Matt Schelly

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  • #167040
    Matt Schelly
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    Oh, I wanted to add that our attrition was a combination of retirements (which usually meant managment or upper levels), one new child (we do not allow part-time or remote-access employment), one firing (due to some unrevealed severe infraction), and people hired away into new jobs elsewhere (these were interesting to me since it meant some companies were still hiring planners while we were freezing hiring).

    #167041
    Matt Schelly
    Participant

    By the way, for those of you who may not know (I didn’t), Olmsted, the son of a Connecticut merchant, dropped out of college (supposedly due to sumac poisining) and his father bought him a farm on Staten Island in 1848. He had previously been employed as a seaman, merchant, and still as a journalist, which apperantly led to his 1850 trip to England. I find this interesting because a lot of the descriptions in Walks are about farming and the English people he runs into are surprised to find an American farmer so civilized. At that time, they apparently thought we were barbarous savages or something like that. His mere visit changed some people’s view of America. His descriptions are very detailed and, as you can imagine, picturesque. Most interesting to me are his descriptions of the English rural and town landscape.

    #167042
    Matt Schelly
    Participant

    I’ve been slowly reading Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England, I skipped the “at sea” portion and I am only up to page 92., but it quite fascinating to hear Olmsted describe the English landscape as he first observes it and then knowing what he achieves later in his life. It is available in full view on Google Books.

    #167044
    Matt Schelly
    Participant

    I am in the public sector (community planner for a county) and we have had a hiring and wage freeze for two years. We might get a 2% increase for 2011. We have lost, through attrition, about 15% of our workforce (20% of our planners, including management). Our work assignments have shifted to more planning and fewer project reviews. So, the workload of each person is higher than before and we get no overtime to compensate. I hope we will be able to begin filing our vacancies starting in the new year (unfreeze), but that looks doubtful. The public sector held out longer at the beginning of the crash, so we are likley to recover later, too. Maybe in 2012?

    #167045
    Matt Schelly
    Participant

    Has anyone found some good webinars or video pieces about village and small town design/planning?

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