Tacoma Power has a few suggestions to help people save a little money.

- Recycle your fridge. Customers receive $30 when they recycle their old, working refrigerators or freezers through Tacoma Power's recycling program, which includes free pick-up.

- Check for heat leaks. Tacoma Power customers with electric heat can get a free home energy check to determine whether their house leaks warm air. Tacoma Power offers free insulation and duct sealing to people who qualify and zero-interest loans for insulation, duct sealing and windows. Tacoma Power reports that adding new insulation, duct sealing and energy-efficient windows can cut heating bills by 25 percent.

- Change light bulbs. Compact fluorescent light bulbs can use up to 75 percent less energy than traditional bulbs and they last 10 times longer. This saves about $30 in electricity costs over each bulb's lifetime, Tacoma Power reports.

Tacoma Power also offers bill payment assistance. For more information on programs and ways to save, go to www.mytpu.org/save or call 253-502-8377.

The News Tribune, hit by the twin curses of a troubled economy and Internet competition, tightened its corporate belt another notch Monday announcing new layoffs, salary cuts and other economy measures.

The Tacoma-based newspaper is among the latest in the Sacramento-based McClatchy Co. newspaper chain to announce cutbacks to meet corporate-wide expense-savings goals.

News Tribune Publisher David Zeeck told employees that the 126-year-old paper remains profitable, but the cuts were necessary to cope with recent declines in advertising revenues.

“Because the majority of our revenue comes from advertisers, and our advertisers are hurting, that’s the primary thing,” said Zeeck. “They can’t afford to advertise as much and some of them have even gone out of business. And that hurts the revenue, and you have to react to that.

“We are still profitable,” Zeeck said, “though less comfortably profitable than in the past.”

The cutbacks announced Monday are the third round of reductions in 10 months at the Tacoma paper.
The economy measures include:
• Five percent pay cuts for employees making between $25,000 and $100,000 a year. Ten percent reductions for employees whose salaries are more than $100,000 a year.
• Workforce reduction of 30 employees. That’s about 7 percent of the paper’s staff. Six of those cuts will happen in the newsroom. One recently vacated newsroom management position won’t be filled. The cuts will occur both through voluntary buyouts and through layoffs.

Zeeck said the economic downturn is speeding up the ongoing process of newspaper evolution.

“The good thing is that we’re already hitting a million unique visitors a month on the Web and 300,000 people a day are reading the printed paper. That’s a huge audience. That’s why I feel Ok about the long-term success.”

Attention owners of retail businesses in Washington: You might want to brighten up your employee-only restroom.

Members of the public may be on their way.

A bill currently sliding its way though the Legislature says that people with qualified medical complaints can use your employee-only restroom if and whenever nature calls. The bill, HB 1138, has passed the House (90-7) and most recently was delivered to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

According to the letter of the bill, customers eligible for entry into an employee-only restroom must have been diagnosed with one of several maladies, and would be required to supply either a letter from a health-care provider or an identification card attesting to a condition.

Those include, but are not limited to, a “permanent or temporary medical condition that requires immediate access to a restroom facility.”

Should you deny access to a member of the public qualified to use the employee restroom, the first incident will result in a letter of reprimand and the second would qualify as a civil infraction subject to a fine.

For a look at the bill and its transit toward passage, click here.