Here's What Corpus Christi Voters Need To Know About Sales Taxes On The Ballot

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Correction: Corpus Christi voters last considered changes to sales taxes last year. A previous version of this story misstated when sales taxes last appeared on the ballot.

How the city uses two voter-approved sales taxes will be back on the ballot next week — meaning residents can again choose whether to continue the sales taxes under their proposed new purposes.

Proposition E and Proposition F request that voters reauthorize the two existing sales taxes and reallocate the revenue for a spread of projects in the downtown area, citywide flood mitigation and work on certain types of streets.

If approved, Proposition E and Proposition F would be in effect for 20 years, according to ballot language.

City officials estimate each sales tax would garner about $200 million over the term, a city-published informational booklet shows.

Because Proposition E and Proposition F are separate propositions, voters have the option of supporting one, both or neither.

Below is a breakdown of what voters need to know about the sales tax propositions before arriving at the polls.

One 1/8-cent sales tax is invested into the American Bank Center's arena, while the second 1/8-cent sales tax benefits the seawall, downtown's first line of defense in a storm.

Art Of Accounting: System Changes

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Systems run a business, not people. People run the systems. Without good systems and compliance, most businesses will have as many systems as there are people. Think about any successful franchise, with McDonald's, Subway and Jersey Mike's coming quickly to mind. None of these could be successful without a system that is followed by everyone everywhere every time . And the people working there follow the system because they have to. Now, let's compare this to a CPA practice or any service business.

Most service businesses and particularly CPA practices employ highly intelligent knowledgeable staff who usually know how to get their work done; and unless they are at the lowest level, they do not need much supervision on most of what they work on. The problem comes with supervising and training younger level staff and also higher level who aspire to move up to the next level and then on from there. Systems need to be established for every level regardless of the technical expertise required to get the services successfully performed.

Making system changes means making changes. This only is accomplished if the firm leaders are committed to improvements. Yesterday's methods must have worked quite well to bring you to today but cannot be relied upon to bring you past today into the many tomorrows that will come.

Do not hesitate to contact me at emendlowitz@withum.com with your practice management questions or about engagements you might not be able to perform.

11 Marketing Budget Templates That Cost Nothing

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A well planned marketing budget helps you ensure costs align with planned expenditures throughout the year. As a side effect, they can also help measure campaign ROI.

The best way to stay on top of marketing finances is with an easily repeatable system. The free marketing budget templates below will help you create one so you can categorize expenses, plan ahead, and allocate resources without blowing your budget.

Smartsheet combines everything you appreciate about spreadsheets and relational databases with project management features. Beyond budget tracking, marketing teams can use it to assign tasks, collaborate with each other, and share updates with stakeholders.

You'll get the most from these templates using them inside of Smartsheet. However, there's no free plan.

Smartsheet's simple marketing budget template is beginner-friendly and super straightforward. It comes with the basics any decision maker needs to plan and track marketing expenses — including the ability to show projected costs against your actual budget across every marketing category.

It's easy to track costs by week, month, quarter, or year, so you can increase or decrease spending based on budget availability at any given time.

Once you've entered all of your financial details, the template has built in formulas that handle all of the calculations for you.

I specifically chose this template because it includes all the essentials without going overboard. It has all of the information you need to look at each quarter in isolation and compare to the others on a single page.

Hannaford Makes Midlevel Managers Eligible For Overtime

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Hannaford Supermarkets, one of Maine's largest private employers, has announced it will start paying hundreds of midlevel managers for overtime hours that previously went unpaid.

The company says the move is meant to boost employee satisfaction, retention and recruitment amid a labor shortage that has many people working overtime.

But some impacted workers may see little change – or even a cut in pay – because they'll have to work 45 hours per week to earn the same salary they got for 40.

The change follows recent federal lawsuits charging Hannaford with overtime violations, including one filed Wednesday in Maine that company officials declined to talk about for this story. The company also says the shift in overtime policy has nothing to do with the Biden administration's ongoing effort to expand overtime pay requirements for middle managers.

Hannaford has notified department managers, evening operations managers and associate relations managers that starting Sunday, they will be reclassified from overtime-exempt salaried personnel to nonexempt salaried personnel.

The responsibilities of affected managers won't change, and they will remain eligible for all salaried benefits, including annual performance bonuses, Cortelyou said.

We Need An Economics That Recognizes The Greater Good

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Whenever anybody writes about the failure of mainstream economics as a discipline, they usually have only a handful of issues with the discipline in mind. The failings, however, are systematic. Training in economics has incorrectly been seen as foundational to ordered, logical, rational thinking. Econ 101, as the basic course is often called, also feeds a career track in law and business administration. So what⁘s being taught matters, especially since only a few students will pursue any further studies in economics and any intricacies.

University students learn that on the supply side, people are atomized as production labor (L), and all other means of production are reduced to capital (K). L and K combine in a mathematical equation to produce Q (output). On the demand side, what is produced is unimportant as long as it meets demand, achieves a mythical equilibrium for profit-taking and provides an amorphous satisfaction, called utility. Because we can⁘t measure utility directly, it⁘s equated with consumption of all that output, weighted by market prices (P). The joy of consumption, as we⁘re told, does not distinguish between needs and wants. Externalities, always unpriced (an indirect cost or benefit) to a third party, are ignored. The benefits of growth and accumulation are taken for granted.

The textbook lubricant of this philosophy, as Jon Erickson writes in ⁘The Progress Illusion,⁘ is the belief that putting a price on everything in a way that presumes people and the planet are disposable, tradable and otherwise serves profit-taking and the invention that we call the economy. In a 2007 survey of North American professors, economics stood out as the only field where a majority (57.3%) disagreed with the statement, ⁘In general, interdisciplinary knowledge is better than knowledge obtained by a single discipline.⁘

Abiding by this understanding, we would never confront the catastrophes of today⁘s fossil-fuel-driven climate catastrophe in the form of physical breakdown and social destruction. That matters.

Best Real Estate Accounting Software (2024)

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*Prices reflect the lowest cost of a provider's paid plan and are current as of Oct. 2, 2024. Some users may be offered different prices, and variation should be expected.

Best for: Real estate investors and property managers with several hundred units or more

Why we like AppFolio for real estate businesses: AppFolio can be considered an industry standard for businesses that focus on real estate properties as investment assets. It allows owners and property managers to efficiently track the cash flow generated from a virtually limitless number of units in their portfolio, both residential and commercial and everything in between. AppFolio combines property accounting with a platform for customer communications, maintenance, work order tracking, and leasing.

What you need to know: AppFolio is the most expensive option in this list, so it's likely not cost-effective for real estate businesses that own or manage smaller portfolios. Additionally, AppFolio clients have complained about AppFolio's interface's user-friendliness, and tenants have noted transaction charges for paying rent through AppFolio's system.

Price range: AppFolio no longer publicly lists its pricing, but as of July 2024, its price tiers were $1.49 per unit per month with a 50-unit minimum and a $298 minimum spend (Core plan); $3.20 per unit per month (Plus plan) or $5.00 per unit per month (Max plan) with unlisted unit and spend minimums. Additional features cost extra.

Standout features: 

New DepEd Rule Allows Overtime Pay For Teachers

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THE Department of Education (DepEd) has issued an order defining new guidelines in rationalizing the teachers' workload and prescribing compensation for rendering overtime services.

DepEd Secretary Juan Edgardo Angara issued DepEd Order No. 005 embodying the the Implementation Guidelines for the Rationalization of Teachers' Workload in Public Schools and Compensation for Teaching Overload.

Under the new rules, public school teachers are not required to work more than six hours a day, in accordance with the Magna Carta for Public School Teachers (Republic Act No. 4670). In exceptional cases where teachers exceed this six-hour limit, they will be eligible for overtime pay for up to two additional hours per day.

In instances where teachers have fewer than six hours of actual teaching, they may be assigned to other teaching-related tasks, proportionate to the time available.

The DepEd reiterated that these guidelines ensure that teaching overloads are managed transparently, with clear procedures for compensation and equitable workload distribution.

Moreover, teachers working beyond their regular six-hour duty may earn vacation service credits (VSC), providing additional recognition for their contributions.

"By optimizing teachers' workloads and providing fair compensation for additional duties, we are creating a more balanced and sustainable environment for our educators. This will ultimately enhance student learning outcomes," Angara explained.

To facilitate the smooth rollout of these policies, DepEd will provide standardized templates and materials through its online platforms.

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