Lettie G. Howard releases 2025 season schedule
Lettie is getting the sailing season started earlier than ever before. May 2 is the first day of sailing this year.
City of Erie awarded $51,000 for traffic safety upgrades
Lettie is continuing programming involving local students, offering learning experiences, sail training, and tall ships challenge port visits.
'We're also going to be working with camps, youth groups and things like that all throughout the summer because we want Lettie to be here for not just the tourists that come in, but for this community as well,' said William Sabatini, president and CEO of Tall Ships Erie, Captain of the Lettie G. Howard. 'We're also going to be right here in Erie doing the thing that we brought Lettie here to do. We're going to be here taking all of you out sailing.'
Second Harvest hosts welcome reception for new CEO
To schedule your sailing experience on Erie's Bayfront, click here.
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Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Yahoo
State Street in Erie to close from Second Street to Bayfront Parkway. Here's what to know
State Street will be closed between Second Street and the Bayfront Parkway beginning July 21. The road is expected to be closed for a few months. Vehicle and pedestrian traffic will be detoured, and temporary traffic signals will be installed along the route. Pedestrians will be able to use State Street during the Tall Ships Erie Festival. And the City of Erie is making some traffic changes and prohibiting parking on some streets to help prevent congestion due to the planned State Street closing. Drivers traveling between the bayfront and downtown will be detoured onto Holland Street, East Third Street and the Bayfront Parkway. Vehicles will be able to access the waterfront side of the parkway using Holland and East Front and Sassafras street and West Front street extensions. Pedestrians will be routed along West Third Street, Holland Street and East Front Street. Walkways will be provided along State Street from Aug. 21-24 to accommodate foot traffic to and from Tall Ships Erie. Temporary traffic lights and push-button pedestrian signals will be installed on East Third Street at Holland and French streets. The pedestrian push-button system already in place at Holland Street and the parkway will be updated to include audible messages. The signals will remain in place through continued construction on the parkway. Because the portion of lower State Street will close and "in the interest of community access, public safety and response times," the City of Erie will implement detours and parking restrictions beginning July 14. Sassafras Street Extension will be closed to all but emergency vehicles from the parkway south to the bluff. West Third Street between Peach and Sassafras streets will be converted from one-way to two-way traffic, with parking prohibited on both sides of the street. Parking additionally will be prohibited on: West Second Street from Peach to Sassafras; East 3rd Street from French Street to Holland Street; Holland Street from East Third Street to East Sixth Street. The two blocks of lower State Street will be closed while drainage pipes are installed under the Bayfront Parkway. State Street will become a bridge over the parkway when construction at the intersection is completed. Completed and planned improvements along the downtown portion of the parkway also include roundabouts at Sassafras Street Extension and Holland Street and a pedestrian bridge at Holland Street. At Holland Street: Early work for construction of pedestrian bridge to begin More information about the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation's Central Bayfront Parkway Project is available on the department's website and Facebook group. Contact Valerie Myers at vmyers@ This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Detours ahead: State Street to close between Second Street and parkway
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Yahoo
This food bank saved big with solar. GOP cuts could crush similar efforts.
When the team at Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina first started planning construction of a new headquarters in Winston-Salem in 2019, they seriously considered solar panels. 'Food banking at its core has always been about sustainability,' said Beth Bealle, Second Harvest's director of philanthropy, stewardship, and engagement. The organization rescues food that would have ended up in landfills to feed those in need, and Bealle and her colleagues wanted to push the sustainability concept 'in other aspects of our work — like our facility.' But at the time, they were advised that a rooftop array would be too expensive. Second Harvest shelved the idea and moved into its gleaming new 140,000-square-foot building in a former R.J. Reynolds Tobacco industrial park. 'Fast forward to the Piedmont Environmental Alliance Earth Day Fair of April 2023,' Bealle said. That's where she met the alliance's new green jobs program manager, Will Eley, who asked, 'Did y'all know about the Inflation Reduction Act?' Eley and Bealle 'hit it off fabulously,' she said. Together, they took the food bank's solar plan off the shelf and worked through the details of complying with the federal law's clean energy incentives. Two years later, on Earth Day 2025, Second Harvest and the alliance flipped the switch on a 1-megawatt array, one of the largest rooftop solar projects in the state. Assuming promised refunds from the federal government materialize, the project is expected to save Second Harvest $143,000 each year, funds the group says will be reinvested directly into programs that provide food, nutrition education, and workforce development across 18 counties of Northwest North Carolina. But with the tax rebates now on the chopping block in Congress, other organizations considering new facilities may not have the chance to follow Second Harvest's footsteps. 'We've already talked to several food banks who are in that process about our project, because they're interested in putting solar on the rooftops of their new buildings,' Bealle said. 'And that's not going to be within reach for some people if these tax credits aren't available.' The federal government has long offered tax credits to incentivize renewable energy projects, from solar farms to rooftop arrays. But before the Inflation Reduction Act, those enticements were of little use to food banks and other entities that don't pay an income tax. The 2022 landmark climate law allowed organizations like Second Harvest to access the 30% tax credit on their solar investment by essentially transforming it to a rebate. 'The process by which they were able to fully monetize the tax credits was quite the game changer,' Eley said. In North Carolina, the provision known as 'direct pay' serves as a vital sequel to an expired rebate program from utility Duke Energy, which helped dozens of houses of worship and other nonprofits go solar during its five years of existence. 'Duke Energy had the nonprofit solar rebate, and that was a tremendous tool that was very helpful,' said Laura Combs, a one-time solar salesperson who worked with tax-exempt groups around the state to access the cash back from the utility. 'When the direct payment came into play,' she said, 'that took up that slack.' The federal climate law also offers other inducements. It provides a 10% bonus to tax credits for projects deployed in government-defined 'energy communities,' including those on former industrial sites or brownfields. At least another 10% is available for clean-electricity projects that are located in or benefit low-income communities. As an organization that serves food-insecure households and that is headquartered in a poor census tract on a brownfield, Second Harvest qualified for both of these extra incentives. 'We really maximized the clean-energy layer cake,' Eley said. Altogether, the tax credits cut the $1.5 million price tag for the solar rooftop installation in half, Eley said. While the food bank had to pay the full amount up front and won't recoup those savings until it files its tax return for the year, the extra incentives mean the 1,702 solar panels will pay for themselves more quickly in the form of lower energy bills. Second Harvest and Piedmont Environmental Alliance hoped the project would serve as a beacon to other nonprofits looking to go solar. And in and around Winston-Salem, that's starting to come true, Eley says. 'It's opened up several doors there,' he said, mentioning that a local credit union and groups like Goodwill have expressed interest in installing panels. 'We're presently working with six faith communities that are navigating [direct pay] and going through their feasibility and contracting processes for solar specifically.' That tracks with a nationwide trend of houses of worship going solar thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act. There's also been an uptick in nonprofit installations statewide, according to data compiled by the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association. The association doesn't monitor whether institutions access the direct-pay feature, and some recent arrays may be holdovers from the Duke rebate program, which ended in 2022. But the numbers are striking nonetheless: Since 2011, almost 150 houses of worship, local governments, and other entities that don't pay taxes have erected solar arrays, nearly all on rooftops. Sixty-three, or 42%, did so in 2023 and 2024. Now, Eley said, the groups he's working with are especially motivated to act quickly. 'The idea of going solar has been something they have tossed around for a number of years,' he said. 'We're certainly reiterating to them if you're going to make that investment, do so now.' That's because the massive budget bill passed last month by the House — dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in an homage to President Donald Trump — would make tax credits for solar and other renewable energy projects nearly unusable. The Senate is now considering whether to pass the measure as is or to make changes. As the legislation stands now, projects would have to begin construction within 60 days of the bill's passage to access the 30% tax credit. That's an easier feat for a rooftop installation than a larger, ground-mounted affair, but still incredibly difficult for nonprofits, religious institutions, or local governments that tend to have lengthy decision-making processes and aren't already planning to go solar. Even more unworkable is a provision that requires documentation that no component of a project, no matter how small, is linked to a 'foreign entity of concern' such as China. While House lawmakers voted to make the underlying 30% tax credit virtually useless, they didn't explicitly target the three related adjustments that helped enable the Second Harvest project: direct pay, the low-income community benefit, and the brownfield benefit. 'These cross-cutting provisions are part of the tax credit structure, but they are their own mechanisms,' said Rachel McCleery, the former senior adviser at the U.S. Department of the Treasury who led stakeholder engagement for the climate law's implementation. The survival of direct pay in the House measure stands in contrast to the elimination of its twin in the private sector, transferability, which allows smaller energy companies better access to incentives. But direct pay means little if the baseline 30% tax credit is still hamstrung by the 60-day start-work requirement and the foreign-entity provision. 'This is backdoor repeal of the IRA,' said McCleery, who now advises clients on defending clean energy tax credits, 'and it's backdoor repeal of direct pay — because you can't use direct pay if you don't have an underlying tax credit.' The same applies to the bonus incentives for low-income and brownfield communities. 'These cross-cutting mechanisms can still be used,' McCleery said, 'but if the underlying credit is moot, that essentially repeals the mechanisms.' On the flipside, if the Senate restores the viability of the underlying 30% tax credit in its version of the bill, the mechanisms that aid nonprofits like food banks and houses of worship will also be accessible. But advocates say that remains a big 'if.' And there are other challenges: Slashes to the Internal Revenue Service workforce could delay payments to Second Harvest and others. And the group is bracing for the impact of the other budget cuts in the House bill as written, such as to food assistance and Medicaid. 'It's just going to put pressure on people who are already under-resourced,' Bealle said. 'And that has a ripple effect to every organization that supports under-resourced people, including us.' Combs, the former solar sales professional who also volunteers with climate advocacy group North Carolina Interfaith Power and Light, called it a 'tragic snowball.' She then brought up U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, the North Carolina Republican who has consistently voiced disapproval of a full-scale repeal of the tax credits. 'Thank goodness Sen. Tillis has spoken out and been a leader on the importance of the Inflation Reduction Act incentives,' Combs said. 'I am anxious to see how this plays out in the Senate.'
Axios
05-06-2025
- Axios
New Orleans food pantry braces for "very challenging summer"
With kids out of school, south Louisiana's largest food pantry is "bracing for what's going to be a very challenging summer," says Second Harvest Food Bank chief impact officer Lindsay Hendrix. The big picture: Kids will likely go hungry this summer in New Orleans and elsewhere amid national cutbacks at the USDA, rising food costs and a safety net that can't quite catch everyone who falls toward it. Catch up quick: In March, the USDA canceled more than $1 billion in federal spending that bought food from local producers and shipped it to schools and food banks, Politico reported. And food prices have been up since the coronavirus pandemic, which squeezes budgets for families and food suppliers. Plus, when kids are let out of school, they no longer have access to free or reduced-price lunches five days a week. By the numbers: In Louisiana, 448,000 students, or 62.4% overall, had access to free or reduced lunch for the 2022-2023 school year, National Center for Education Statistics data shows. But once the summer hits, Hendrix says, only 8% of those kids receive meals. "That other 92%, it's hard for us to reach them," she says. Between the lines: Gov. Jeff Landry's administration did opt the state back into the summer food stamp program known as SUN Bucks. He was hesitant to do so in 2024, but enrollment this year seemed to happen without incident. Yes, but: The program only offers families a one-time payment of $120 per eligible child. "We know you can't make a meal every day for that sum, so there's still a gap," Hendrix says. "These programs are designed to be supplemental but that piece — cobbling together accessing different kinds of programs — is unfortunately a real occurrence for a lot of our families with kids." What's next: As a short-term measure, Hendrix says, Second Harvest has dipped into its reserves to help make ends meet, "but money for food only goes so far, even at wholesale prices." The food bank, which serves the whole of South Louisiana, is also leaning on its food pantry partners and network while increasing the number of staffers it has dedicated to finding donated food sources. But those jobs will take some time to produce results, Hendrix says. The bottom line:"The unfortunate reality is we will just have less to go around," Hendrix says. How to help If you can give money, great. And there are other ways to help:
