Posts tagged closure
Boulder News Briefs for April 2, 2014
Apr 3rd
Birds of special concern/raptor monitor program volunteers needed
The City of Boulder Parks and Recreation Department’s Urban Resources division is seeking volunteers for its Birds of Special Concern/Raptor Monitor Program at the Boulder Reservoir, located at 5565 N. 51st St. Training and orientation will be held from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 26. A slideshow presentation will be held in the morning followed by an easy walk of the monitor locations.
Monitors should be able to work independently and have their own binoculars. Skilled birders with the ability to identify osprey, American bittern, northern harrier and burrowing owl are preferred, but some identification training will be provided for beginners. Responsibilities include monitoring and reporting animal presence, bird behavior, nest locations, fledgling success, wildlife closure violations and assisting with educating the public. The days are flexible but a minimum commitment of one site visit per month consisting of approximately 1.5 hours each, from late April through early August, is requested.
For more information and to RSVP, please contact Mary Malley, volunteer services coordinator for the Parks and Recreation Department, at 303-413-7245.
North Boulder Recreation Center will close early on Saturday, April 5
The North Boulder Recreation Center (NBRC), located at 3170 Broadway, will close early at 5 p.m. on Saturday, April 5, to prepare for the annual Father and Daughter Dance. The East Boulder Community Center, located at 5660 Sioux Drive, will be open extended hours until 7 p.m. to accommodate NBRC’s early closure. The pools will close one-half hour before each center’s closing time.
For more information and to register for the Father and Daughter Dance, visit the registration website.
Source: City of Boulder
Florida reporters win Al Nakkula Award for Police Reporting
Mar 4th
Two Florida reporters have won the 2014 Al Nakkula Award for Police Reporting from the University of Colorado Boulder’s Journalism and Mass Communication program and the Denver Press Club.
The $2,000 Nakkula prize goes to reporters Megan O’Matz and database editor John Maines of the South Florida Sun Sentinel for their series, “Cops, Cash, Cocaine.” The piece uncovered a police department’s secret scheme to lure drug dealers to a small town, entangle them in a sting and pocket money from the operation.
The award is named in honor of the late Al Nakkula, a 46-year veteran of the Rocky Mountain News whose tenacity made him a legendary police reporter, according to award organizers. The contest has existed since 1991 and this year drew more than two dozen entries from major publications around the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Seattle Times, the Boston Globe and Newsday.
Five veteran reporters, who worked at the Rocky Mountain News before its closure in 2009, judged the contest. Most of the reporters worked with Nakkula.
“The Sun Sentinel’s report stood out for the sheer doggedness of the reporting and the sheer audacity of the operation the newspaper exposed,” said Nakkula award judge Kevin Vaughan, an investigative reporter for Fox Sports.
Reporters O’Matz and Maines found that the Sunrise, Fla., police department enticed drug buyers to come to town, arrested them, confiscated their cash and cars and kept millions in proceeds. The officers who participated also received hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime pay.
“ ‘Cops, Cash, Cocaine,’ was one of those stories that allowed Megan O’Matz and John Maines to deploy the skills they have become known for around here: piecing together bits of information, reviewing documents endlessly, talking to sources and checking things out in person. In other words: old-fashioned tenacity,” said Howard Saltz, Sun Sentinel editor.
“The result of their investigation not only revealed something that still boggles the mind when you read it, but served the community by forcing a highly unusual — and arguably dangerous — police operation to shut down,” he said.
O’Matz has received numerous state and national honors for previous work and was a 2006 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting.
Series co-reporter Maines has been a database editor for the Sun Sentinel for 16 years. He and a Sun Sentinel colleague won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.
Second place in this year’s competition was awarded to reporters John Diedrich and Raquel Rutledge of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for their series, “Backfire.”
The judges also sent a special commendation to the staff of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for the depth and breadth of their work in 2013. The staff entered two major reporting projects in the contest.
For more information about the Al Nakkula award visit http://journalism.colorado.edu/al-nakkula-award/. For more information about CU-Boulder’s Journalism and Mass Communication program visit http://journalism.colorado.edu/.
-CU-
Campus Alerts system gets a test Friday
Dec 3rd
“As we saw during the recent floods, emergencies can happen quickly and without warning,” said Stuart Pike, CU-Boulder emergency management director. “The Campus Alerts system is our most effective means of communicating key safety messages to the campus community. It’s important for students, faculty and staff to be aware of this critical messaging platform.”
If the emergency involves a threat to personal safety or a campus closure, a campus alert will be sent using one or all of the communication methods available. Text messaging is the backbone of the system as it reaches the most individuals in the least amount of time.
More than 90 percent of CU-Boulder students, faculty and staff are registered for the Campus Alerts system and over 90 percent of those have at least one mobile device registered, according to Pike.
During an emergency that affects the campus, critical updates, additional details, and any necessary instructions regarding the nature of the emergency will be posted at http://alerts.colorado.edu, university social media sites, and on the campus Emergency Information Line at 303-492-4636 (303-492-INFO).
Active CU-Boulder student email addresses (@colorado.edu) are automatically registered and the university encourages students to add mobile phone numbers in order to receive text notifications as well. Faculty, staff, or affiliates of the CU-Boulder community with an @colorado.edu (or cufund.org, or cu.edu) e-mail address are encouraged to register on a voluntary basis. Additional information is available at http://alerts.colorado.edu.
Details on the decision process for determining a closure, how administrative leave should be handled for essential personnel and other employees, and answers to questions that frequently arise are covered in “Campus Closing Procedures During Emergencies” located at http://www.colorado.edu/policies/campus-closing-procedures-during-emergencies.
Any user who expected to receive an alert and didn’t, or who needs help signing up for the system, should call the IT Service Center at 303-735-HELP or email help@colorado.edu.