By MITCH DEACONStaff Writer

HESPERIA — In today’s rap-idly changing economy, workers need to know where job oppor-tunities are being created while companies need a way to find qualified candidates.

Trying to build a bridge be-tween the two parties, the coun-ty Employment and Business Resource Center in Hesperia is a place where job seekers can get information on new jobs, and employers can meet with the staff to explain their business needs and arrange interviews with applicants who have been pre-screened for open positions.

When Ar rowhead Credit Union decided to open a new full-service branch office in Hesperia, they contacted the staff of the resource center to find potential applicants. The company interviewed more than 50 people during a recent job fair at the resource center.

“Our hiring manager plans to call people back today for second interviews, so we may be close to making job offers to some people later today. Normally that pro-cess might take a month,” said Max Arbolida, vice president of employee relations for Arrow-

head Credit Union. “ S i n c e we a r e n e w t o

Hesperia, the staff can help fa-cilitate our entrance into the community by utilizing the re-sources at the facility to publi-cize our positions and find em-ployees,” Arbolida said.

Obtaining information on emerging job opportunities is a crucial survival skill for work-ers in the contemporary job market, county officials argue.

“If the average adult changes

jobs more than seven times in a lifetime, they need a central place where they can go for good reliable information on local economic growth,” said Barbara Halsey, director of the Work-force Development Department.

“We want to make sure busi-nesses are connected to the work force,” Halsey said. “Our career counselors help people connect with employment

Center/D2

By CURT WOODWARDAssociated Press Writer

With a growing crowd of mil-lions lining up for its fancy coffee drinks in the 1990s, Starbucks Corp. was tanta-lized by seemingly endless

opportunities to expand its brand.A chain of full-service restaurants?

Seems like a good fit. A hip tavern with coffee undertones? Hey, sounds sexy. A literary magazine? Why not!

It didn’t take long for those ventures to fall flat. And as the coffeehouse ti-tan readies for a long-term explosion of growth, some Starbucks-watch-ers warn the company may again be stretching its all-important brand too far. Even company chairman Howard Schultz frets that the efficiency im-provements driving Starbucks’ domi-nance have robbed stores of their au-thenticity.

Starbucks’ leaders say they haven’t forgotten the past. Reminders of their greatest misses are even scattered around global headquarters.

“We do look in the mirror and say, ... ‘Hey, don’t forget when that didn’t work,’ ” said Anne Saunders, senior vice president of global brand strategy.

Seattle-based Starbucks has more than 13,000 locations around the globe, with a long-term goal of 40,000 stores, half of them outside the U.S. The

company had annual sales $7.8 billion in 2006, and is projecting 20 percent growth for this fiscal year. In some markets, the company is saturating densely populated areas with more stores so customers don’t have to walk more than a few dozen yards for a caf-feine fix.

The company’s rapid growth almost single-handedly popularized upscale

coffee in the U.S., and its success has enticed McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts and other retailers to upgrade their coffee offerings.

But not everything Starbucks touch-es turns to gold.

Starbucks has led investors on a rocky ride over the past 52 weeks, with shares now 20 percent lower than a year ago. In February, the company

said its fiscal first-quarter profit rose 18 percent, attributing the growth to the 700-plus stores it opened in the quarter, and a 6 percent jump in sales at stores open at least a year. But re-sults still missed Wall Street’s expec-tations as higher wages in the U.S. and Canada ate into profits.

In the 90s, the company experiment-ed with several strategies for capital-izing on its hot brand.

Among the bigger ventures were attempts to open separate food-and-drink outlets: a full-service, sit-down restaurant called Cafe Starbucks, and a computer-friendly bar under the name Circadia.

Starbucks also partnered with a few Web portals and pushed further into merchandise and media, including a periodical called Joe Magazine and a line of journals and desk supplies.

None of those ideas lasted. But that spasm of unsuccessful brand expan-sion shows that Starbucks can become overheated about the world outside of coffee, said John Moore, a former Starbucks marketer who heads the Brand Autopsy consulting firm.

“They’re kind of caught in the position where I’d say they believe the hype,” Moore said. “They talk so much about the brand that they have really fallen prey to the idea that they are a lifestyle entity.”

StArbuCkS/D2

Price powerplayOn the heels of regulation,

Nevada electric prices jump up by 94 percent 2Business

ENTERTAINMENT 3 COMICS 4-5 WEATHER 6

MONDAY, APRIL 23

2007

D1

Page edited by Justin D. Beckett

Walking that fine ground line

Photos by the Associated Pressto the left, a woman cleans an outdoor lamp near a Starbucks coffee outlet in beijing on April 5. At right, signs for the original Starbucks coffeehouse store hang with the original logo in the Pike Place Market in Seattle, on April 12. While opening up outlets worldwide, the company walks a fine line between traditional coffeehouse and industry entrepreneur.

Amid questions about its brand, Starbucks forges ahead

Cups are stacked in the original Starbucks store, kept as it was in the beginning, complete with the original logo, in the Pike Place Market in Seattle, on April 12. Starbucks’ leaders say they haven’t forgotten the last time the company over-reached on certain ventures. executives even keep reminders of their greatest misses littered around global headquarters, warning against straying too far.

Hesperia center helps job seekers find the perfect fit

T he tax man has come and gone. Now that we have turned our money over to

the government, many of us are in a cash crunch.

I have noticed that the frequency of advertising for “payday loans” seems to have increased during the past two months.

Maybe that is because those “lenders” know people are vulner-able during this time of year, or maybe I am just more aware of them when my pockets are empty.

In any case, I have always avoid-ed them and you should, too, unless you have absolutely no other source of money and cannot possibly wait. David found out why the hard way:

Dear Bogey,I borrowed some money for

taxes from a “payday” lender. I was in a hurry, desperate and did not do the math.

Now I have to keep “rolling” the amount that I owe and I can-not pay off the principal because of all of the fees that I spend on “rolling” the loan.

Is there anything that I can do to bring the payments down or make the lender agree to a lower interest rate?

David H.Apple Valley

Dear David,They really should call them

“quicksand loans” because once you step into them, it is almost impossible to get out without a little help.

The payday loan industry has come under a lot of fire from leg-islators that don’t like the high in-terest rates, but the lenders do not mind because their profit margin is so ridiculously high.

For example, check-based loans of $100 to $500 typically cost triple digit interest rates, which can be as high as 780 percent annual interest rates for two-week loans with $15 to $30 per $100 loaned, according to the Consumer Federation of America.

The real problem with these loans is that many, if not most, borrowers cannot repay them within two weeks, so they have to use their next check to borrow enough to repay their first loan.

Of course, all of the fees associ-ated with the original loan are also charged on the renewal loan.

One secretary in my office is up to renewal loan No. 16.

She has effectively been pay-ing about $40 a pay period for the use of $250 during the last eight months, which means that she has paid $640, but she still owes the original $250.

None of her payments have gone toward the principal. That means an annualized interest rate of 384 percent.

The relationship between you and the lender is contractual and, in general, that contract will prob-ably comply with state and federal law, particularly if your lender has a physical presence in the state.

If the loan was made over the Internet, which is becoming more and more common, then you might want to review the state law to make certain that the terms are in compliance.

If they are, then it is extremely difficult to get out from under this type of loan.

One approach is to discuss the interest rate with the lender and see if there is some accommoda-tion to be made.

It is not like these guys are Santa Claus, but they can lower your rate and still make oodles of money.

One other option is to use a credit card cash advance.

A credit card cash advance for $300 and repaid in one month costs between 50 percent to 80 per-cent in interest, and you can pay it down without renewal fees.

Do you have a question for bogey? Submit it to him at www.iamfightingforyou.com. All requests must be made through this Web site.

Your Cornerby Mike “bogey”

bogus lawsk i

Payday loans: How to stay

out of the quicksand

CHICAGO (AP) — The Chi-cago Tribune has launched a community journalism Web site encouraging readers in nine suburbs to post their own articles, photos and blogs.

“This started with the ques-tion of how can we make the paper more relevant to read-ers who continue to live fur-ther and further away from the center city,” said Ted Biedron, president of the Tribune divi-sion that designed the site.

The Web site www.triblocal.com was announced in Thurs-day’s edition of the newspaper.

Triblocal will have a staff of four journalists, but the major-ity of the site’s content will be written by readers.

Biedron said sites like News Corp.’s MySpace.com have per-suaded publishers that there is value in allowing readers to publish their own content.

Triblocal covers Batavia, Geneva, St. Charles, Elburn, Maple Park, Tinley Park, Or-land Park, Orland Hills and Homer Glen.

Biedron said the company plans to expand the list of

communities.Anyone who posts on tri-

blocal.com must register, provide a phone number and accept the terms of a user agreement.

The Web site was modeled after YourHub.com, produced by the Denver Rocky Mountain News. John Temple, the news-paper’s editor, said some of the content is questionable, but the site adds richer news coverage on local issues.

“It’s inevitable that tradi-tional journalists are going to view this as inferior, almost ridiculous,” Temple said. “But anything that brings people into the public discussion is potentially valuable.”

The paper periodically will publish some of the reader-submitted articles in a special supplement, officials said.

“A lot of it, just like the Web site, will be lightly edited,” said spokesman Mike Dizon. “The intention is to keep it true to the writer’s voice.”

The Tribune is one of 11 newspapers owned by Chicago-based Tribune Co.

Chicago Tribune Co. launches community journalism Web site

James Quigg / Staff PhotographerA Job Fair sign is a common sight in front of the San bernardino County employment and business resource Center in Hesperia. the office provides a connection between job seekers and potential employers.

By MAX JARMANthe Arizona republic

PHOENIX — Faded copper boomtowns in the Pinal Moun-tains, 85 miles east of Phoenix, are about to boom again.

Soaring copper prices have companies scrambling to open new mines in the mineral-rich Globe-Miami Mining District or restart older operations that were closed when metals prices plunged a decade ago.

But the historic Gila County mining towns of Globe and Mi-ami are not prepared to handle the renewed mining activity in the area and the up to 1,000 new jobs it is expected to bring.

“We have not planned for this,” Miami Vice Mayor Ray Webb said. “Nobody expected copper prices to go up so fast.”

Many of Miami’s houses and commercial buildings were abandoned years ago and are crumbling and uninhabitable. Neither Miami nor Globe, four miles to the east, has enough dwellings to accommodate the new miners and their families. Miami’s aging water and sewer systems can barely handle ex-isting residents, and in Globe there is little private land avail-able on which to build homes.

“We’re just getting by now,” said Ed Carpenter, vice presi-dent and manager of the Sun-state Bank office in Globe and president of the Southern Gila County Economic Development Corp. “In six months, it will be a real problem.”

Currently, there are about 575 construction workers em-ployed in the area getting Aus-tralian mining giant BHP Bil-liton Ltd.’s closed Pinto Valley Mine ready to reopen this fall.

Hundreds more workers will arrive in June to begin work on the new Carlota copper mine near Pinto Valley. And it’s pos-sible that Phelps Dodge could re-

open its shuttered Miami Mine, putting more people to work.

When BHP and Phelps Dodge Corp. closed their Miami mines in 1998 and 2001, copper was sell-ing for 65 cents a pound. Now, thanks partly to China’s bur-geoning economy, copper is go-ing for around $3.25 a pound and was as high as $4 last year.

Mark Blakely, project man-ager for the new Carlota Mine being developed by Quadra Min-ing Ltd. of Vancouver, British Columbia, said financing is in place for the $220 million mine and that construction is expected to begin in June. About 400 peo-ple will be employed during the construction phase, which will last until August 2008, when the mine is scheduled to open with about 200 full-time employees.

“It’s going to get pretty busy around here when we both get up and running,” Blakely said. “There will be a lot of jobs and a lot of money being spent.”

Workers at Pinto Valley al-ready have gobbled up much of the available housing in the area. Motels, even frilly bed-and-

breakfast inns, are booked up with construction workers, par-ticularly during the week,

“Before, we would sell maybe 10 rooms a night,” said Bobby Kapoor, manager of the 40-room Super 8 Motel in Globe. “Now, we’re selling 35 to 40.”

The area also is feeling pres-sure from Phelps Dodge’s new Safford mine, 75 miles southeast of Globe. Many of the more than 600 people working on the new mine are living in the Globe-Miami area and commut-ing to Safford, where there also is a critical housing shortage.

Globe Mayor Stanley Gibson said that the community has formed a housing committee to encourage home construction, but it could be a year or more be-fore new houses are available.

Despite the lack of prepared-ness, residents and businesses

that hung on through a decade of tough times after mines closed are jubilant about the renewed mining activity and the prospect of good local jobs.

Maryan Jones, 19, of Globe, was commuting 170 miles round trip to a construction job in Phoenix. Now, he drives five miles to Pinto Valley, where he is on a construction crew getting the mine ready to reopen.

“It’s easier than driving to Phoenix,” he said, noting that working close to home allows him to spend more time with his young son.

But Ed Gardea, manager of Ortega Shoes in Globe, notes, “It’s always been feast or famine in Globe.

“Before the mines closed, there were strikes and people were out of work for months at a time.”

Besides Pinto Valley and Car-lota, Resolution Copper Co., a limited liability company made up of BHP and another min-ing giant, London-based Rio Tinto Plc, is developing an un-derground copper mine about 15 miles west of Miami, near Superior.

The project hinges on a land exchange with the federal gov-ernment that would give Res-olution Copper control of the property surrounding the mine site. If it goes through, the proj-ect will employ 1,000 people during construction and 400 permanent miners when open, perhaps by 2017.

Another possibility is the re-opening of Phelps Dodge’s Mi-ami mine, which was closed in 2001. If the mine is reopened, it could create another 300 jobs.

opportunities and build careers by providing them with rich in-formation about jobs that are available, how to get a job in the right industry and how to ad-vance in their careers.”

To address the needs of the business community and the job-seeking public, there are two separate entities working together under the same roof.

The Business Resource Cen-ter works with businesses and entrepreneurs in the commu-nity to determine their needs, while the Employment Resource Center welcomes individuals looking for employment.

“If you are at home looking for a job and don’t know where to start, this is the place,” said Kathleen Oles, work force de-velopment supervisor of the Hesperia Employment Resource Center. “We provide workshops on job search skills as well as computers, fax machines, copy machines and telephones.”

When Wal-Mart opened a new distribution center in Apple Val-ley, the Employment Resource Center helped the company re-cruit workers by prescreening for job interviews so that hiring managers were not bombarded with unqualified applicants.

“Every person who comes through our doors will be seen by a case manager,” she said.

Businesses and entrepre-neurs are offered a wealth of resources at the center.

“Our focus is to make sure that the businesses in this coun-ty are healthy, and that includes assisting them in finding the

very best employees that are available,” said Sue Tippit, busi-ness resource specialist with the Hesperia resource center.

“In addition, this center is open to people starting their own businesses,” Tippit ex-plained.

The resource center features a library with literature on how to start a small business in many different industries, from beauty salons to eCommerce.

The center also has comput-ers with software programs for developing business and mar-keting plans and handling taxes.

Individuals interested in be-coming entrepreneurs can use the resources to create a well-organized business plan, which can help them qualify for small business loans.

In addition to the Hesperia office, the county also oper-ates business and employ-ment resource centers in Rancho Cucamonga and San Bernardino, with satellite of-fices in Barstow, Redlands and Joshua Tree.

Funding and oversight for county resource centers is pro-vided by the San Bernardino Workforce Investment Board, which receives money from t h e f e d e r a l a n d c o u n t y governments.

Comprised of public sector officials and private business leaders, the Workforce Invest-ment Board assisted nearly 80,000 jobs seekers at its employ-ment Resource Centers in 2005, according to county officials.

“We are trying to facilitate

employers who come to the county and also the people in need of employment by discov-ering the kinds of jobs that are needed in the industries that are coming here,” said John Lewis, director of government relations of Loma Linda Uni-versity Medical Center and a member of the Workforce In-vestment Board.

For more information on the Hesperia Employment and Business Resource Center, visit the Web site of the San Bernardino Workforce Invest-ment Network at www.csb-win.org or call the Hesperia office at 949-8526.

Mitch Deacon can be reached at 951-6232 or at mdeacon@vvdailypress.com.

PAGE D2 Daily Press, Victorville, Calif. BUsINEss Monday, April 23, 2007 Page edited by Justin D. Beckett

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Moore sees parallels in some of Starbucks’ latest moves be-yond coffee-related commerce — namely last year’s market-ing of “Akeelah and the Bee,” a feature family film that was heavily promoted in stores but got a chilly reception at the box office.

“There was no linkage to cof-fee at all, nothing to the core of what the company was about,”

Moore said. “You start to realize, ‘Wait a minute . . . they just want my eyeballs. They sold my e y e b a l l s t o someone.’ ”

Other skep-tics question whether Star-bucks’ other r e c e n t m e -dia ventures, par ticularly its new Hear Music record label, are the type of moves t h a t c o u l d distract Star-b u c k s f r o m its bread and butter: selling $4 coffees.

Starbucks is wary of cast-

ing the company’s abandoned ideas as evidence that its all-im-portant brand has a weak spot.

Instead, Saunders said ven-tures like Circadia, Cafe Star-bucks and Joe Magazine fell vic-tim to difficult logistics or poor execution.

“There isn’t really an in-stance that I can think of where we’ve extended the brand and consumers have rejected that,” she said.

But that doesn’t mean Star-bucks is shy about remembering its missteps, she said. Chairman Howard Schultz has long kept a rack of Joe Magazines in his of-fice; workers poking around head-quarters can still ferret out bottles of Mazagran, a discarded coffee-and-soda drink that preceded to-day’s bottled Frappuccinos.

The company’s penchant for self-examination was put on dis-play in February when a memo from Schultz was leaked to the blog starbucksgossip.com.

In the e-mail to top execu-tives, later verified by the com-pany, Schultz worried that the automation that is helping to drive the company’s expansion is sucking the romance out of the Starbucks experience.

The memo set off a flurry of speculation that the luster was gone, and that Starbucks might slow its ambitious growth plans.

Insiders responded that those worries were nothing new, and are a central part of guarding Starbucks’ brand as it tries to become the world’s neighbor-hood coffee shop.

“It is, for us, being very thoughtful and careful about how we extend the brand,” Saunders said. “We joke around here: It’s a slippery slope to sun-glasses and underwear.”

In the end, other observers say Starbucks’ international expan-sion plans may be more affect-ed by hard-nosed supply chain problems than consumers’ feel-ings about a legion of smiling, wavy-haired mermaid logos.

Starbucks hopes to have its first stores in Russia and India before 2008, putting the compa-ny in 41 countries. Last week, Starbucks announced it will open its first store in Bucha-rest, Romania — one of 2,400 locations planned for this fiscal year, at a pace of about seven new stores each day.

Starbucks’ real challenge will be hiring enough designers to build those stores and buying enough coffee and milk to stock each loca-tion, said Larry Wu, a vice presi-dent at consumer consulting firm Iconoculture and a former Star-bucks research director.

“I think there’s things that people aren’t looking at that could bring the brand down,” Wu said. “If you can’t get enough high-quality coffee and keep the productivity up, that’s one area that I think is more in-fluential than people realize. It’s not the marketing.”

Starbucks: Memo shows worries about over- automationFrOM D1

“there isn’t really an instance that I can think of where we’ve

extended the brand

and consumers

have rejected

that.” Anne

SAunderSSenior vice

president

Center: Also has libary for starting a new businessFrOM D1

Arizona copper towns rev up for more jobs

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Ne-vada’s electric rates soared 94 percent from 1990 to 2006 even though the state continued to regulate the power industry.

While an AP analysis of federal data shows consum-ers in 16 states and the Dis-trict of Columbia — which de-regulated power since the late 1990s — paid an average of 30 percent more for power in 2006 than their counterparts in regulated states, Nevada power costs were up sharply because of the California en-ergy crisis and the rising cost of natural gas, industry ex-perts said.

Nevada’s electrical rates nearly doubled from 5.7 cents per kilowatt/hour in 1990 to 11.07 cents per kilowatt/hour in 2006, according to figures released by the U.S. Depart-ment of Energy.

M e a n wh i l e, t h e p r i c e of natural gas rose from $1.70 per million cubic feet to $7.16 per million cubic feet, said Nevada Power Co. spokes-woman Andrea Smith, citing figures from the Energy Infor-mation Administration.

“The increase has been driven by natural gas prices,” Smith said.

Adding to the problem was that Nevada power utilities had stopped building new gen-erating capacity and prepared to sell off power plants as the state moved to deregulate the industry in the 1990s, said state Consumer Advocate Eric Witkoski.

After seeing the rolling blackouts and price-gouging caused by deregulation in Cal-ifornia, lawmakers in Nevada abandoned the idea in 2001.

That left companies like Ne-vada Power again responsible for power generation.

“They didn’t do any long-term planning,” Witkoski said. “We turned the ship and we’re trying to patch everything up and deal with a lot of those issues. We’re still paying off what happened in California.”

Nevada Power is now seek-ing to diversify the fuel sourc-es of its electric power away from expensive natural gas. It is proposing a $3.8 billion coal-fired power plant near Ely that is expected to gener-ate 750 megawatts of electric-ity by 2011.

The company aims to de-crease its reliance on natural gas from 48 percent of its fuel mix in 2008 to 14 percent in 2015, while boosting cheaper coal sources from 18 percent to 45 percent and renewable sources from 9 percent to 20 percent, Smith said.

Reliance on purchasing power from out of state is ex-pected to decrease to 21 per-cent from 25 percent, most of which is comprised of natural gas-generated energy.

Rates are likely to keep in-creasing to pay for new gen-erating capacity that will be needed due to Nevada’s grow-ing population, Witkoski said.

“It’s not a pretty story for the ratepayer because rates just keep going up,” he said.

nevada electric jumps 94 percent

AP Photo / Arizona Republic, Sherrie Buzbybefore landing a construction job at bHP billiton’s Pinto Valley Mine, Globe resident Maryan Jones, 19, was commuting 170 miles round trip to a construction job in Phoenix. now, he drives five miles to Pinto Valley, Miami, Ariz. where he was working on April 5.

James Quigg / Staff PhotographerJess escalante of Arrowhead Credit union interviews Gina Cracchiolo, a prospective employee at the San bernardino County employment resource Center in Hesperia. the county employment and business resource Center frequently hosts job fairs for employers.