Belle Council Meeting

The Council of Belle will meet tomorrow evening to vote on what to do about a new mayor, and I will be attending the meeting. Their elected mayor died last month.

Zoning Appeals Board Meeting

I will be attending the Zoning Appeals Board Meeting tomorrow morning in Kanawha County.

I have not been to a zoning board meeting before, and I was unable to get a copy of the agenda. I am curious to see what the board will discuss.

UPDATE: This meeting was continued.

Huntington Budget Proposal

To: Burnis Morris

From: Samantha Turley

Re: Story Outline: Major Story no. 5

Date: March 17, 2011

Subject: Huntington’s austere proposed FY 2011-2012 budget

Scope: I will research the 2012 budget and examine where cuts have taken place. Mayor Kim Wolfe said economic troubles for the city will continue into the 2012 fiscal year, and I will detail for readers how the economy has impacted the budget, what parts of the budget have been affected and how it will affect different major departments. I will compare Huntington’s budget to budgets in similar cities (such as size and location) to see if Huntington’s budget and budget cuts are comparable to those cities. In a sidebar, I will examine the budget allocation to the Huntington Police Department and how funding cuts will affect the department.

Need: Cuts to the city budget affect city services, including fire and police departments. The public needs to know where cuts are taking place and how it will affect them.

Methods: This story can be documented by a thorough analysis of the 2012 budget and a comparison to budgets from the three previous fiscal years. I can research it further by obtaining other city budgets from similar cities and comparing them to Huntington’s budget.

Sources: I already have the FY 2012 budget as proposed by Wolfe. I will obtain the city budgets from other city websites. I will obtain the budgets for the past three fiscal years from the City of Huntington’s website, and if it is not available online I will contact the city clerk for access. I will interview Wolfe and multiple city council members. If possible, I would also like to find a person who is an expert in city budget to get their viewpoint on the city budget for Huntington, how it compares to other cities and if they think it is a reasonable budget plan.

Presentation: This story can be presented as an overview of the city budget and budget cuts, a sidebar study examining the cuts to the Huntington Police Department in further detail and a follow-up story after the Huntington City Council finalizes the budget.

Follow-up: A follow-up can be written once the Huntington City Council finalizes the budget. In the follow-up, I will compare the FY 2012 budget as proposed by Wolfe with the budget finalized by the city council.

Huntington's Budget Process

Covering the city's budget process is difficult but interesting. It's a daunting task with a lot of quantitative information to understand, but the budget process and subsequent decisions has a major impact on life in Huntington.

A recent example was the city's decision to cut $100,000 in funding to the local animal shelter. The shelter learned of their funding cut through a Herald-Dispatch article.

I am interested in hearing about how the city chooses where to cut funding, and how the city chooses how much to cut from each area.

Ebenezer Medical Outreach

Ebenezer Medical Outreach, Inc. is a charitable organization in Huntington, W.Va., that provides medical care to those without health insurance. Over the next few weeks, I will be researching and writing a story about the impact the recession has had on the organization. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of uninsured Americans has been on the rise since the recession began. As an organization that provides services to the uninsured, I expect Ebenezer Medical Outreach has had an increase in the number of people seeking their services.

I obtained the following information from the 2009 IRS 990 form:

Yvonne Jones is the executive director of Ebenezer Medical Outreach. She received a salary of $65,035. The organization did not list salary information for other employees. Ebenezer Medical Outreach had total revenue of $731,618 and total functional expenses of $881,568. At the beginning of the year, it had $1.1 million in total assets. At the end of the year, it had $974,288 in total assets.

Contact information:

Ebenezer Medical Outreach, Inc.

1448 10th Ave.

Suite 100

Huntington, WV 25701

304-329-0753

emohealth.org

State of the City

I'm attending the State of the City address delivered by Huntington Mayor Kim Wolfe. In his third address, I expect Wolfe to outline his proposed budget for the 2012 fiscal year, and I expect for him to talk about the city's struggles and successes over the past year.

SEC Filings: Champion Industries

Searching for Champion Industries (NASDAQ/CHMP) brought up many results. Some of them were difficult to understand, but I found a news release, which was useful. The Jan. 27 release explained, in layman's terms, the company's results for the fourth quarter and for the 2010 calendar year. Having this document available is a smart move. It will be an aid to journalists who may be covering this topic.

Other documents were not as easy to understand. I found many quarterly reports and annual reports. I found some of it comprehendible, but a lot of the terminology would be hard for me to explain to readers if I were writing a story without help from someone more knowledgable.

I also found documents referred to as proxy statements, which were identified as being for use at the company's annual shareholder meetings. I'm not sure of the meaning behind the title, but digging deeper into the text I found information regarding the election of directors, including biographical information for the potential directors. Information about the number of directors' meetings held was another thing included.

The documents were intimidating, but I think with some time, effort and guidance, they could be understandable.

Edit: Out of curiosity, I also looked up CSX on the SEC website. I found an interesting feature for their filings - interactive charts that allowed users to click on different categories for details about what that category encompassed. This is a great feature, and it's an extremely useful one, as well.