November 2009

Living with a toxic waste site in your backyard has its advantages. For a place like Benton County this means more stimulus money. Benton county received $2 billion in stimulus money while Elkhart county in Indiana only received $49 million. These two counties are very similar to each other, their populations are with 30,000 of the other, they are both dependent on single sectors; Hanford in Benton county and RV manufacturing in Elkhart. Cost of living are similar in both places, they both are more than 90% white and tend to vote republican. So why is there such a huge discrepancy between the stimulus money each received? Well, Benton county had plenty of "shovel ready" projects while Elkhart was dependent on RV manufacturing which has taken a huge hit…

If you are looking for Kennewick real estate listings, you've come to the right place. We've just upgraded our listings search tool to allow for a better client experience. Our search usability allows for a home buyer to save several searches each meeting different criteria. Those searches can then be emailed to a specific email address. Additionally, among the many features available, homes can be tagged as favorites, several options available for email updates, search by zip code, address, and or mls number, to name a few of our search tool features. Our search updates at least once per day to include any new listings our area's real estate agents have posted. Our search is the only type of it's kind in the Tri Cities Washington area. Last, but not…

In the past six months the Tri-Cities is one of ten cities nationwide to have job growth. There has been an increase of about 3,000 nonfarm jobs in the Tri-Cities over the past year, in October we had an increase of nearly 500 jobs. One of the job markets in the area that is down is construction, not from a lack of demand but from a credit freeze. Overall the local economy in the Tri-Cities is doing well thanks to the stimulus money which has helped job growth, thus helping the housing market and retail industries. Many people are coming to the Tri-Cities to look for work which is making it difficult on many people to find jobs.

Back in May Richland did a curbside recycling pilot project involving one neighborhood in South Richland, two in Central Richland, and one in North Richland. Residents involved in the pilot project reported using their recycling bins 75-100 percent of the time. Now the intended curbside recycling ordinance has gone before the Richland city council for the first time and was passed with a 5-1 vote. The ordinance would include yard waste collection to the garbage collection service and give an option for curbside recycling. The only downside to this ordinance would be that those who want curbside recycling would have to pay $5.70 a month in addition to the regular garbage collection service fee. The reason for the fee is that it costs the city more to handle…