This systematic review found that there is currently insufficient evidence to support the use of ecclesial splints as a viable treatment option for orifacial myalgia and myofascial pain. More rigorous clinical studies with larger sample sizes and better methodology are required before any conclusive findings can be drawn.


and welcome back to Hawaii, the state of clean energy on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Mitch Ewan. And today on our show, we have four guests, a total of four guests, this is a world record, from the Hawaii State Energy Office, starting with Kirsten Turner, who's the Deputy Chief Energy Officer, and the American Corp VISTA interns, James McAllen, Vera Wood, and Parker Kishima. We will be discussing the HECO's new Community Engagement and Workforce Development Program. So welcome to the show, everyone. Aloha, thanks for having us. Great, so let's start off with each of you, introducing yourself and giving us your background of what got you interested in climate change, equity, and energy. So Kirsten, let's lead off with you. Tell us about the program, yourself and the program. Well, very briefly, I joined the Energy Office a little over a year ago. I was Scott Glenn, our new Hawaii State Clean Energy Officer, has led off the new organization of the State Energy Office after the enactment of Act 122 in 2019 that reorganized us and created an attached agency. So we're no longer a division within D-Bed, but we are a separate office. And as a result, he brought me on as a special advisor to help with the reorganization of the office and as mandated by the legislature. And I am now all the deputy energy officer. And I basically like the COO and I help with the organization and management and particularly the direction of and the strategy of the office to be able to orient us in a way that helps us move ever more quickly on towards our target of 100% clean energy by 2045. And my background very briefly is I worked for the last three years for Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard before I came to the Energy Office. And before that, I was years in the private sector working on renewable energy projects and including startup renewable energy companies. And in the 30 plus years of my career in Hawaii, I've been in and out of federal, state, county and private sector work. And I began my career in Washington, D.C. in the International Trade Administration working on trade aid and development projects with a specific focus on renewable energy. So that's it in a nutshell. I'd like our VISTA team, whom we don't refer to as interns because they're full-fledged members of our office. And we hired them for very specific capacity building positions within our office. So maybe Parker, you can begin and introduce yourself and tell us about what you're doing. All right, thank you, Kirsten. Aloha, Mitch, nice to see you and Aloha everyone. My name's Parker Kushima and I serve as the Transportation Affordability Specialist in the Climate-Ready Hawaii VISTA cohort as well as the Hawaii State Energy Office. So I'm a Kamehameha grad at kindergarten through high school, graduated in 2015 and then moved on to Princeton where I studied electrical engineering with a focus in sustainable energy and graduated in 2019. I did a few internships with Hawaii Energy and Kupu and Kamehameha. All kind of working towards my interest in sustainability and clean energy, specifically in Hawaii. And I knew that I wanted to move back home after college and a lot of things lined up nicely and I found a nice niche in the work that I'm doing now. So I'm really thankful for the opportunities that have been given to me and especially for this one now, working as an AmeriCorps VISTA and with the Energy Office. So yeah, I'm also born and raised in Ewa Beach. So it's nice and sunny now in the summer and it's a nice change from the East Coast for the past few years. Well, it's great to have an electrical engineer in the Hawaii State Energy Office. So nice meeting you. So how about Ravir? Tell us a little bit about your background. Yeah, hi, my name is Ravir Wood. I'm the Community Engagement and Communication Specialist. I graduated in June, height of the pandemic from the University of California Riverside with a Bachelor of Science in Sustainability Studies. As well, I ended up moving out here. My dad lives out here and I moved just trying to figure things out in the middle of this pandemic and I was so fortunate as well to apply and be given the position with the Energy Office and I see my role, you know, my background is not in energy but as a Community Engagement Specialist, I see that as a benefit in that I am also learning alongside the community members about what clean energy is. And I kind of see myself as the bridge between the specialists at the Energy Office and just the everyday people and hoping to inform everybody about what clean energy is and hopefully advance the clean energy goals of the state of Hawaii. Thank you. Yeah, well, it's great having you. Welcome to Hawaii. So James, how about giving us a little pitch on you yourself and your background and why you're here. Thanks, Mitch. My name is James McCallan and I serve as the Energy Affordability Specialist here within the Climate Ready Hawaii Vista cohort and within the Hawaii State Energy Office. My role focuses on equity issues involving energy efficiency, renewable energy and public education to help Hawaii achieve a clean, resilient energy economy. I am originally from Long Island, New York and I did my undergraduate degree at Wake Forest University where I studied biology and Chinese language and culture. I also have a master's degree in public health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health where I concentrated in Global Environmental Sustainability and Health. I first became interested in the climate crisis while serving as a Peaceful Volunteer in the South Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu. This experience was deeply impactful to me as I witnessed firsthand just how serious the climate crisis is and how it's currently affecting some of the most vulnerable people in the world, especially those living in Pacific Island communities. And that is why this time so far within the Hawaii State Energy Office has been so great because it's been helping me to understand just how the energy sector plays its important role in the fight against climate change, especially through our specific lens of equity focusing on the most vulnerable communities in Hawaii. So thank you for having us and I look forward to sharing some of our work with you today. That's really great. What a great background and living out there in the South Pacific must have been one big adventure. Absolutely, yes. Great. So Parker, can you describe the climate ready Hawaii VISTA cohort mission? Yeah. So as we've mentioned, James Revere and I are three members of the inaugural Climate Ready Hawaii VISTA cohort. And the goal of this cohort is to address climate readiness and equity issues statewide that will help our most vulnerable communities thrive and be resilient in the face of climate change induced events and impact. And these goals were identified by the Hawaii Climate Commission and our work will help in the pursuit of a clean equitable and resilient Hawaii. And so the cohort is comprised of six AmeriCorps VISTA members, including the three of us distributed between the Hawaii State Energy Office, the Office of Planning, the Department of Health and the Department of Land and Natural Resources with one additional AmeriCorps CUPU member also at DLNR. And our cohort utilizes the various resources and support offered by these four key state offices to address climate related issues and from different angles and different lenses while also working to break down silos and pave the path for more collaboration between these offices. So I think our position is very unique and it allows for a lot of flexibility and being able to address, like I said, climate change in innovative and interesting ways. Okay, great. So Kirsten, how about describing the community engagement part of the program? Yeah, thank you, Mitch. And this is the main reason we wanted to bring to everyone's attention this terrific team that we have of our VISTA cohort, which as Parker mentioned, is part of the statewide Climate Ready Hawaii cohort. But we were lucky that we're engaging the lion's share of them because there's that much work to do in order to achieve our 100% clean energy transition in order to be able to particularly make sure that everyone has access to clean energy resources and that they're affordable and that they have a voice in how we get to that goal. It's really important that we have a more robust outreach and that we have the opportunity to engage folks on a level playing field where they have an understanding of what clean energy is about. What is the ecosystem that we are talking about that we need to create in order to get there? And one of the things that we've been hearing from our civic advisory group in particular and other community groups with whom we've engaged for the past year that I've been involved is that a lot of people just don't understand the intricacies of what's becoming an ever more complex energy industry and energy delivery systems. And so we need to raise the awareness level, help educate folks about what the ecosystem looks like of the future that we're progressing and trying to implement in Hawaii. And we also need to engage their perspectives and input in a more proactive way that is more accessible. And then finally, of course, with James's position is particularly to help folks be able to meet the costs of energy and understand that renewable energy costs are lowering quickly and empower them to be a part of using those resources. And Parker in particular with the transportation affordability is working on multimodal transportation and other things that he's gonna talk about that help people connect to be able to partake also in the clean transportation transformation that we're undergoing. And part of this community engagement and outreach program is HSEO, our offices push but it is always in partnership with our partner organizations, industry stakeholders and NGOs as well as very importantly, communities because the communities are the users and they are the ones who are gonna get us there take us all the way home in that if you bear with me to use a relay metaphor we're gonna pass the baton to them and that last push of that last mile of getting there. So they have to be fully empowered to do that with us. And then Revere's position as a community outreach and engagement specialist is bringing us a real tremendous perspective on the latest and greatest in more youthful perspective as well on how to reach out to their generation. Particularly we were arguing about this just yesterday or whether they belong to millennials or Gen Z, but we were hardly establishing me very clearly as a baby boomer. So we need to pass this baton on to the younger folk. And with that, I'll let you continue to grill them a little bit on their role. Well, let's talk about community outreach and engagement seeing as how it seems to be a key part of the program because I'm kind of interested in well, how do you actually engage with the community?   How do you get the data, you know and what kind of data you're looking for? So Revere- Thank you, I'll start off with that and then pass it on to them. But that we have a really robust program that we've been strategizing and planning in the energy office over the last year and we're now launching. And one of the first things that we need to do is make our communications much more user friendly and accessible. And so we're bringing on next week a communications consultant that's gonna help us rebuild our website to make it more accessible to create a dashboard that not just in the past we've always been giving out the energy data to others to be able to communicate. We wanna sync our data and metrics across the board, across the state as well as all the non-governmental organizations like Blue Planet and Boy Green Growth that is stepping up and doing more in the energy arena as well as Alohaina Economic Futures, Sierra Club and other great community-based organizations. And so we've brought on a data science management specialist from the University of Hawaii from the lava lab there from the Data Science Institute who's already served us tremendously in the legislature this year and you actually had him on your show to talk about the deep dive into understanding the state vehicle plate, for example in order to be able to see how we can most efficiently and cost-effectively transition our state plate. We're also bringing on data fellows. Currently, I just signed some of the paperwork to get them here with the help of HNEI, your institution whom we partner very closely with and we're really happy about that growing relationship that is helping us with the data side as you guys dive deep into the weeds with modeling and data analytics. And so we're making it more accessible by making it more portable, downloadable not having dead-end data that we can't trace the original facts and figures. And so I'll let the scientists and Parker has a unique interest in that talk more about it. But the other thing that we're doing is upgrading our communications or our messaging and we're gonna be rebranding the office this year and making sure that all of that has a communication message that is much more when we say accessible, it's more easily digestible and I'll let Raveer talk more about that those are just three elements of the work we're doing. But what about language barriers? I mean, not everybody, English isn't the first language for everybody, a lot of these communities don't speak English. So how do you get involved with them? Do you have translators or does some of the people here know how to speak the various languages out there in the Pacific? That is part of what our communications consultant is going to help us with. First, we have to get it right in English and that's the biggest part is basically building our infrastructure, our outreach infrastructure, our engagement infrastructure and our communications infrastructure. So that's the first step. But yes, that's a need. But as far as languages, I'll let each of them answer that for you. Well, I'm gonna start off with Raveer then. Talk about community outreach and engagements over here, you're on the hook. Thank you. I will also just echo what Kirsten was saying in that the HSEO also is ADA compliant. So our community outreach and communications that we submit to the public are like use active language and utilize language that could be understood from a fifth grade level. So while we are working to increase language access, we also make sure that even people, we don't wanna just be a boring bureaucracy. We really try to make sure that everybody can understand what we're talking about, especially with such technical information. To continue on what you were talking about earlier though, with just how do we even engage with the public, with the pandemic, we've been in a very interesting situation in that many of our normal avenues of communication were closed off because we couldn't directly engage with the public in a physical setting. So we've like everyone have transitioned to this virtual world. And part of my role is not only being in these virtual meetings with the civic engagement group, but also making sure that our social media platforms are up to date and provide the public with the information to really advance the clean energy goals. One of my personal projects I've been working on is building our Instagram page, which is at energy Hawaii Gov. And I've just been, it's kind of been my own personal journey with learning about energy as well. And just what don't I understand that I also feel that other people won't understand. And so I've been talking about the basics of renewable energy, like what is solar energy? How are we utilizing it in Hawaii? As well as geothermal energy was our most recent post. But also just talking about the infrastructure, like what is the grid? It's referenced so frequently, but what does that even mean? And how is Hawaii's grid, especially being such a unique state compared to the rest of the continental United States in that we don't have an interconnected grid. Each island has its own energy source that it has to rely on, which is so different from the continental United States. And so that project has really been to help inform the public about these intricacies in our energy ecosystem and how transitioning to clean energy can help achieve those goals. Another goal of my role and why Scott and Kirsten and the rest of the HSEO staff brought me on specifically and created this role for the future AmeriCorps VISTAs as well, is that they really were listening to the community members and understanding that there is a need for more education on what clean energy is and just more engagement with community members. They recognized the need to break the barrier between industry, the energy industry, between policy makers and community members, especially again on such a technical subject that isn't easily understood. So that's kind of what I've been doing primarily in a virtual setting, although hopefully soon we'll be able to go back into in-person. Oh, that was my question. That's one of my curiosity questions is, how do you actually engage with them? Because not everybody has a computer, not everybody knows how to go on to the internet. Do you actually go out to like a community and how do you word out that, hey, we're meeting the community center, we want to talk about energy? Or maybe not that far yet, I don't know, No, actually that's a great question, Mitch. One of the important things in building our infrastructure is making sure that we continue forward with the abilities of the internet and to use this wonderful technology that so many people have gotten used to going on to Zoom and participating in webinars and meetings that otherwise they would never be able to participate in. So we need to preserve that element that has really amplified access while at the same time reaching out in-person, COVID along protocols allowing, that we'll be doing a dual approach and we'll be using one to support the other and vice versa. And so getting the word out will be both through these means that Revere has talked about, but it's also through networks of community organizations and making sure that our newsletter, our three social media sites, Twitter, Instagram and the web as well as our own engagements with communities and invitations by communities. We really want community organizations and grassroots as well as the traditional NGOs to invite us out there to be a part of your meetings where appropriate and we can speak to your communities and the issues that are concerning to you. And we've been doing that so far as I mentioned, we've been invited to participate in a variety of the Kahuku Community Association, for example, is having a meeting, I think it's tomorrow night. It'll be the, we've been doing that quite regularly and the Sierra Club of course we partner with Blue Planet and the different industry organizations, but we invite community organizations to invite us. What about if you looked at leveraging the Department of Education? I mean, we have this whole network of schools with students and students all have parents. Absolutely. And they all do projects and they take them home to mom and dad. So, I just know that. Well, let me just mention that very quickly. We have basically a three tiered approach and the first contract to get out the door and we have now awarded it is with, this was a competitive bidding process was to do a K through 12 clean energy curriculum for both the classrooms and professional development for teachers with a special focus on Title I schools. And those are the schools that are in vulnerable communities that might be low income that particularly those are the schools that offer free meals at the schools. And so we felt that those hadn't had the same amount of attention. And that contract went to the Maui Economic Development Board. They have a tremendous experience and they're amplifying the work that they're doing with some of the directions and guidelines that we want or that will translate across the different work that we're doing. And so that's the first step. And that's a year long program. The second program is of course to build our outreach and engagement. And the third area is the infrastructure I talked about. And the third is actually implementing workshops in communities and those again will be dependent upon COVID protocols but those workshops will be virtual and or and hopefully both online and in person. And we're planning those out and the priority for those will be in communities that have planned renewable energy projects. Okay, great. So Parker, tell us about mobility hubs. All right, thanks Mitch. And thank you Kirsten and Riviere for opening with community engagement because I think it's a time thread through a lot of the projects that we're working on. So it gives great context for some of the other projects that we talk about. So my work in the energy office and in the cohort is focused on transportation affordability and equity. And the topic that I've come across that's kind of captured all of that is mobility hubs or multimodal mobility hubs. So basically multimodal mobility hubs are locations where you can co-locate multimodal with different forms of transportation to more equitably provide access to these different modes of transportation for communities. And in doing research for this and through collaboration with the Hawaii Climate Commission and the Hawaii Interagency Transit-Oriented Development Council, we've been working with the counties to kind of compile a list of future ongoing or potential mobility hub projects across the state along with some other mobility hub materials to demonstrate the potential for mobility hubs in Hawaii and to show how they can best serve the communities that they can be housed in. So again, I said that community engagement is relevant to all of our projects. So in the implementation of mobility hubs, the first step is really identifying the transportation needs and concerns of communities and then designing these hubs to best serve those needs. So as these hubs start to come online across the state, engaging respectfully with communities will be a huge part in pursuing that. That's great, mobility is near and dear to my heart because as you can see over my shoulder, that's my height over on the Big Island for public transportation, which I think is where we should be investing our money among all the other things we need to invest in. Anyway, well done. So we're marching along the timeline here. So I wanna call on James to talk about while we're talking about money, let's talk about financial assistance and what kind of resources are there available? Yeah, thank you, Mitch. So my position is the energy affordability specialist, which in its name, it's we're working to help to make energy more affordable. And so when discussing energy equity, I think it's important that we understand and discuss this idea of the energy burden, which describes the percentage of an individual or a household's total income that is being spent on their essential energy needs. And so the US Department of Energy, actually they report that low income households experience an energy burden three times higher than that experienced by higher income households. And this average is consistent in Hawaii as well. And so these households already dealing with high rent, childcare costs, high student loan debt, which are all interconnected and contribute to financial inequity and poverty. So for our equity work, we wanted to help HSEO to improve its capacity to address the energy burden and reduce these financial strains placed on Hawaii's low to moderate income communities. And so one solution we found is to leverage the existing federal, state and county financial assistance programs, subsidies and rebates that exist to kind of help offset the high energy expenses that are contributing. And so we developed a comprehensive guide of all the energy financial assistance programs that are available in Hawaii. And you can find this right on the homepage of HSEO's website by going to energy.hawaii.gov or you can go directly to this by following energy.hawaii.gov forward slash financial dash resources. And so this guide includes a bunch of information and it includes links to programs such as the low income home energy assistance program which can provide a one-time payment directly to cover an electric utility bill. There's also a bunch of information about rebates that are offered by Hawaii Energy to help reduce the cost to purchase more efficient energy efficient appliances for your home. And there's also various information about enrolling in a community-based renewable energy subscription which is an emerging alternative solution to accessing the benefits of renewable energy even if you are unable to install a solar photovoltaic system on your home. So there's a ton of resources out there and we're gonna be continued to promote this page on our social media. And we're also gonna ask that our partner organizations continue to spread this information just so we can get this out on the community and really get it to work. Wow, this sounds like a great program you guys.  I'm sure Kirsten had something to do with all of this. So Kirsten, how about telling us a little bit about your Wayfinders program? Wayfinders program, absolutely. And I just wanna mention that we've had a lot of support from the Energy Equity Hui that we helped put together with Hawaii Energy on both this Wayfinders program and other elements of what James has been doing. He's been our lead with the Equity Hui but the whole team has been with them. There's about 12 members of that Hui so we're really excited to have their support. If you go ahead and queue up the slides I can walk you right through. The Wayfinders purpose is this is a program that we developed in response to COVID and a response to the call for creating more green jobs. And so while we're creating jobs with the VISTA program and certainly there's great examples of that across the state because all the state energy offices have been hosting them. Of course, the Office of Climate Change Stainability and Resiliency for the City and County of Honolulu has had a tremendous VISTA cohort supporting them. And we see that as a great example of how to prepare folks to have the resume they need to get the leadership jobs in clean energy and other fields. And so the Wayfinders program which was named by the Equity Hui and the VISTA team it was I had come up with a clean energy core when we first developed this last year. And so where we've gone from there I really credit that this VISTA team and the Energy Equity cohort and particularly Hui Energy and our partner also Kupu but creating jobs for this generation is a key part of it but it's also helping us to get to that 100% clean energy goal. And these Wayfinder the program will help community needs and concerns be identified and communicated address the inequities and vulnerable communities and establish that open communication that we need both virtually and in person. So next slide. When we talk about clean energy these are all the elements everything that these VISTAs are working on as well as everyone within our office and the other county energy focused offices. And that just I wanna make sure it includes active transportation as well as mobile mobility clean transportation. Next slide. These are our main partners that have been working together we started off with our office and Hui Energy as I mentioned and the Equity Hui and then we moved to working with Kupu because they have so much experience in this arena. And there is a bill also HP 1176 that would use some ARPA funding to fund Kupu's green jobs youth for program. It has a funny acronym and we're partnering to see how we can all work together and that with the energy focus on that. And of course the Hui is made up of many different groups as you see in the small blue box here about a dozen groups are represented. Next slide. The other potential partners that we see in this are of course industry. We've had HIKO already commit to in kind support of the program but there's many others and particularly the University of Hawaii System and the Department of Education as you mentioned. Next slide. The program strategy is to bring on 15 way finders and the way finders are the concept of them are very similar to the VISTA program and very similar to what is the name of the program? Parker in the Cornell University, navigators, right? The Clean Energy Navigators, yes. Clean Energy Navigators program. So we looked around to see across the country where there are other successful programs like this. There's was very different than ours though. We want to scale this up to a large group of people who are not just supplementing their university time but they're actually working in the field and the 15 way finders would be our pilot program to measure the performance and see how well this works. We were seeking funding from federal, state, county and private sector. Next slide. And we're hoping to get applicants from the communities that we want to serve. We may fund this through VISTA. We have an initial VISTA application for a whole new cohort in that area but we are also seeking funding from industry partners in particular that may want to support the communities that they're working in or the whole state. We're seeing the 15 member cohort going across the island. So we'd start with six on Oahu with the top row. You can see what the 15 spread would be in the yellow, sorry, the second to the top. And we would have more on Maui County because we'd want somebody on Lanai and Molo Ka'i even though Hawaii County has a greater population. And then we would scale up if you were going down the table and hopefully if this is a very successful program. So if you can, that's the end of the slides but talk a little bit more, James would you because he's really been spearheading the development of this proposal about the actual work of the wayfinders in the community. Yes, thanks Kirsten. So really the work that we're hoping that the wayfinders do is to really get directly into the communities and work on the concept of equity. And when we talk about equity, it's really understanding kind of the different intersectional identities and figuring out where the communities are. It's not just like a one size fits all solution. It's really getting in there and understanding their unique energy needs. So kind of going back to the financial assistance resources I had discussed, wayfinders could go in and kind of understand like what are the reasons that are inhibiting their financial security around the field of energy and connecting them to the appropriate resources. Another one would be to just kind of understand if the communities need a little more education or understanding on renewable energy and how it fits into the total energy equity ecosystem. So for example, a wayfinder might present what the opportunities are at a community organization's meeting or at a neighborhood board meeting if they're invited. And they then may be connected with a school teacher who's teaching a module on energy or a principal who wants to present to their teachers for professional development and understanding. There are myriad of ways in which the wayfinder can be integrated into the different community happenings so that they're seen as a resource to both understand the energy ecosystem and learn where they can plug in and how they can benefit more effectively with all that is happening in our transition to clean energy. Well, what a great program. And afraid we're gonna have to leave it there for a well out of time, but that's good. It's all good content. It'll be like a feature length movie, which is great. Got a great content, great presentation guys. I really enjoyed it and I'm sure our audience will like it too. So you've been watching Hawaii, the state of clean energy on Think Tech Hawaii. Today we've been discussing the HSEO's new community engagement and workforce development program with Kirsten Turner, James McCallan, Revere Wood and Parker Kishima. So thank you all for appearing on the show. And appreciate the opportunity. Awesome. You're welcome. And thanks to our viewers for tuning in. I'm Michuan. We'll be back in two weeks with another edition of Hawaii, the state of clean energy. Aloha.


Welcome to Sheboygan County Government, working for you. My name's Adam Payne, County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Roger Distruty. And as you know, every month we strive to bring a different department head or someone from the county who knows what they're talking about. And today we've got Building Services, Jim, Building Services director Jim Tobist with us. Welcome Jim. Well, thank you. Jim is the director of all the buildings throughout Sheboygan County and there are a number of them from the county courthouse to law enforcement, the administration building, and Jim and his staff, of course, make sure that they're well maintained, that we plan appropriately to be sure that roofs and other things are taken care of. And he has all the cleaning staff under his oversight as well, and they do a real nice job for us. So Jim, it's good to have you here. Let's talk a little bit about when you first started with Sheboygan County. The years are flying. When were you first hired? I was hired here in 2000. I'm home grown. Grew up at Usberg and lived away for 20 years in my family. And I decided we wanted to live closer to home, closer to grandparents. And Sheboygan County is such a great place to raise a family. We wanted their kids back here before they started high school. And that's what we did. Three children? I have three children out of college, one daughter-in-law and a grandpa, and one grandchild on the way. And if I recall correctly, they're all pretty good athletes. You had some soccer players and basketball players in the family. Yep. We got to go to state quite a few times. One one of them. It was very exciting. So speaking of exciting, it's got to be exciting to be the Building Services Director. I want to share with you really the mission and roles and responsibilities are of your department. Well the real goal of our department is to serve others. That's why we call ourselves Building Services. Anybody ask us to help them out? Our goal is to serve them. Whether it's constituents, taxpayers, or other staff members of the county employees. We try to maintain the taxpayer assets for the long run. We keep everything clean and running. We mow the lawn, plow the snow, all the grounds and take care of the flags. But the big part of the time is working on the HVAC systems, making sure everything is efficient as possible. Try to fix stuff before it breaks. And you never get any complaints about the HVAC. It seems not a week goes by that I don't hear someone make a comment. And usually it's complimentary of your staff or how helpful they are, how clean the facilities are. A lot of compliments about snow removal this winter and them getting out there earlier and getting the parking lot cleared and the sidewalks cleared. But when it comes to HVAC, when you have an old courthouse and an old health and human services building, the heating distribution or cooling distribution isn't ideal. What are some of the challenges you have there? Like you said, there's old building helping human services from 1927, the courthouse from 1931. They basically just had radiators in the 40s or 50s. They added air conditioning and we have all that much more equipment, all the computers giving off heat and the controls just aren't there in order to redo it to bring it up to snuff. We'd have to tear open walls and that's just not something you do, especially with all the marble we've got at the courthouses. Definitely a challenge, but you can have two people in the same room and one's hot and one's cold. That's just the nature of people and the aging process. Our IT offices on the, not the top floor, but the fifth floor of the courthouse and Josh, our division manager, is about my size so as you can imagine, he prefers things a little cooler. And I think his office, he doesn't have any heat necessarily coming from on his floor, but all the heat from the floors below pour out into his office and I think it's become a good wellness program because I think he's losing all the weight in there. And he does have all the equipment and it just so happens that chimney goes right through that area. They didn't insulate things like they do nowadays. Well we do the best we can and that's one of the challenges of having an older building. You mentioned primary roles and responsibilities of your staff, obviously the snow removal and talk a little bit about the cleaning responsibilities and I know a few years ago there was actually some discussion in the county about should we privatize cleaning services and you really drilled down into that. Touch on that a little bit. I'm very proud of our cleaning staff. They do an excellent job. They're very conscientious. We never have any accusations of theft or anything like that but it is a costly item. They're working second shift so we're trying to be invisible and there was request to look at outsourcing. So I did compare. I've got some bids from some vendors. I talked to people that use out private cleaners and when I compared to what we're spending to what they're paying we would pay the vendor. They may pay their staff minimum wage but what we would pay the vendor we were cheaper. You have to consider the cleaning supplies, the vacuums, the equipment, the scrubbers as well as the disposal costs that we're already paying anyway we would have to still pay with the outsourced company. It turned out to be more cost effective for us to maintain our own workforce and as you said I don't recall in 15 years ever getting a complaint about something being stolen or misplaced and suggesting that one of our cleaners or custodial staff took something so like you said we've got some really good people. And there's a lot of confidential files in the courthouse and child support and register of deeds. A lot of documents that cleaners shouldn't be looking at and our cleaners don't. Right. Very good. How many staff do you have in total in the department and what is your total operating budget? There's 34 members. Half of them are cleaners, half of them are maintenance then we have a supervisor of the hourly people an electrician and a part-time account clerk. Our operating budget is three million dollars a year and the tax levy is about two and a half million dollars. We're getting revenue from renting some places, leasing out some space focus on how much energy gives us grants. That adds up to about a half million dollars. And Jim you probably have one of the best track records of all of our department heads working within your budget parameters. Of course no budget is a crystal ball and every department head does the best they can working with their liaison committee and obviously myself and the county board adopts that budget but no one has a crystal ball but year after year building services seems to be right on budget or providing a positive variance and we certainly appreciate that leadership. It's not the case for every department but it is for most. Most do a good job. Obviously we're taping this program here at UW-Shabuigan and you mentioned that you know you have a number of different buildings, areas of responsibility and as we've mentioned in the past but in case we have some new viewers a lot of people don't know that the county owns the UW-Shabuigan buildings, the grounds, the county owns the facilities here so we have that responsibility. The state of course operates out of the facility there. They're the teachers and the staff here that make this place tick and they do a good job but we own the buildings, we own the grounds and talk a little bit about that relationship Jim. How does that work? We don't have our cleaning staff over here per se but we certainly are involved with any new building project. How does that relationship work? We are similar to the other 13 two-year campuses across the state. They're owned by the counties that they're in. Some municipalities are also involved like the City of West Bend is involved in Washington County but here at Shabuigan it's just the county and the state and the county does provide them some maintenance dollars but it's all state labor We buy the lawn mower, they buy the gas, we buy the light fixture, they buy the light bulb, they pay for the electricity and of course the state runs the professors and the classrooms and the books and all that stuff. I work very closely with the maintenance supervisor here on campus to make sure that they're taking care of our building because it is an asset of the taxpayers. We want to make sure it's kept up and I think they're doing a very good job and this is a definite cooperation, a very advantageous cooperation that's a real asset to the area. At any time a new building is constructed here or an addition is put up and Jim has had a key leadership role with that. We had the Science Building Edition a number of years ago that was a public-private partnership thanks to the generosity of the Bratz family. We had the Acuity Technology Center that was a public-private partnership thanks to the, obviously the generosity of the Acuity we're looking at adding an engineering lab here in the near future that's going to be a public-private partnership and more information will be coming on that in the future but the buildings as you said are owned by the county though we've really been trying to leverage resources from the private sector and the state operates it. What's your role when a new building is contemplated out here? I get deeply involved with the architects to create a bid specification so we can make sure the contractors are all going to build the same building when they give us their bids. That can be a three month to a year long process there are some state hoops we need to jump through to keep Madison informed and we make sure all the stock stakeholders here on campus are involved. Some of the professors, the IT people, the maintenance people gets to be quite involved and frankly the building projects take a majority of my time though. The maintenance guys are really good back at the courthouse they're empowered to take care of things themselves. The building projects are the emphasis of my job. Make sure the taxpayers are getting their dollars worth. We're building the attractive building that will attract students not be some dungeon for people to come into and get service from. And then while it's under construction I work with the contractor. They're always something you find behind the walls that you didn't know was there. We try to get the decision quick so the crew isn't standing there overbilling us or wasting their time making sure they're building things the way the specifications and plans read. And that they train the maintenance staff here how to take care of it once it's done and they walk away. Right. And you've done a phenomenal job. Obviously we always have to balance. We don't want a dungeon but we're not building a castle either. It needs to be functional and it needs to certainly be built well so it lasts a long time. And if you haven't been out to UW-Shabuigan I invite you to come out to your facility and take a look at a couple of the more recent additions that Jim had an important oversight role in the science addition as I mentioned. UW acuity facility, an award winning library, one of the most attractive functional libraries in the state but it's a beautiful campus out here and of course you have bookworm gardens so you can bring the kids along and they'll be opening up here soon with warm weather. UW extension is now co-located here with UW-Shabuigan so it's just a lot going on out here a lot of good things. Final question before I turn it over to Roger. We talked a little bit about your budget and you've done a nice job working within budget parameters. Chairman Testruity the county board, we've been really working hard to hold the line on property taxes and of course every department needs to be part of that solution. What's been your key to success? How have you helped hold the line and be sure that we aren't raising property taxes more than we need to in this community if at all? I think we've been quite successful at that. In fact our operating budget this year is no bigger than it was in 2009 and if we take out the utilities that I have to pay for really don't have any control over what rates they're going to charge us our budget, the tax levy this year is only 1% over what it was in 1999 15 years ago our tax levy for our department was basically the same as what it is now. We have had some pain. We've cut 10% of our staff. We've tried to leverage technology. We're using iPads for the guy that's on weekend call so he can look at the HVAC system which we've gotten out of all everything's computerized control. It makes it for more efficient operation but it also lets us check things from remote locations. We've got cell phones of course so we don't have to look for a pay phone after we got paged and all that other technology is a great thing. We're getting a lot more productivity and the delegation and empowerment that I mentioned before I think is a big thing. We empower the people that are closest to the problem to get it fixed or if they hear an odd noise let's figure out what that is and correct it turns into a problem. There's a big puddle on the floor or there's part that got mangled because it didn't get taken care of we're working at keeping costs down by fixing it before it fails. Excellent very good thank you Jim. Thank you for the great work that you and your staff do and you've done some wonderful things and I kind of knew before you started working you do a great job because you had the good sense to marry a gal from my home area in Cedar Grove actually. I feel a little old because she was in one of my freshman Sunday school classes way back when so that dates me so but in addition to a lot of the maintenance work that you do how about some of the capital projects and the energy efficiency programs that you set in place. My department we try to stay invisible like I mentioned we're going to fix things before the big puddles on the floor hopefully the staff doesn't even notice that we're working there we change the light bulbs at night we're cleaning at night etc but I do have some of my bigger capital projects are also somewhat invisible nobody's going to see that the roof got replaced they might see the crane there for a month but a big project I just helped the highway department I managed a project to replace their heating system from steam to hot water because of age and we also replaced their air conditioning system for the office again something that people driving past aren't going to see those types of projects in 2013 added up to about $1.7 million worth of projects we upgraded the elevators at health and human services so instead of clickety-clack relays now we've got computers and they're talking to each car talks to each other so they're being more efficient as the car goes down it even regenerates some electricity to put back into the grid but a majority is we've got almost a 20 year roof plan and we've slowly been replacing the roofs. This year I'm really going to be busy and those projects are going to be more visible projects the total that we expect to spend is about $6 million we're adding a lobby addition onto our health and human services to consolidate waiting rooms and provide better service more attractive service to the clients that use that building combined dispatch is a big project the city dispatchers hopefully become county employees and we're going to dispatch out of county buildings all the city police department and the county sheriff's department it's a highly visible project because it's been in the papers I'm sure it will be in the papers we want to make sure we get it right the first time and we build it it's attractive and operating well for the users in smaller projects like at our aging and disability resource center in Sheboygan Falls there's no entrance vestibule or canopy with the ice and snow and rain and the elderly clients that use that building we want to make it a safer entrance. We also have things on tap for the future. And some of these projects you mentioned how do you figure out the bidding process and who's selected the contractor which contract did you select by state law if it's over $25,000 we have to bid it out so if it's close to that amount I'll do the drawings myself write a little specification for a smaller project like we built two offices in one department. If it's a bigger project like this lobby addition at health and human services that hire an architect who hires engineers or if it's an HVAC project I'll hire the engineer directly. They write a very detailed specification sheets and sheets of plans and make sure that all the work that is intended to be done is documented in words and pictures and then the bids go out the contractors give us their bids and we property committee traditionally awards those and we always select the lowest bidder. Jim I know a few years ago we established the county energy conservation team how is that working out and what has been saved as a result of that. That is also very good success. In 2008 the utility bills for the county not counting the nursing home in the highway department was almost a million dollars a year it was getting to be a major part of the building services budget. We were challenged by Adam and the committees to save some of that money so we created an energy team to try and get some ideas of how we could get other employees involved in saving energy and raising the awareness that first year we saved 10 percent. Since 2008 we've saved $650,000 in utility costs it's not actually the cost it's the energy used I'm not taking advantage of the price reduction that we've recently had in natural gas I'm seeing the energy that we used at those prices was actually reduced by a value of $650,000 and pardon me what were some of the different measures that you did or what did you do to make that happen.  Other bigger things that we've done is sealed up all the cracks and even nailed windows shut in our health and human services building again it's a temperature issue that we mentioned before in such an old building but we're saving energy by doing it we don't want to have one window open in somebody's office and they're cold and the other people say why isn't the heat catching up. Another thing we did at our laundry in the jails we now inject ozone into the washing machines it allows us to wash all the clothes in cold water it uses less soap and in fact it makes the drying time less so we're using less to heat the water and we're using less to dry the clothes and well as our county electrician keeps us high highly informed of all the new technologies and we're switching over to quite a few of the LED light fixtures they use substantially less energy and it also helps my department because they last so much longer we don't have to replace them every 6 months their LED exit lights last 10 years we're lowering our maintenance costs because we've gone to LED technology. Jim what committees on the county board do you typically work with? I report bi-weekly to the property committee I'm working very closely with them and then it seems like I always need money to build something so I'm working with the finance department as I have employees retire I need to replace them so I'm working with the HR committee and then as I'm doing projects about the county I work with the health care committee if I'm helping them out with a construction project out at Rocky Knoll at the health care center I work with the transportation committee if there's anything at the highway department or the airport and the law committee I'm involved with with the dispatch center and previous projects that we've had at the jail I get around to almost all the committees thank you very much for your good work Jim. Thanks again. As I think about it you probably spend as much time with the 9 different liaison committees as any department head in the county you lucky guy. I enjoy it there you go. Oh yeah a lot of good people to work with you know we wrap up one budget and strive to work within budget parameters and here it is March this may be shown in April but we're already working on our 2015 budget and every department will receive specific targets based on budget assumptions what have you and what do you find is generally your key challenges or fundamental challenges when you're asked to prepare your department budget each year a fundamental challenge from a facility department is to try and think a year and a half ahead what might break down it's almost you got to have a crystal ball we typically spend this much on plumbing or did last year we have some catastrophe that made it higher than we expected and has this electrical thing been given us a hassle that we're going to have to pump up that part of the budget a little bit to cut back a little bit on the air conditioning repairs but again if something fails we have to fix it so it's a big challenge to try and predict what's going to happen we do have a lot of history like I said but as our buildings are getting older and older administration building in the jail is getting to be 12, 15 years old and that's when things start to fall apart you do have a contingency fund but it's a relatively modest one in the big picture correct the property committees in charge of allocating funds from a contingency fund it's $100,000 a year and it's the way it's designed strictly for emergencies we've got a boiler that went out and there's no heat in this building we have to hurry up and fix it I don't necessarily have the chance to get to the finance committee to try and seek other funding this is something that needs to get taken care of right away or if the toilets are all plugged up at the correctional facility and pipes are breaking and there's no time to go to a committee to ask for permission to fix that you just got to make it happen correct when our staff is very good at that we are man for two shifts a day Monday through Friday but we do have people on call 24-7 and the inmates do plug toilets and we get called in on the weekends so take care of that of course you have salary increases that may or may not happen but usually we try to do something around cost of living and health insurance I thought one of the other areas you might bring up though were utilities because that's obviously largely out of your control the price of the utilities is largely out of control but this energy team has really helped us as I said before we're almost a million dollars now we're something like a thousand part of that is because prices have dropped on natural gas because of the poor economy and the fracking that they're finding additional supplies but a lot of it is we're just saving energy our natural gas is down 32% our electricity is down 16% and we continue to whittle away at those uses a lot of good changes a lot of improvements there with that energy team we only have a minute remaining that you see hotter coming to building services a big challenge I see is retirement a lot of my staff is getting to be up in age and maybe a third of them could go any time they decided they wanted to leave and I'm afraid we're going to lose a lot of knowledge they know the sound that this pump makes or this boiler makes and when it doesn't quite sound right they know how to fix it now how do I transfer that knowledge to younger staff a big challenge succession planning I was just meeting with a couple of representatives of the sheriff's department this morning and they shared that they're looking at possibly 20 retirements at the sheriff's department in the next two years and it takes even more time to fill positions there because of all the background checks and everything else so without question that's going to be a challenge for all of us in the future well Jim thank you for joining us today a lot of good information if you wanted to learn more about building services good things that Jim does or have suggestions for building services don't hesitate to give him a call his number and information is on the county website otherwise you can contact the county clerk's office and he or her his staff can always point you in the right direction next month we're going to have Ellen Schleicher here a register of deeds she does very very important work whether it's recording birth certificates or our sales of property so we're going to hear from Ellen but until then I want to thank Jim for his good work and the important leadership he provides it's it's rather remarkable once he starts going through the list of all the different projects and things going on in building services and as he said much of it behind the scenes so thank you for joining us on behalf of Roger Distruty and the county board have a good month and we'll see you soon


Welcome back. Now let us look at the basic difference from a thermodynamic point of view between various simple compressible systems. Let us look at gaseous systems, liquid systems and solid systems. Here I have a series. We have seen this earlier in some illustration. It is generally an open system. There is a spout here through which fluid can come in or go out. But if I hold tight here, it is a closed system. Try to push out gas, but it will not go out. Now let us see. There is about 50 cc of air in it. It is a gas. If I close it and try to compress it, I can compress it, may be roughly to half its volume without much of an effect. So remember that gas as a simple compressible system is reasonably easily compressible. Now I am going to have some liquid water in this. Now see, I have filled it up with water and I have attempted to remove all air bubbles from it. Now let me try to compress it. Notice that in spite of great effort, I am just not able to compress it, not even by one cc, a fraction of a cc in 50 cc. So this indicates that although liquid is also a fluid, simple compressible system containing nothing but a liquid, it is almost incompressible. Of course I am not a very strong person, but if you really get a strong person, you may be able to compress it, but a very small bit. Now let us look at a simple solid. I have here a solid piece or even this computer mouse is essentially a solid. And what do I do if I try to compress it? Nothing will happen. In fact if I try to compress it too much, I am able to hurt myself. In fact as I try to compress it, my fingers get compressed because my fingers are not a solid system. They contain some fluid inside. So remember that from a thermodynamic point of view, purely a thermodynamic point of view, the difference between a solid, a liquid and a gas is essentially our ability to compress them. Thank you.


This study examines the relationship between landslides and land use changes in the three gorgeous reservoir area, TGRA. The researchers use interferometric and polarimetric synthetic aperture radar, NSAR, to measure landslide deformations and land use changes over time. They also use random forest, RF, and coherent slash slope maps, CSM, to classify the data and identify the most common causes of landslides. Finally, they use geographic information systems, GIS, to analyze the spatial distribution of landslides and their relation to land use changes. The results show that land use changes have a significant impact on landslide rates, with cultivated vegetation being the most likely to cause landslide deformation. This information can help inform local land use planning and reduce the risk of future landslides. This article was authored by Junhu, Yanayu, Rongui, and others.


What is going on guys welcome back to the channel critical overload here since I'm a screen 5 again here today Never Campbell recently has expressed interest in returning to reprise her role as Sydney Prescott in future installments And I just want to talk about those possibilities of what we could see from Sydney given the events of screen 5 also want to talk about the Draft or the original draft. I guess you could call it for screen 5 that has surfaced online It's available for everyone to read. I'll leave a link to it down in the description Just talk about some of the minor changes involving Sydney in that script during the finale There's probably some other changes, of course that you'll probably notice along the way I'm told or some people have called out the fact that in this draft you see That Tara and Amber are indeed a couple So for anyone who was hoping it would be a couple just like how they were or it sounded They were in the audition tapes and from the character descriptions that came out I guess that really was going to be a thing, but they changed it up My guess is they probably changed it up due to gender or takeoff again at the time being only 17 going on 18 And Mikey Madison was much older than her and it didn't want to really convey that on screen between between the two actresses That's just my opinion on that But jumping into Nev Campbell and her recent comment. She did this she made this comment with a screen rant talking about an interview Or talking an interview. She said it would seem there's always more stories to be told in Woodsboro And there is a taste for it. So I think if people love this one I would imagine there will be an appetite and we of course would all love to be a part of it This we of course spoilers. This is not a spoiler free area anymore I'll do my best to not spoil it in thumbnails or anything like that But this we she has to be referring to again, if you don't want spoilers, don't watch This we ultimately have to be referring to her and Gale Sydney and Gale because Dewey unfortunately did not make it out of the movie alive this time around with her and Gale are the only two left out of the og trio and Sydney is now in a position where I think I could see her being like a Guardian of sorts for the carpenter sisters I don't want to have a movie where you spent so much time with these two sisters and developing them because they're the most Developed out of the group that we got introduced to in there in this screen screen five them that we got I don't want to have a screen six where we're now going back to the Sydney narrative Sydney Sydney Sydney Sydney Sydney and the carpenters take a backseat Sydney has been through so much she has had a lot of stories told and I just think that constantly Digging for things in her past when you've created two new characters one in in specific Sam Carpenter Who has a lot of stuff that was? Tacked on to that character. We didn't even really get to fully explore you have different Narratives you could explore as potential motives for ghost face killers related to Sam going in the screen six going in the screen seven I would just prefer to see Neve Campbell Sydney Prescott be as like a guardian of sorts to to the carpenters I don't think we should then make the carpenters basically Supporting characters on Neve takes back the reins or anything like that. I don't want Neve to be used as a crutch I want her to be in a Laurie Strode Sarah Connor type of role if she is indeed involved Now how how much does she be involved? Like I don't think she should be there a hundred percent in the thick of things like Like how she wasn't in screen five I get the fact that we could say she was underutilized and it's probably what's best in order for this this new incarnation of scream this new trilogy that we're hoping to get to stand on its own and be Identified as something that's not Sydney's story. Sydney's still here, but it's no longer her story So I think that the long I think the more you would have her intertwined with the carpenters and not have Sam and Tara do a lot of things on their own the same way Sydney did a lot of stuff on her own I think that would kind of just give an indication that you don't have faith in these characters to carry your narrative When indeed there are a lot of people who were attached to these two sisters. We have a chance to see a sibling bond that's completely different from the bond between Sydney and Roman because Sydney was our protagonist Roman was our villain Sam was our protagonist and Tara was not our villain and vice versa And they have a bond that they have formed or that has been I would say Rekindled and I would like to see that just progress over time in the new trilogy that we're hoping to get because the other thing to think about with this is Sydney could be in a position where over the years she's always longed for that relationship with Roman to be different After knowing about him and what he went through and still having to of course be a part of killing her own brother I would imagine some part of her probably has longed to have a different relationship with him And maybe she sees some of that in the carpenters So she'll do anything in her power to make sure that bond stays healthy Even if that means they call her up sometimes for help about their trauma They're going through or maybe she even just shows up to help them with the next ghost face killing spiree something like that I'm not saying Sydney can't directly be targeted, but the focus should remain on the carpenters That's just how I think this would be involved in how Sydney probably still remain relevant as people say well How can Sydney get involved now? What would be her reasoning with do we gone? She could have developed some type of bond with the carpenters over Tara and Sam constantly coming to her for After their trip after the events of screen 5 and then again This could be related to her longing to wish that she had that bond with her own brother that she never got to have And we could hear some dialogue like that from Sydney in screen 6 to kind of rationalize why she's still involved here So going into the script changes So there's a lot of different things that I notice in the script one They take a lot of jabs at Ryan Johnson a little not a lot But a few more jabs directly at Ryan Johnson for his directing of stab 8 at the end in the family from Amber and Richie Amber also discloses that stab 8 had three killers There's this disclosure from Amber as well that she knew about Sam being Billy's daughter because Amber's uncle actually went to school with all of them and he knew Billy was hooking up with this girl behind Sydney's back So I'm kind of glad we got the other alternative explanation that Sam's mom was just drunk talking and Amber overheard it one night I like that. I prefer that better Sydney has a much better phone call so far. I would say with Ghostface from what I was reading She there's references to screen for the whole new decade new rules She's basically again once the characters oozing with so much confidence calling the killer of a In inferior Billy Loomis I'll just say to sum it up and mocking them because she's so confident that she's gonna kill them Just like she's killed all the other ones And I think she also makes references to the fact that she has seen all these movies and guess how they always in I kill them all there's just little quips like that We don't have that moment where she I guess hang up hangs up on the kill I might be wrong because again, I didn't read the script in full, but those are some minor details And Richie has a a jab at Sydney where he's like well Sam wouldn't be here if you to open your legs sooner For Billy like he wanted you to and it's just like these bits of dialogue I think would have made that finale a lot more intense and a lot more personable for a lot of moments and would have given us more To stand on as it relates to rooting for our final girls and that that battle that they all went through in the Amber's house stews house formerly But I'll again leave a link to the script down in the description Let me know what you think about think about all this down in the comment section below if you haven't already of course Make sure you subscribe turn on post location in every this video in the script I have links on my social media accounts on Facebook Twitter and Instagram You can message me there of course the limiters any movies news or views you like me to cover in the future with all that in Mine guys, I will see you in the next video


Get Good Done is a two-week program that's offered for free to all University of Auckland students. Anyone that wants to start a project or a business venture that has a social, environmental or cultural impact. We take students through the design-led thinking process using the principles of human-centered design, empathy interviewing, validation to really deeply understand the problems that they're trying to solve, the landscape of the current solutions that are out there and then they identify a gap or a need and what they can build an idea around. We've got all these tools that we can use to find out what the problem is that we're trying to solve, how we can go about solving it. I'm very excited to be part of the Get Good Done program which provides space for young people to delve into some of the most critical issues of our time and to collaborate and coming up with solutions for them. It's really motivating to see real-life examples of what other people have accomplished and then using that as a framework for thinking about what I could do in the future. The group that I was in was focusing on creating an ideal vision of what we wish to see in the world and then figuring out how do you get from where you are to that thing. It's just so inspiring because you feel like you're not really alone in this journey. If this program existed when I was at university it would have equipped me with the techniques to unleash the ideas about some of the issues that I'm passionate about and it would have allowed me to network with like-minded people much earlier. If you're passionate about making a significant change then this program is for you.


The Supreme Court has scheduled hearing for May 19 in the suit by President Mahmada Buhari and the Attorney General of the Federation, AGF and Minister of Justice Abubakam Malami. The scheduling is not only reflected in the court's case least for the week, but the parties have since been served hearing notices. The suit filed on April 29, 2022 has the National Assembly listed as the sole defendant. The plaintiffs are contending among others that the said section of the Electoral Act 2022 is in conflict with constitutional provisions.