes it a point to present the shortcomings of NLP progress in a humorous way. "The biggest limitation," he said, "is you can't just ask anything you want from a system. You still have to follow a certain format structure, and there are limits to that. Where we want to get to is a question-and-answer type interface, but those types of natural language understanding and capabilities are only so good. We want systems that can interpret complex questions, but we just aren't there yet."

One challenge to NLP progress is intent; what people say or type is not necessarily what they mean. A BI or analytics platform using NLP should be able to infer the user's intent and deliver a relevant result. To do that, the system needs to understand the relevant variations of a query. It also has to understand the context of the query.

The context of data usage is also important. Most departments use software applications that are specific to their function. While the data in those departmental systems may be accessible with BI or analytics via an API, data used outside its originally intended context needs to be handled accordingly. Because context is such a big issue with NLP, a successful NLP pilot in one department may not scale well across the enterprise or even to another department because each may require different models, data or data integrations to achieve their goals.

More BI and analytics vendors are adding NLP capabilities to their products to improve the user experience. Eventually, users will be able to carry on an interactive dialogue with these tools to get the information they need quickly without clicking through analytics dashboards or BI reports. But before rolling out an NLP-powered system broadly, it's wise to understand its capabilities and limitations so that appropriate end-user expectations can be set.

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NLP progress in BI and analytics slowed by language barriers - TechTarget

Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) will report earnings Thursday, Oct. 24, at an interesting time for the company and the stock. Though Amazon has been a tremendous winner for investors over the years, the stock has been quite the laggard over the past year or so. While the market is currently very close to a record high, Amazon is over 10% lower than its all-time high all the way back in the late summer of 2018.

Since the stock is reflecting investor concerns, I'll be homing in on a few hot topics in the upcoming report. Amazon is now a sprawling conglomerate encompassing many businesses beyond just its core e-commerce business, so here are the most important aspects I'll be watching.

Image source: Getty Images.

A large part of the reason to own Amazon's stock isn't its e-commerce business, but rather Amazon Web Services (AWS), which made up about two-thirds of Amazon's operating income last quarter. Though AWS makes up only around 13% of Amazon's revenue, its high profitability, sticky recurring-revenue business model, and high profitability make it arguably the company's most valuable segment.

Last quarter, AWS reported 37% growth, which is terrific by itself, but it did mark a significant deceleration from the 49% growth in the year-ago quarter. In addition, operating margin fell from 26.9% to 25.3% year over year. The segment will be coming up against tough comps from the year-ago quarter, in which AWS grew 46% and had an all-time high operating margin of 31.1%.

One shouldn't immediately react to the headline operating margin, however, without listening to Amazon's commentary. Last quarter, management explained that it had invested heavily in AWS, adding significant personnel to its marketing team, and also grew AWS's technical personnel at twice the rate of the overall company. These investments ate into the margin, but Amazon's investments usually pay off in the long run. Therefore, investors should pay attention to management's commentary on AWS's operating margins and investments in addition to the headline numbers.

While AWS had been decelerating, Amazon's more mature North American retail business accelerated last quarter. The company's new one-day shipping initiative helped, and it was recently supplemented by Amazon's decision to add items as low as $1 to its Prime free shipping service.

These new customer-friendly benefits spurred the North American segment to accelerate to 20% growth, up from the prior quarter's 17%. The reacceleration came from both the online stores segment, which accelerated from 12% to 16% growth, and third-party sellers, whose growth accelerated from 23% to 25%.

Investors should watch to see whether that acceleration can continue, or at least if these growth rates can maintain their high levels.

Speaking of third-party sales, Amazon's third-party platform has been under fire recently. In August, an in-depth article inThe Wall Street Journal (subscription required) highlighted the proliferation of faulty and/or counterfeit products that come from third-party vendors on Amazon's platform.

If this point comes up on the call, I'll be listening for whether the company is taking steps to police its massive platform. And of course, investors should monitor whether negative publicity affected third-party sales growth.

Finally, I'll also be watching for any commentary around Shipping With Amazon, the company's new initiative to ship third-party goods through Amazon's logistics system. Some believe this new service could pose a threat to FedEx (NYSE:FDX) and UPS (NYSE:UPS). FedEx itselfreported quite negative results in its recent earnings release, though there is some debate over how much of the shortfall, if any, can be attributed to Amazon's nascent program, or FedEx's recent decision to cut ties with the e-commerce giant.

Amazon has also begun delivering an increasing percentage of its own packages. According to Rakuten, Amazon has gone from shipping 15% of its packages in early 2017 to around 50% today. On the upcoming release, I'll be watching for any more information regarding how many customers Amazon has picked up for Shipping With Amazon, and also what percentage of packages Amazon is shipping through its own logistics infrastructure.

Taking more shipping in-house should have a positive effect on Amazon's North American margin, but shipping costs accelerated to 36% growth last quarter, ahead of North American sales growth. A lot of that had to do with the one-day shipping initiative, however. Either way, investors should zero in on whether management can break down the puts and takes between the one-day shipping headwinds and vertical integration tailwinds with regard to its shipping costs.

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Amazon's Cloud Computing and Shipping Progress Will Be Key to Q3 Earnings - Motley Fool

Its a better time to be a bus rider in New York City. No, seriously.

After years of taking a back seat to other forms of public transportation, the MTA and city Department of Transportation are finally getting serious about pushing ahead with efforts to speed things up on bus lines in every corner of this city.

Even so, there are many challenges which the MTA must address on the road ahead and, not surprisingly, it comes down to dollars and cents.

First, the good news. The 14th Street Busway implemented this month has been, in the words of New York City Transit President Andy Byford, sailing along. Buses are moving faster now that they have six blocks of Manhattan to themselves; more people are also using the route because of its increased speed.

The Busway is a pilot program, an 18-month experiment, as the city described it. Yet the early results are so promising that City Council Speaker Corey Johnson indicated support for potentially creating Busways elsewhere in New York City, including 34th and 42nd Streets in congested Midtown Manhattan.

Then on Tuesday, the MTA unveiled a redesign of the Bronx bus network, an effort aimed at not just speeding things up but also connecting more riders to subway lines and other major destinations across the borough. Similar retooling efforts of the bus route networks are currently underway in Queens, and on the verge of getting started in Brooklyn.

And all of these efforts make sense.

The city and MTA lack the massive amount of funding necessary to build and expand a subway system in dire need of greater maintenance and modernization. We cant expect more trains, but we ought to expect better and more bus service.

Yet plenty of challenges lie ahead toward achieving those goals.

While the MTA moves ahead with rearranging bus networks, theres concerns about service cutbacks elsewhere, such as the B46 in Brooklyn. The Bronx restructuring, considered a cost-neutral change, has come under fire because its not immediately coupled with a pledge to increase overall bus service.

Changing street regulations to accommodate more buses, and redrawing the bus route map, can only go so far. The MTA needs to find the cash to insure the buses keep moving.

Its great to see the MTA and city paying attention to bus service at last. But without financial investments, its nothing but rearranging deck chairs.

Excerpt from:

Editorial: Bus improvements a sign of forward progress - amNY

New harvest progress was particularly slow in North Dakota, which generally was hit harder than neighboring states by an exceptionally early October blizzard.

That was most evident with soybeans. North Dakota farmers harvested just 4% of their beans during the week, with South Dakota producers combining 20% of their beans and Minnesota farmers harvesting 23% of their soybean crop.

But Minnesota and South Dakota farmers, like their North Dakota counterparts, made little progress harvesting corn. North Dakota farmers combined 3% of their corn during the week, while South Dakota farmers harvested just 4% of their corn and Minnesota farmers combined only 6% of their corn crop.

The area's sunflower and sugar beet harvests also are far behind schedule.

North Dakota farmers have harvested 6% of their sunflowers; the five-year average is 27%. South Dakota producers have harvested 5% of their sunflowers; the five-year average is 28%. The two states dominate U.S production of the crop.

Sugar beets are an important crop in eastern North Dakota and western Minnesota. In Minnesota, farmers have harvested 47% of their beets; the five-year average is 86%. In North Dakota, 41% of beets were harvested; the five-year average is 91%.

Another concern is the Upper Midwest spring wheat crop, harvest of which should have been wrapped up weeks ago. As of Oct. 20, however, 8% of Montana spring wheat was unharvested, with 5% of North Dakota spring wheat and 1% of Minnesota spring wheat still in fields. South Dakota has completed its spring wheat harvest.

Here's a closer look at corn and soybean as of Oct. 20:

Corn

Minnesota: 11% of corn was harvested, compared with the five-year average of 35% for Oct. 20.

North Dakota: 4% of corn was combined, down from the five-year average of 24%.

South Dakota: 9% of corn was harvested, compared with the five-year average of 29%.

Soybeans

North Dakota: 20% of soybeans was combined, down from the five-year average of 81%.

South Dakota: 33% of beans was harvested, compared with the five-year average of 76%.

Minnesota: 42% of the crop was harvested, down from the five-year average of 81%.

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Another week of scant harvest progress, especially in ND - AG Week

Artist Suzanne Benton with her portrait of Alice Paul.

Artist Suzanne Benton with her portrait of Alice Paul.

Photo: Tina Sarno / Contributed Photo

Artist Suzanne Benton with her portrait of Alice Paul.

Artist Suzanne Benton with her portrait of Alice Paul.

Women of Town Hall: Portrait of Progress will honor the history

From the voting booth to Town Hall, the Womens Suffrage Centennial will be honored in Ridgefield next year.

The Board of Selectman approved the Women of Town Hall portrait project presented by local artist Suzanne Benton at its Oct. 2 meeting.

We have one aim and that aim is to join the very timely 2020 Womens Suffrage Centennial celebration here in town and honor the unsung women who work here in town hall, Benton told the board. All their work is crucial to the underpinnings of society and this 2020 project offers them the recognition they deserve.

The 24 portraits that will be displayed at Keeler Tavern at a gala next year before being moved back to town hall where they will be hung, Benton explained.

They will form a grid that depicts universality of womens life in America, she said.

The first portrait of suffragette Alice Paul is done, Benton said, and the rest of the portraits will depict current members in Ridgefields town hall.

Ive done Alice Paul, she said. The first one is done. Ive gathered 23 other artists to do the other portraits. The artists range from a Ridgefield High senior to myself. ... Im definitely the eldest.

Benton said the goal was to set up a studio in town hall and have a drawing table and a stool. Over the next several months, the workers will meet with the artists to have their portrait drawn.

The original title of the project was Portrait of Progress: From the Voting Booth to Town Hall. The selectmen settled for a shorter moniker the Women of Town Hall portrait project

Were a new organization, we started this back in April, Benton said. ... Our request is simple: We want to become members of the Friends of Ridgefield. ... We have 100 percent support from the women in town hall.

Experience and costs

Benton has already created a similar project down in St. Petersburg, Fla., where she spends her winters.

We did 36 women in Florida, she said, we got a grant from the state which helped immensely with the costs.

She said she wasnt able to secure such a grant from the state of Connecticut.

I guess its because were not diverse enough, Benton said.

She sought nonprofit status on the Friends of Ridgefield umbrella so she could apply for local grants from the Lewis Fund, the Ridgefield Thrift Shop and the Ridgefield Rotary Club.

We cant apply for these if were not recognized as a nonprofit, she said. Grants and fundraising will be much easier if we say its deductible. ... Our status as a nonprofit can end when we mount it in town hall in October 2020.

As for costs, Benton said the panel boards and the mounting would be the biggest expenses. She also planned to give the artists a little something as well as provide coffee and some light snacks for them and their subjects during the portrait process.

Its about community. Its about getting to know these people, she said. These women are delighted by the attention. Theyre thrilled.

The time is now

Benton urged the projects timeliness.

This is the 100th anniversary, its the right, she said. Time will pass so now is the time to recognize these individuals and what they represent. Ridgefield has a real history of feminist activity and we should honor it and bring awareness to it.

If enough money is raised, then Portrait of Progress could become more than just drawings hung up in Ridgefields town hall, according to Benton.

Wed like to do a catalog or something thats long-lasting that can go around. ... We have a high school student whos interested in doing video for us and maybe it will become a template for a similar project elsewhere in the state, she said. ... But all were asking for tonight is to to become Friends of Ridgefield so we can fundraise here in town and get this project off the ground here. ... We have a better chance of covering costs if were under your umbrella.

Longevity

While the selectmen were eager to approve the project and the nonprofit status, the talks did hit a short snag over where and for how long the 12-by-10 inch portraits would be hung.

Where are these going to be hung? Is it permanent? asked Pond Road resident Ed Tyrrell resident from the crowd.

Benton said that her plan was to have them hung in town hall near the tax collectors office.

Up in Keeler Tavern first for the exhibit and then install them in town hall, she said. The idea is it for it to be permanent.

Permanent? balked First Selectman Rudy Marconi. ... I dont think weve ever hung anything forever. Theres nothing permanent in this building other than the tribute to World War I and World War II veterans.

Thats prime real estate, Selectman Bob Hebert added. Im not so sure.

Benton replied that the idea was to have that prime real estate to showcase the women and the artists work.

Its a beautiful wall, she said.

Selectwoman Barbara Manners offered the project one year on the wall from 2020 to 2021.

Well keep it there for a year and then find another location, Marconi agreed. At the library or the town hall annex or maybe even up at the high school.

It has to be an accessible place, Benton countered. The one down in Florida is at a college somewhere that has a lot of foot traffic like that.

The selectmen ultimately agreed to OK the artwork and the temporary mounting in town hall, and Marconi told Benton they would get the approval from town counsel to have the Women of Town Hall project fall under the Friends of Ridgefield umbrella.

This holds as much water as other things weve covered in the past, said Selectman Steve Zemo, who seconded Heberts motion to approve.

Its very worthwhile, Selectwoman Maureen Kozlark agreed. And it is a short-term program. Its not an open-ended timeline. Were talking about fundraising and artwork that will be done within the year. All the work will be over by next October.

For updated activities and more information about this project search Ridgefield Suffrage Centennial on Facebook or email

Alice Hayes at alice

hayes.43@gmail.com.

Original post:

Women of Town Hall: 'Portrait of Progress' will honor the history - The Ridgefield Press