Author Archives: jimgilvin

Transit advocate boots taxpayer advocate from train pep rally

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I saw this article from the Marietta Daily Journal referenced by Lee over at rootsinalpharetta.com and want to pass it along here as well. The article is about a pep rally for business leaders that want to leverage higher taxes on the public into higher profits for themselves. Nothing surprising there but the section below is just too perfect to let slide:

Lance Lamberton, president of the Cobb County Taxpayers Association, attended Wednesday and tried to distribute copies of a letter to the editor he wrote that was published in the Journal last month. But he was asked to leave by an unidentified person.

So transit advocates and business leaders that want higher taxes to pay for their pet projects don’t appreciate taxpayers criticizing their expensive and grandiose plans? I sure am glad that would never happen around here…

Today I became a lifelong Texas Rangers fan

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From the AJC:

Paralyzed UGA OF drafted in 33rd round by Texas Rangers

Georgia junior outfielder Johnathan Taylor has been selected by the Texas Rangers in the 33rd round of the Major League Baseball draft Wednesday.

“This  was truly a classy move and a great gesture on the part of the Texas  Rangers organization,” said Georgia coach David Perno.

“J.T. is  definitely a player worthy of getting drafted. He’s been a big part of  our program, and we are all very excited for him. When I talked to him  after he got the call, he was in the middle of his rehabilitation work,  laughing and having a good time and was thrilled to be drafted.”

Currently,  the 5-8, 181-pound Taylor, is an outpatient at the Shepherd Center in  Atlanta after suffering a broken neck in a March 6th outfield  collision this year with teammate Zach Cone. The accident happened  while the Bulldogs were playing Florida State in Athens.

You can read the rest here.

We hear about a lot of screwed up people doing a lot of screwed up things every day in this world. It is refreshing to see a classy move like this from the Texas Rangers.

I think I’ll have to get a Rangers jersey with Taylor and a number 2 on it!

The federal gravy train is pulling into the station

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Drudgereport.com had this headline: “USA has record $61.6 TRILLION in unfunded obligations; $534,000 per household…” The link leads to this report in USA Today. It is a powerful reminder that the United States is in a terrible financial situation and the current levels of government spending are unsustainable.

Read the whole thing but below are a few highlights:

The federal government’s financial condition deteriorated rapidly last year, far beyond the $1.5 trillion in new debt taken on to finance the budget deficit, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

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The government added $5.3 trillion in new financial obligations in 2010, largely for retirement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. That brings to a record $61.6 trillion the total of financial promises not paid for.

This gap between spending commitments and revenue last year equals more than one-third of the nation’s gross domestic product.

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The $61.6 trillion in unfunded obligations amounts to $534,000 per household. That’s more than five times what Americans have borrowed for everything else — mortgages, car loans and other debt. It reflects the challenge as the number of retirees soars over the next 20 years and seniors try to collect on those spending promises.

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The government has promised pension and health benefits worth more than $700,000 per retired civil servant. The pension fund’s key asset: federal IOUs.

The numbers in USA Today are astounding but it isn’t an isolated report. Back in May, Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming released this statement which says:

The numbers don’t lie. Every day, this government borrows another $4.1 billion. We are borrowing at a rate of more than $2 million per minute. Forty cents of every dollar Washington spends is borrowed money, much of it from China. Every American child born today and tomorrow and the next day owes more than $45,000.

The federal government cannot continue to operate this way. It is more clear than ever before that one day soon our nation has to make difficult choices or foreign investors will make those decisions for us as they are doing for Greece.

So what will local governments do when the federal funds dry up? The Wall Street Journal article Threats to Town Halls Stir Voter Backlash shows that budget woes are already forcing some local governments to consider consolidation against the wishes of many constituents. Here in North Fulton we need only look back to the consolidation of Milton County with Fulton County that occurred during the last Great Depression to see what happens when a municipal government is not sufficiently prepared for the fiscal issues it can face.

The current fiscal policies of the United States federal government are unsustainable. The gravy train of federal deficit spending is nearing the end of the line.  Will Georgia and its municipalities be prepared when it does? I hope so.

Money grubbing bureaucrats find they didn’t need to extend GA 400 tolls after all

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According to the article Ga. 400/I-85 to be rebuilt, but was new toll needed?  in the AJC:

… for Ga. 400 toll payers who once expected the toll to expire this year, the congestion relief will be bittersweet.  As they now continue paying the toll for another decade to fund the interchange project and others, there is a new kicker. The bid the state accepted Friday for the project is far lower than the state estimated it would be when it made the case that the toll had to be extended.

So low, it raises the question of whether the toll extension was necessary in the first place.

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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted at the time that the toll authority expected to have $42.5 million  in excess toll reserves at the conclusion of the original toll, meaning that the state did not need to extend the  toll to pay for the  I-85/Ga. 400 interchange. However, Perdue, who chaired the authority as governor, replied that not just those projects, but others  along the corridor needed to be done, too.

If bids on all 11 of those Ga. 400 projects — estimated by SRTA last fall at a total of $67 million — come in at the same low rate under the estimates, the state wouldn’t need the new toll to build any of them.

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Gena Evans, director of the toll authority, told a legislative panel earlier this year that eliminating the toll could impair the state’s bond rating as well as confidence with investors in public-private toll projects.

Ms. Evans neglected to mention that removing the toll would also impair her ability to collect a six figure salary as the state’s head toll collector if the tolls stopped as promised.

As a wise man once said,”Once you vote to give the government your money they will do with it what they damn well please.” Remember this any time  government asks you for permission to take more of your money.

AJC Home Sales Report: No telling when we’ll hit bottom

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The AJC began a realistic presentation of the Atlanta real estate market in a two part series they call the AJC Home Sales Report. You should read the whole thing here.

Some highlights include:

Our annual analysis tracks the sales of 43,000 houses in metro Atlanta in 2010, and the trend is still going in the same depressing direction.

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Analysis from this year’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution Home Sales Report reveals that home values in metro Atlanta remain locked in a four-year slide as the pace of home sales sputtered. Five thousand fewer homes sold in nine metro counties last year than in 2009, accounting for a 9 percent drop. Those that did sell went for less than in 2009: Home prices fell 4.5 percent last year.

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Homes in the northern suburbs sold at a faster pace than other areas, though suburban home values continued to slide. Cherokee, Cobb, Forsyth and Gwinnett had increases in the number of existing homes sold. But prices decreased 17 percent to $126,500 in Cobb’s 30067; 11 percent to $135,250 around Woodstock in Cherokee’s 30188; and 15.8 percent to $80,000 around Norcross in Gwinnett’s 30071.

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The report, along with interviews with dozens of buyers, sellers, agents and experts, paints an uneven picture of the market. This much, however, is clear: Metro Atlanta’s housing market remains a big gamble.

This is a far cry from seven years ago when home sales began to increase 10 percent a year while median home prices grew about 5 percent a year. That ended in 2007, when home prices in the 20-county region went flat and home sales fell 22.3 percent.

I would love to tell friends and clients that the real estate has hit bottom and everything will be rosy from here on out but that simply isn’t the case. There are still too many foreclosure and short sale properties on the market with more in the pipeline for the market to stabilize.

Is it a good time to buy a home? Yes. If you need or want to buy a home and are in the financial position to do so this is a great time to buy and there are some incredible deals out there. But don’t let anyone tell you that the overall real estate market has hit bottom or is even close to doing so… yet.

Fulton County tax dollars at work

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Last night the Alpharetta Planning Commission took up the issue of taxpayer subsidized apartments for seniors. The commission voted to deny the petition but the Alpharetta City Council will eventually have the final say.

The subsidized senior housing will be an important decision for Alpharetta because it would once again ignore our land use plan in favor of adding more high density residential housing. It would also lower the city’s ratio of owner occupied properties to rental properties even further below the 85% as required by law.

But even more than the fact that the proposal is bad for Alpharetta, what bothers me most is that my tax dollars are being used to lobby my elected representatives against my own interests. As I mentioned in this previous blog post, employees of the City of Alpharetta used public resources to circulate emails in favor of the proposal and offered to give bus rides on to seniors that were willing to attend zoning meetings in support of the proposal. I found that use of public funds inexcusable and to their credit it seems that the City of Alpharetta put a stop to the activity.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Fulton County. Someone emailed me the picture below that shows a Fulton County bus from the Dorothy C. Benson Multipurpose Complex which brought seniors from Sandy Springs to the Alpharetta zoning meeting last night. In case you didn’t make the connection the Sandy Springs senior center is named after the leading proponent of the subsidized housing project, Ms. Dorothy (Dot) Benson.

So who paid to bring people from Sandy Springs to lobby a planning commission meeting in Alpharetta? Was it the developer? Was it Ms. Benson? Or was it the taxpayers of Fulton County footing the bill to support this advocacy?

I respect Ms. Benson and all of the private citizens that support the developer’s zoning proposal. They have every right to come from anywhere they wish and lobby my representatives. But I should not be forced to pay the bill for them to do so. If Fulton County has money to spend on this kind of activism I am sure there are seniors in Alpharetta that would love an air conditioned ride to the next Tea Party rally.

Transportation follies continue

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The third act of Georgia’s transportation tax follies began this week as the planning director of the Department of Transportation, Todd Long, announced his list of projects which could be funded with the tax increase. If passed by voters, Metro Atlanta taxpayers will be expected to pay an additional 8 Billion Dollars over the next ten years. With this week’s release of potential projects the state has winnowed the list down to a mere $23 Billlion. But since 23 Billion is nearly 300% of what can be expected from taxpayers the rest of the cuts will have to come from that master of efficiency known as a government committee.

The AJC has an article about this most recent revision of the transportation project list and you can read the whole thing here. Below are a few of the highlights:

A group of 21 local elected officials must take those $22.9 billion worth of projects and jettison about $15 billion of them, because the penny tax would raise only about $8 billion over its 10 years

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For  the moment, this is it: $14 billion worth of transit projects, $8.6  billion worth of road projects, $205 million in sidewalk and bicycle  projects, and $28 million for aviation.

Long emphasized that the  $14 billion price tag for all the transit was just a reflection of the  high cost of new transit capital projects, not his opinion on how much  the region should spend on such projects.

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Bodker (Johns Creek mayor) is ambivalent about the idea of Ga. 400 transit. While he favors transit, he said it has to be the right project, a sustainable one, so he’d like to see it studied first.  MARTA staff did not put the project on the agency’s list because of the difficulty and expense of crossing the Chattahoochee River to get to the next jobs center, staff members told their board.

But other officials in north Fulton favored putting the $839 million line on the list, Long said.

So the director of planning added an $839 million MARTA train extension to Roswell because “other officials in North Fulton” favored it. I can’t imagine who those other officials  might be.

The MARTA train is projected to cost 10% of all the money collected from every taxpayer in the metro Atlanta area over ten years and wasn’t even requested by the people of Roswell. That is the kind of decision making which will doom this entire transportation tax boondoggle.

I am starting to believe that the tax increase is doomed. And while I never thought the tax increase was a good idea, it is sad that the state will have wasted two years by the time voters make it official.

Douglas Road in Alpharetta is closing

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The next few months are going to be a traffic nightmare in my neck of the woods. The city of Alpharetta is going to be installing a new bridge and a traffic circle at one of the most dangerous intersections in Northeast Alpharetta and the resulting construction is going to cut off a vital roadway for thousands of area residents.

Prepare to take a circuitous detour if you usually drive the length of Douglas Road and I urge people to allow extra time for any travel through the Douglas Road area. Below is a diagram of the work to be done:

I am curious to see how the traffic circle works in this area because I have never seen one in a location quite like this. I’m also skeptical of how well it will work but the intersection is a dangerous one and the city really didn’t have any other valid options so I hope to be pleasantly surprised once the work is completed. If nothing else the traffic circle may encourage some of the cut through traffic in the area to avoid Douglas Road altogether.

A glimpse into Alpharetta real estate through the lense of one home

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The home above is for sale in Alpharetta. It is not far from my house and as a result I have watched it experience the wild fluctuations of Alpharetta’s real estate market for nearly a decade. I do not claim that this home is representative of the overall market in Alpharetta but I do think its history is an excellent example of what has gone on in our local real estate market. I also think the history of this home can help people outside of the real estate profession gain insight into what is going on around them.

The home in the picture is a 5 bedroom brick home on a lot of about a 1/2 acre in a very nice subdivision in Alpharetta. It was built in 1993 and according to the tax records it is about 4300 square feet with a 2200 square foot finished basement. The home has a three car garage. It also has granite countertops and the floors are mostly marble and hardwood.  It also has a beautifully landscaped, heated inground pool in the back yard.

According to tax records the home originally sold for $464,500 in 1993. Then according to records the original owners lived in the house for 11 years before selling it in 2004 for a price of $740,000. That is about 60% more than the original owners paid. When the home sold in 2004 I had just recently moved to the area and was glad to see that kind of appreciation close to my new home because it would help increase the value of my home as well. You know the old saying, “The rising tide raises all ships.”

In 2006 the home sold again. This time the sale price was $850,000. At the time I was surprised because even though it was a beautiful home I just didn’t believe the home had appreciated so much in such a short period of time. While there were homes nearby that sold in the price range those other homes were either much larger, nicer or on the lake. The comparables around us just didn’t support the sales price but it was a time of irrational exuberance and given the lax mortgage underwriting standards of the time the loan was made.

Fast forward to 2011. The home was listed on the market for $549,888. After a few weeks on the market the price of the home is now down to $499,888. The home is scheduled to be sold in a foreclosure auction on the steps of the Fulton County Courthouse next week.

So a home that originally sold for $464,500 in 2003 rode the real estate bubble to a price of $850,000 13 years later. And in the 5 years since that time the real estate market has plunged to the point where a bank will be fortunate to get the original sale price of $464,500 for it.

Sadly, just as the home’s rapid rise in price helped increase the values of surrounding properties it is now helping to drive down the values of those same homes. A rising tide does indeed raise all ships but a dropping tide also lowers them.