Owning real property is fraught with pluses and minuses. I guess one cannot be fraught with pluses so let us say there are pluses and minuses to this endeavor. Of owning. Parcels. As in a home.
Of the minuses is notices that your city sends you - more like missives - that alert you to sudden tax increases and obligations for which your reaction generally tends to be a shrug.
Not a happy shrug more like - oh heck - what am I going to do with this? They figured it out so it must be right. Not really. Being dismissive is to your own detriment to an extent in that you never know how any cost basis was derived and whether it is truly applicable to you.
Largely things are transparent (better than third world countries) but due diligence can help. I tried to do it by attending the City Council meeting for which an invite was included in said missive.
It had an agenda item wherein the citizenry could ask questions surrounding this mystery tax item and the panel made of the Mayor and his cohort would address to the satisfaction of the asker. So I went, I got lost (the building is - purposely maybe? - not marked well) and then I asked.
Actually it was more theater than that. First people assembled 15 min after the time that was included on my letter because the actual agenda was different from the invite. So we began 15 min late by my watch. Then the assembled folks - all old, white people in a town that is 50% Asian, began the proceedings for the evening.
First up was some mumbo jumbo of addressing that we were now going to use the agenda in front of us and go down the list (that is what you do with an agenda so why explain that?) and there was all sorts of back and forth between the Mayor and Madame announcer - a white old lady (the only lady on the podium).
I was also the minority in the attendee pool (about 5% of the audience was non white) and the only one with a question - apparently. There were 7,000 mailings sent to talk to the citizens about this tax increase and they had received 3 responses by mail. So much for democratic choice.
So once the back and forth settled the course of events for the evening we were asked to stand up and say the pledge of allegiance to the American flag. Not having been a follower of regimens and bogus rules and drama I was bit peeved that we could not start discussing the stuff that mattered right away but spend time on some old fashioned belief system to praise the lord/god/flag/ and a curious amalgamation of things under said items.
That out of the way the mayor again went back and forth passing and approving some crap that made no sense to me but all the sage faces on the dias seem to agree whole heartedly. So after several Aye and No Nays we got to the matter of the GHAD. Geological Hazard Abatement District item responsible for the tax increase.
Oh Ghad. That was the item I had driven in for. What the heck is it and why am I paying for it?
There is a lawyer on the city council who took charge of answering my questions and while attempting to show that he was explaining added more questions to my hopper (which if I really want to know answers to would require days of due diligence) got praised by the mayor for doing a wonderful job on addressing the citizenry.
I am not sure how the system came to be where on average the folks sitting on that dias (who could not have needed more than a 5th grade education to do what they were doing or NOT) earned $250K on average a year. But there we were - most folks just attending because it was a slow night - it always is when you are over 70 and live a quiet life in a secure bedroom community in Silicon Valley.
I left shortly.
Of the minuses is notices that your city sends you - more like missives - that alert you to sudden tax increases and obligations for which your reaction generally tends to be a shrug.
Not a happy shrug more like - oh heck - what am I going to do with this? They figured it out so it must be right. Not really. Being dismissive is to your own detriment to an extent in that you never know how any cost basis was derived and whether it is truly applicable to you.
Largely things are transparent (better than third world countries) but due diligence can help. I tried to do it by attending the City Council meeting for which an invite was included in said missive.
It had an agenda item wherein the citizenry could ask questions surrounding this mystery tax item and the panel made of the Mayor and his cohort would address to the satisfaction of the asker. So I went, I got lost (the building is - purposely maybe? - not marked well) and then I asked.
Actually it was more theater than that. First people assembled 15 min after the time that was included on my letter because the actual agenda was different from the invite. So we began 15 min late by my watch. Then the assembled folks - all old, white people in a town that is 50% Asian, began the proceedings for the evening.
First up was some mumbo jumbo of addressing that we were now going to use the agenda in front of us and go down the list (that is what you do with an agenda so why explain that?) and there was all sorts of back and forth between the Mayor and Madame announcer - a white old lady (the only lady on the podium).
I was also the minority in the attendee pool (about 5% of the audience was non white) and the only one with a question - apparently. There were 7,000 mailings sent to talk to the citizens about this tax increase and they had received 3 responses by mail. So much for democratic choice.
So once the back and forth settled the course of events for the evening we were asked to stand up and say the pledge of allegiance to the American flag. Not having been a follower of regimens and bogus rules and drama I was bit peeved that we could not start discussing the stuff that mattered right away but spend time on some old fashioned belief system to praise the lord/god/flag/ and a curious amalgamation of things under said items.
That out of the way the mayor again went back and forth passing and approving some crap that made no sense to me but all the sage faces on the dias seem to agree whole heartedly. So after several Aye and No Nays we got to the matter of the GHAD. Geological Hazard Abatement District item responsible for the tax increase.
Oh Ghad. That was the item I had driven in for. What the heck is it and why am I paying for it?
There is a lawyer on the city council who took charge of answering my questions and while attempting to show that he was explaining added more questions to my hopper (which if I really want to know answers to would require days of due diligence) got praised by the mayor for doing a wonderful job on addressing the citizenry.
I am not sure how the system came to be where on average the folks sitting on that dias (who could not have needed more than a 5th grade education to do what they were doing or NOT) earned $250K on average a year. But there we were - most folks just attending because it was a slow night - it always is when you are over 70 and live a quiet life in a secure bedroom community in Silicon Valley.
I left shortly.
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