How Tall Is That Tree?

I pride myself on having one crackpot idea a week. One of them was that Mt. Washington should have a Champion Oak. That would be the tallest, fattest, biggest Oak tree in the neighborhood. I don't really know where this tree might be, but a good starting point might be Chris and Caroline Tuft's house on Wexford Road. They have a seriously big oak tree.

Anyhow, I found THIS on AmericanForests.org. It's about how to measure the height of a tree using a very sophisticated and delicate instrument--a stick:

Hold the stick at its base vertically, making certain that the length of the stick above your hand equals the distance from your hand to your eye. Staying on ground level (or on the same contour as the base of the tree), move away from the tree while sighting the trunk base above your hand. Stop when the top of the stick is level with the top of the tree. You should be looking over your hand at the base of the tree and, moving only your eyes, looking over the top of your stick at the top of your tree. Measure how far you are from the tree and that measurement - in feet - is the tree's height.

Revenge of the Real Estate Market

If you own a house in Mt. Washington, I don't need to remind you of how sharply the assessments for most houses jumped when they were last assessed a year ago. Well, that was then, and this is now. My professional opinion has always been that residential real estate tends to track a 4% trend line over long periods of time. Sometimes values sag below this line as they did for most of the 1990's. Sometimes they bubble above as they did in the period that ended quite abruptly in the fall of 2006.

Cities and states that tax property had a field day with these rising prices. Assessments went through the roof, and took property tax receipts along for the ride. This added lots of money to coffers, which was a good thing. Between scary health care inflation (a major component of education and municipal services costs) and the expenses that a non-functioning federal government shifted to the states, costs have risen enormously. But what happens now that prices are falling? Should the governments that benefited from the up now share in the down? In some parts of the country, that is exactly what's happening.

THIS New York Times article points out that falling prices are forcing some cities to reverse course.

Home owners across the nation are looking to county governments to reassess the values of their homes in the face of flattening and falling prices that have befallen scores of markets. Downward assessments, done at the request of homeowners or pre-emptively by government, appear to be most pronounced in areas where the housing market was exploding just a few years ago, or where economic conditions are poorest.

So what does all of this mean for Baltimore? It's not like the city doesn't need the money. But is it fair for them not to deal with this? And given the three-year assessment cycle, is there any requirement for them to do anything proactively? I kind of doubt there is. I'm not even sure that a homeowner can ask for a re-assessment at this point in the cycle. But if I had purchased a home in the neighborhood in late 2006, I'd sure be looking into it.

Where Have I Been?

Well, it's been a crazy month. Lots going on. So where have I been? Frankly, the big news items in Mt. Washington and Annapolis have been the Jones Falls Trail and the Slots Referendum, respectively. And both of these issues have been in stages where I felt it was really best not to comment. And now things are starting to break loose a bit on both, and I can now share some of my thoughts.

On the Jones Falls Trail (JFT) the Mt. Washington Improvement Association voted 18-1 (with one abstention) to approve a hybrid plan that will include a footbridge from the Corner of Greenspring and Northern (near Sinai) into the Northwest Park. From there, the path will go through the Park and right on West Rogers for a few blocks. It will then enter the Pediatric Hospital woods, circle around the back, and exit near South and Kelly.

Needless to say, this has been quite a process. There has been a lot of back and forth, conversation and study. And there has been some contentious opposition. I didn't want to bring this debate into this venue. Now that the trail plan has been approved, expect to read more about the process moving forward.

The other big issue is the Slots Referendum. I had a number of people approach me who were kind of glum about this. After all, we lobbied against it and would have preferred to see this die a painful death in Annapolis. But the fact is that had we won and defeated the referendum, we would be right back in the fight in January. It is impossible to sustain a war of this sort year after year after year. Remember, the lobbyists are paid millions--the grassroots is not.

So StopSlotsMaryland is quickly re-organizing from a lobbying effort to a campaign. We are holding meetings and doing research. And I have to say that I feel very good about where we are and what our prospects are. Will we be outspent ten to one? Yes. Will that mean anything? Probably not.

Stay tuned. MUCH more to come.