Topic: Pest control

New Tennessee laws are in effect

July 7, 2009 |

Despite tight revenues, state finishes fiscal year on schedule, lawmakers save jobs, education programs. (See complete text below of newly published Public Chapters of the Tennessee Code Annotated.)

NASHVILLE – While several other states struggle to close out the fiscal year ending Wednesday, Tennessee has already published new laws passed during its recently completed legislative session.

“We didn’t have a $24 billion shortfall in revenue like the legislators in California are struggling with, but it was still a tight budget year in Tennessee,” Senator Lowe Finney of Jackson, incoming chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus, said.

Still, we were able to protect our better schools program – pre-K in particular – and we can move ahead with projects that will put Tennesseans back to work.

That’s good for our families, our hometown economies and our state revenue. As more jobs begin to open up – thanks to projects like the West Tennessee industrial megasite – we can build a stable tomorrow for Tennesseans.

Among the laws now in effect:

• Increased energy efficiency is now required in state buildings and vehicles.
• Sex offenders are prohibited from being within 1,000 feet of certain places where children are likely to gather.
• Tennessee driver’s licenses now print birthdates larger to make them easier for retailers to read.
• Vending machines installed on state property after July 1 must use energy efficient lighting, and the new lighting must be installed on any that are repaired.

«Read the rest of this article»

Sections: Politics | No Comments

Ants moving out of heat, drought … and into your home

By Christine Anne Piesyk | August 26, 2007 |

Ants. They’re not usually a major problem. More of a minor irritation. But excessive heat and the combination of that prolonged heat and extreme drought is sending these critters scurrying right into your home — even if you haven’t had big problems with them before. They are hungry and thirsty, and just looking a place to beat the heat and get well fed in the process. Are you an unwitting four star hotel for a local ant colony?

First, the basics. Ants come in a variety of shapes and sizes, from the carpenter ants who consume the wood framing of your home as if it were prime rib, to fire ants that make their presence known by, among other things, biting you. And then there are those pesky little brown ants who normally converge in small mounds in your backyard or in the cracks in the sidewalks and around foundations.

With the record-breaking heat wave, though, the ground is cooked, the pavement is hot enough to fry eggs on, vegetation is dead or dying, and rainfall is non-existent for the time being, which leaves ants hot, hungry and thirty. So what’s a poor ant to do? Go visiting.

Now, I’m not against ants; they have their place in the strata of life on earth. I just don’t want them in my kitchen.

If you’re not careful those visitors will be on the way to permanent residency. Without a Visa. But there are steps you can to minimize the intrusion, remove it altogether, and implement preventive measures that can keep most intrusions from recurring. «Read the rest of this article»

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