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Home builders and school officials celebrated their new partnership Thursday in a noontime ceremony in front of the Old Merced County Courthouse, symbolically signing the pact which could lead to construction of new schools here. Merced Union High School District trustees ratified an agreement Wednesday night with the county's Building Industry Association which will see new homeowners pay $3.06 per square foot, four times the amount previously collected. Guy Maxwell, president of the building industry group, lauded the new agreement in the half-hour ceremony below the courthouse steps. More than two-dozen people attended the event. "It's the end of a very long journey. A lot of people worked hard to make this happen. I love our new relationship. This is a win-win situation for the betterment of Merced County," Maxwell said.
Charlotte/Douglas International Airport expects to start construction on its long-delayed third parallel runway in February, pending approval of an initial grading contract this year, officials told the Airport Advisory Commission Thursday. The 9,000-foot runway is slated for completion in January 2010. It is expected to cost from $80 million to $90 million, with about two-thirds of the money coming from the Federal Aviation Administration. .
The Toronto Raptors training camp in Waterloo was all business this week, not leaving any time for the sightseeing that some of the players new to the team and new to the country might have wanted to do. That was disappointing for at least one of the newest Raptors, Uros Slokar, who fell in love with the Waterloo Region when he visited his relatives here more than 10 years ago. Slokar, one of the new international contingent on the Raptors from Slovenia, stayed with his uncle and aunt, Andre and Pia Brodnik, and their daughter Helene for a month and a half, doing all the typical touristy things people do when they come to this part of the country. "They were at the universities (University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University) studying computers and music," said Slokar, who picked up some of his English on that trip.
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