In Maryland, volunteers who just couldn’t get enough fun doing their own taxes are opening their slates to help low-income families get their taxes done — an important task, because many low-income filers are missing out on a big credit.

Georgia Samios of WYPR in Baltimore reports:

Here at Ray of Hope Baptist Church in Northeast Baltimore, volunteers are helping low income people fill out tax returns. They want to make sure that those who qualify get the earned income tax credit, which can literally put money in people’s pockets. .. That means more people are covered, says the Internal Revenue Service’s Peggy Riley.
“It’s a big expansion over other years, and with the amount of unemployment we’re figuring many more people will probably qualify for the earned income tax credit this year,” she says.

A similar volunteer program is underway in Seattle, where the public library is home base to help people get their taxes done. This year, there’s more confusion as many of those seeking help are underemployed or unemployed.

NPR’s Wendy Kaufman reports:

The pain is evident at the Seattle Public Library. Part of the library’s fifth floor has been turned into tax central for the past several weekends. Low-income people are getting free help in filing their tax returns.
Courtney Noble of the United Way is in charge of the program.
“We see more people every year — and this year, we see a lot of our same customers from last year,” Noble said.

In California, tax credits passed down to homeowners from a bill passed in the 1970s are causing intense debate as the state faces a budget crunch.

In San Diego, where the housing crisis hit particularly hard last year, residents are facing off with legislators as tax time approaches and the county stands to bring in less money in property taxes. California Proposition 13 passed more than 30 years ago and gave huge tax breaks to homeowners, aiming at helping them stay in their homes and not be “taxed out” over time. But now the state is questioning the law’s relevance. KPBS produced a recent special The Legacy of Prop. 13 analyzing the bill’s influence.

Joanne Faryon reports on Prop. 13′s impact:

Prop 13 locked in property assessments at 1 percent of the purchase price, and limited yearly increases to 2 percent. The result: California has among the lowest property tax rates in the country. In fact, more then half of all the homes in San Diego County are assessed below market value.

For last minute tips, Nightly Business Report continues it series with Kiplinger’s Kevin McCormally. Recent tips include help Supercharging You Standard Deduction and changes in Demutualized Stock Sales.

KPCC’s Air Talk had the mayor on to address threats facing the city’s Department of Water and Power from ratings agencies, and options to keep the city afloat beyond a partial shut down.

Villaraigosa told KPCC’s David Lazarus:

It’s not something that I want to do. But it’s something we need to look at and discuss. … Clearly we don’t’ have a lot of options where we know that we don’t have the cash to pay employees. We are liable to them when we ask them to work, knowing we don’t thave the cash to pay them.

In the comments section of the KPCC page, concerned LA residents left pressing questions about other budget issues hitting City Hall, like early retirement payments for city employees and furloughs for municipal departments outside of the general budget.

LA school budgets are also being cut. That’s drawing some Hollywood names to make the issue a hit online, like in this Funny or Die video with Megan Fox and Brian Austin Green, who visited Wonderland Avenue Elementary School in LA to get their point across about overcrowding and budget cuts:

It’s not just LA that’s affected. Earlier this month, protests against budget cuts for schools were held in northern California. Youth Radio reporters caught up with protesters in Berkeley.

Waving signs that read “No Cuts” and “Defend Public Education,” the crowd of around 150 people included elementary school student Eliza Fosket Hyde, 7, who made a homemade sign “We want money for pableck shools.”

Strawberries/Credit: Flickr/ClayIrving

Every Tuesday, I cook dinner with a friend of mine to save some money by cooking at home and improving our kitchen skills. This week is her turn at the stove, but I’m bringing strawberries for dessert. Why? Well, in the spirit of frugal cooking, imagine my excitement when I saw strawberries for 88 cents a pound at my local supermarket. I was pretty stoked, but with a little research learned that low prices for me means bad news for strawberry farmers as the height of the season approaches.

It’s the cold winter on the east coast that’s permitted Florida strawberries to flood the market, just as California’s growing season gets underway. Marketplace’s Kai Ryssdal spoke with Plant City, Florida farmer Gary Wishnatzki about the surplus.

Typically in mid-February growers will plant in the same bed spring crop like melons, eggplant, tomatoes or cucumbers, but by late March the two crops begin to compete for room and at that point the grower will just come in and twist off the strawberry plants to give the spring crop room to grow. This year the extended cold slowed the strawberry harvest down.

Savings blog WalletPop also picked up on the strawberry bounty, reporting that prices in Ohio are also low, coming in at around $2.50 per pint. WalletPop even had some suggestions of what to make if you (like me) have found yourself with a fridge full of strawberries.

How can you take advantage of the deals being offered in local groceries? One of my favorites is freezer jam, which avoids all that messy pouring of wax caps. By the same process you can make a killer ice-cream topping by thinning down the mix.

One WalletPop writer took her bounty and managed to make strawberry tacos (or galettes, if you’re more Martha).

While strawberry prices have crashed this year, the cost of land to grow them on is still high. Why is that, if real estate prices in urban and industrial areas are still dropping due to the mortgage crisis? PBS NewsHour’s Paul Solman found out why from agricultural economist Gerald Nelson:

Agricultural land is driven by future agricultural prices. And while we are off the highs of 2008, agricultural prices are still high and the expectation is that they will continue to be high.

Have you seen other unexpected deals on produce this season at your local store?

Asked what she thinks California will look like in ten years given what’s happening in public education today, 21-one-year-old Taylor Kohles said, “We need to change our priorities and fully fund education. If that doesn’t happen, it will create an education gap.”

Twenty-year-old UC Berkeley student Eddie Rivero said he has friends who will have to drop out of school because they’re undocumented immigrants who can’t get financial aid and are paying part of their tuition with scholarships. He said they won’t be able to cover costs as tuition rises.

For more on the protests, check out Youth Radio’s Twitter list of Day of Action participants.

In New Hampshire, some students are facing a subprime loan crisis much like the housing one – except this time it’s loans to help cover rising tuition costs of higher education.

“In many cases private student loans come with variable interest rates that can top twenty percent. In addition, a number of recent graduates contend that the education they paid for included sub-par labs, mediocre instructors, and fell short of the quality education that was advertised.”

NewsHour’s Paul Solman reported that a new bill making its way through the Senate would move the student loan industry under the Department of Education, reducing the subprime risk.

In Michigan, among the areas hardest hit by recession, some recent graduates are staying true to their state.

“Anna Barson graduated from The University in Michigan and immediately moved to Washington D.C, and then New York. She’s discovered there’s a lot of grassroots activism in Detroit she wants to be a part of.
“I do feel some connection, and if I am serious about wanting to do social justice work, Detroit– I mean, it is in my home state, and I think it would be hypocritical of me to completely ignore that,” said Barson.”

Propublica reported on how the US Department of Education is dividing up stimulus funds to schools – and it’s turning into a competitive race to get any of that funding.

“Using an elaborate scoring system just announced, the program will benefit only those states that have already taken steps to shake up their school systems, the [Wall Street] Journal reports. “This is going to be highly competitive, and there are going to be a lot more losers than winners,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan told reporter Neil King Jr. Preliminary plans for the program provoked an outpouring of criticism, The New York Times reports, but the final rules have added flexibility. Some potentially volatile aspects remain – like President Barack Obama’s emphasis on charter schools – but the new rules invite states to describe “innovative public schools other than charter schools.”

There is some good news for veterans looking to go back to school, however. As Emilie Ritter reported for Montana Public Radio back in August, a new GI bill is sending those who’ve served back to college — for free.

Station Fire, L.A. Credit: Anthony Citrano/ZigZagLens.com

The fires burning in the Angeles National Forest near Los Angeles have already cost two lives and thousands of acres of protected land. How much will the emergency spending to control the disaster cost the already bankrupt state?

Patt Morrison of Pasadena-based public radio NPR station KPCC reported this morning that the California Department of Finance has spent $106 million out of a $182 million emergency firefighting fund.

Even before the latest fire, California’s resources were burned out on fire control costs. In this piece from last July, the LA Times reported that fire service costs had grown exponentially:

“Wildfire costs are busting the Forest Service budget. A decade ago, the agency spent $307 million on fire suppression. Last year, it spent $1.37 billion. Fire is chewing through so much Forest Service money that Congress is considering a separate federal account to cover the cost of catastrophic blazes. In California, state wildfire spending has shot up 150% in the last decade, to more than $1 billion a year.”

At the time I wrote this blog, the biggest fear for radio and television stations in the region is the threat the fire poses to Mt. Wilson, where most of LA’s communications towers are set up. Media blog LA Observed reports that “Several area radio stations without backup sites at other facilities could be especially vulnerable, although information coming out of the fire area is understandably incomplete.”

PBS station KCET has a warning ticker on their its Web site, noting that services could be interrupted due to fire damage on Mt. Wilson. By the time you read this the fires could have already consumed Mt. Wilson. In fact, fire officials were predicting that such an occurrence was only a matter of when, not if, it would happen. Endangered fire fighters were already pulled from the top of Mt. Wilson for safety reasons.

For the latest on the Station Fire, follow LA public media resources SoCal Connected (on Twitter, @socalconnected) and KPCC’s Patt Morrison (@patt_Morrison). KPCC is also asking readers to send in their images of the fires and stories from the local area.

Non-profit journalism project Spot.us asks the community to support journalists to report specific stories. Recently, the site uncovered a story about a San Francisco Bay Area group that got the local government to allow the reuse of graywater to conserve water and help survive California’s drought. Learn more about graywater use in California from this KOSU report about Catalina Island.

And California’s water issues are just , uh…a drop in the bucket compared with the global demand for the stuff:

The 2004 film “Thirst” featured on PBS’ POV examined water politics and the idea that clean water could soon be a commodity as valuable as oil, both in the U.S. and abroad.

In “The New Economy of Water” the filmmakers discuss water privatization:

“In the best cases, more efficient operation has allowed people without access to be hooked up to centralized water systems. But the problem remains that those cities, states, and nations with the biggest water problems and the strongest incentives to privatize are often the least prepared to deal with the many potential problems of water privatization.”

PRI’s The World reported this month that just one less toilet flush per day can save over a thousand gallons of water per year.

What’s happening in your community to conserve water? The following TED talk shows one way a new type of portable filter can take dirty water and make it usable again:

In Oakland, California, budget cuts have bred creativity – as well as several species of creatures. Cultivating their own insects and small animals like crayfish for science projects, rather than buying them from suppliers, has saved the district over $200,000.
Youth Radio reports on this unique approach.

In Seattle, teachers are seeing cutbacks beyond classroom resources as layoffs loom. Teacher seniority is the traditional way that layoffs are conducted in the school system. KPLU reports on a group of teachers that is pushing for a merit-based system that retains the best – rather than those who’ve been there longest. But the idea is facing criticism from both the union and the school system.

It’s not just elementary and high school education that are at risk due to the economic downturn. Students have faced increased costs at universities, among them the University of California system. This week, KQED’s California Report spoke with UC President Mark Yudof.

“The budget leaves us hurting badly…it leaves us somewhat less competitive for faculty and staff.”

Listen to The California Report interview with Yudof.

San Francisco’s KQED has a collection of economic coverage that tracks the California situation, including reports on how small businesses are coping and whether the downturn is actually creating opportunity for the state’s tech hubs in Silicon Valley.

And NewsHour talked to Patchwork Nation’s Dante Chinni about the foreclosures in monied burbs — a key community in struggling California.

Listen to the interview here: Foreclosures in Monied Burbs? and read the full report.