Feb. 07--Sonoma County supervisors Tuesday approved a small addition to the list of county roads targeted for long-term maintenance while signaling support for study of a possible property tax increase to boost road upkeep.

The $4.5 million currently allocated toward long-term upkeep is woefully short of the $120 million maintenance backlog saddling the county's 1,382-mile network.

Supervisors tentatively agreed the problem may require a tax increase, possibly in the form of a countywide road maintenance district.

RIDGEWOOD -- New Jersey stands to receive as much as $519 million for transit projects under a transportation bill moving through the U.S. Senate, but transportation advocates are worried that the House could slash transit funding.

Standing outside NJ Transit's Ridgewood station, Sen. Bob Menendez said the bill would create a $20 million program for transit-oriented development projects, $5 million for transit training at the National Transit Institute at Rutgers University, increase funding for clean fuels grants and provide additional money for senior citizen and disabled transportation, among other programs.

He said if the legislation, approved by the Senate Banking Committee, receives bipartisan support and passes the full Senate and House, it would mean "more federal transit funding per year than ever before" for New Jersey.

Feb. 09--Is transportation too expensive to pay for?

Gov. Corbett said Tuesday that he did not budget for rescuing troubled highways, bridges, and mass-transit systems because the problem is so vast.

But Corbett reduced transportation funding by about 9 percent in the budget he proposed Tuesday: $5.86 billion, down from $6.43 billion this year.

Feb. 09--WORTHINGTON -- A request by the Okabena-Ocheda Watershed District to install fish barriers in all 10 bays of the dam on Lake Ocheda may lead to a change in ownership for the 1940s-era structure.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is responsible for the dam, which was constructed as a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project in 1941, but DNR regional hydrologist Tom Kresko has told watershed district staff the state has neither the time nor the financial resources to do proper maintenance.

In December, OOWD Administrator Dan Livdahl applied to the DNR for a permit to install nine additional fish barriers on the dam to keep rough fish from crossing between Lake Ocheda and the channel that flows into Peterson Slough.

Feb. 09--The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is one of the poorest pockets of the country, with unemployment rates hovering above 80 percent.

The South Dakota reservation that is home to the Oglala Sioux Tribe is facing a tremendous housing crisis, and a CU instructor and his architecture students want to help.

The students in Rob Pyatt's "Native American Sustainable Housing Initiative" will travel to South Dakota, beginning Thursday, to start designing housing for the reservation.