Some Miscellaneous Stuff

Well, life has been going well this month. For that I am glad. It is a lot less crazy than January was. In January I had to ramp up the ward choir again, buy a new car, move to a new office (and I have a LOT of stuff in my office, I must be a pack rat or something), I had a job interview that required some hefty preparation, and was swamped at work. So February is nice, I feel like I got my head above water.

As for my office, I am not sure if I am a pack rat or not. I still have stuff in boxes because I might have to move out again to get new carpet in the office (the carpet is old and literally ripped in a couple places). Well, in the last week I have had to go through the boxes maybe four times to get stuff or help someone who was asking for something. So even though I have a lot, maybe much of it actually IS necessary. I'll never know for sure how much of it, though.

Well, I called this the miscellaneous entry because I found a few fun pictures and just thought I'd say something on each one.

The top picture is a conference room at work. In it is people, my co-workers. These people are sampling chili. We had our 3rd annual Chili Cookoff this year. I kind of organized it three years ago because I wanted a chili cookoff. We have had it the Friday before the super bowl, so we call it the Chili Bowl. Because we are all a bunch of engineers, I thought I'd make the scoring as confusing as possible. It was great fun to put it together and participate this year. The office is larger than ever, and over 60 people came to try chili! Not only that, there were 22 kinds of chili. We had little food service ramekins (portion cups, see second picture) and eveyone had 22 of them stacked on three plates. It was really a great event this year.

The above picture is in our bathroom. I got in my stocking for Christmas - (thank's Joanna!) - some little "pills", and when you put them in water and the capsule dissolves you have some foam shape. Well, she got me some airplane shapes! After I had "expanded" them all with hot water, I came home a few days later from work and found them hanging in the bathroom, just for me! It was a surprise, and it was cool. She had put thread through all of them and hung them from suction hooks. First they were in the shower, we moved them because we kept knocking them down. So there it is, Joanna is fun and creative, and nice. Each night one of us fills the humidifier in the tub. She quickly grabbed it from me and said, "I'll fill it tonight!" because she wanted me to see them when I showered in the morning and for it to be a surprise.

Last but not least, this is dinner. Dinner from some night a couple weeks ago. Wild rice, zucchini, and chicken. Joanna cooks health meals for me. I usually get the bad food at work unfortunately. Anyhow, we usually reheat our leftovers in the microwave, and will put plastic wrap over the dish to keep from drying out the chicken. Well, I set the microwave long so the food got really hot. The plastic wrap was a giant bubble in the microwave. When it turned off the hot air in the bubble cooled and shrunk - severly shrunk! The plastic wrap actually formed to the food. It reminds me of that vacuum packing infomercial. I thought it was pretty amazing so I took a picture. Just so you know, the food was tasty, hot, and still moist!

Happy Valentime's Day!!

Joanna and I went to Rino's Italian Restaurant. A very nice place. We talked much, which was good because I hadn't really seen her this week. I worked much overtime. The last month has been borderline insane, many things going on out of the ordinary. I am glad it is back to normal. I don't really have much time to write but I wanted my tax diatribe NOT to be the lastest entry.

Oh, and I mispelled it Valentine's on purpose. My younger brother when he was little (and a lot of other people) say it with an 'M', which I find fun.

Property Taxes

On our West Jordan Citizens forum, someone mentioned proposals to modify Property Tax methods to be more fair, or to use purchase price instead of market price. They are both bad. Something else has to be done. I have here a proposal that several of my co-workers came up with while we complained about it. I think it is really good. What do you think?

This is a proposal to change the way property taxes are calculated. It takes into account the city budget, the purchase price, purchase date, and market value of properties, and we believe it is very equitable and could be implemented tractably. It consists of four corollaries which are explained below.

First, the logical flaws in both currently popular ideas:

1. Tax based on purchase price:

This hurts new families and also discourages moving because your taxes could go way up. It unduly rewards people who never move and punishes those that are just getting houses or move a lot, often people that can't afford it. More people end up renting or holding onto homes when they want or need to move just because of the economics of it.

2. Tax based on market value:

Market fluctuations can cause tax burdens to change drastically, even when the owner's ability to pay doesn't change with it. People can go bankrupt, older citizens or those on fixed incomes can be forced to foreclose. The result is unfair tax burdens in areas where prices go up quickly or more popular areas. Cities then receive a windfall which can be squandered or mis-used. When prices go back down, the cities that enjoyed the "windfall" and have bloated their budgets then have to downsize again. Often the downsizing is sloppy and hasty, resulting in mis-allocation of funds. Fast changes like this are hard on any entity in general.

So there is a fundamental underlying problem with either of these models of property tax which is:

Taxing directly by a percentage of property value!

This means that when values go up, tax revenues go up. Even if the city doesn't need the money, they get more money. If prices go down and the city needs more money to make ends meet, it has to change the tax rates to get enough. So the money coming into the city (and other entities that rely on property tax) changes based not on costs of running these entities (which should be related to city size and inflation) but on unrelated real estate market fluctuations.

The following proposed solution would more fairly spread the property tax burden as well as take care of the problem of basing the taxing entity's revenues on market values. I'll use the city as an example, though this would apply to any entity getting funds from property taxes. There are four corollaries to this proposal which are described below.

First: Property taxes would be collected based on the proposed budget of the city (or other taxing entity.)

Say that a city's fiscal year begins in January. Taxes for the next year would be calculated starting in September and collected in November of the previous year. Prior to that September, the city would be required to submit a budget estimating the costs for the next year. This is a common practice and should be done anyhow by any responsible taxing entities.

Property taxes would be calculated and collected based on this budget. The city would have a slush fund of 5-10% of the annual budget (or another reasonable figure) to assist in shortfalls due to unforeseen issues or emergencies. Note that this means the tax burden could change every year based on the city budget. But it does anyway based on market value under the current system. The city budget is something residents can influence more easily than the market.

So if house prices and worker incomes keep up with the inflation of city costs, the effective tax rate would not change significantly. If house prices rise faster than city costs, then the tax rate effectively goes down relative to the property value. This means that if house prices shoot up, the tax burden doesn't. It is indexed to city costs. Large real estate market fluctuations do not influence the city's income.

This would mean that citizens should pay close attention to the budget as it is being approved by the city council! The change in the budget will in effect be the change in what they are paying. We think it would foster greater involvement in all city functions by the citizens and result in better public oversight. It would also be important for cities to inform the residents of the overall budget changes for the year, and have a chance to influence the city budget.

If citizens did choose to ignore the city, and the city council made some expensive decisions, things would change fast when people saw their tax, because a change in that tax generally means a change in the city's expenses, not as much in market value. Instead of throwing up their hands, a taxpayer can call their city council person and express their concern.

So the city budget says how much money needs to be collected. How is the tax burden for each property calculated? This leads to the second corollary.

Second: The tax burden would be based on ratios of the total taxable real estate equity in the city (or other taxing entity.)

Let's use a simple example. This assumes market value is used in all property value calculations for tax purposes. In the city of Springfield, there are ten houses. Each house is worth $100,000. The total real estate equity of Springfield would be $1,000,000. The tax burden would be divided up based on the portion of the total equity taken by each property. So each person would pay 10% of the tax burden.

Springfield estimates their budget for the next year, and the city council approves it. It is $50,000. Each resident's property taxes collected would be $5,000, or 10% of the total tax burden. For other taxing entities, such as school districts, counties, etc, the ratio would be based on the total real estate equity in their respective geographic service areas.

If the value of everyone's home the next year rocketed up to $200,000, the total real estate equity of Springfield would be $2,000,000. However, the ratio of 10% per taxpayer of the city's costs would still be the same. If the city budget was $55,000 the next year, the tax burden on each taxpayer would be $5500, NOT $10000. Springfield would not be flush with cash and make rash decisions on how to spend it, nor in the inverse case fall significantly short of their needs. Large real estate market fluctuations do not influence the city's income.

Third: Property valuations would be based on purchase price, purchase date, and market value.

Properties would be "binned", or placed, into categories based on purchase price and purchase date. The market value would be averaged over the entire category. All properties in a category would pay the same tax ratio based on this average.

This may sound very complex at first, but all the information is already there on each property within the entities that calculate tax burdens already, only some new formulas are needed to calculate these values. Computers would make this all possible with some new software.

We felt that the purchase price method alone was too unfair. It burdens new home buyers or those that move a lot. This has nothing to do with the services they receive from the city, and too generously rewards those that don't move.

However, there is also an issue with the pure market value approach, even after the possible rapid changes in actual tax burden are taken away with the tax ratio method. This is illustrated in the following example.

Suppose John and George each buy a house for $100,000. Their tax burden would be the same initially. After 10 years, millionaires have built houses near John, while smaller houses have been built near George. Their market valuations come back as $500,000 for John and $300,000 for George. This means that because of what happened in the area around John, out of his control, he has a 66% higher tax burden than George. Granted, John might have some benefits by being around these rich people. But maybe he is actually upset that people in his demographic, people he understands, aren't around. Regardless of this, the assumption is that both John and George have about the same ability to pay. How to rectify the situation?

The solution is to put all properties in categories based on purchase date and purchase price, and everyone in that category has an average market price calculated, and they all pay that ratio. Let's use John and George again in this next example.

As explained earlier, John and George bought their houses at the same time. They also paid the same amount, so they are in the same property bin, or category. John's house is market valued at $500,000, and George's house at $300,000. The average for their category would be (300000+500000/2) or 400,000. They would each pay the same ratio of the city tax burden based on a market value of $400,000.

Since their assumed ability to pay is based on their property purchase value and purchase date, they are treated with equal portions of the tax burden. At the same time, market value is used between all properties in the same group to calculate the tax burden ratio. Since the categories would include many more people, it is likely the average would be very fair while helping to ensure that outliers in their category pay a more fair portion of the taxes.

Here are a couple examples of what a property category could be:

First, the purchase date. Categories could be based on six month increments, for example.

Second, the purchase amount. Categories could be divided based on $25,000 increments, or better yet the increments could vary as the value adjusted since there would be fewer residential properties in some ranges.

Third, the zoning type. Categories wouldn't cross major zoning types. It would be up to a city if they would cross zoning subtypes. Commercial real estate would not be in the same bin as residential, for example.

Some example categories:

R-1970-2-100 - All residential properties purchased in the second half of 1970 for between $100,000 and $124,999. The time range is 6 months. The price range is $25,000 for this category.

R-1970-1-600 - All residential properties purchased in the first half of 1970 between $600,000 and 674,999. Note that the price range is larger, at $75,000. This would be necessary as fewer properties at this price range are purchased and the number of properties in a category shouldn't get too small. These ranges could be set each year.

C-1984-2-2000 - All commercial properties purchased in the second half of 1984 between $2 million and $2.5 million.

A category would "mature" once the time period was complete and would be closed. During the time period the price ranges of the categories could be modified to ensure that no category gets too small for its zoning type. Once mature, properties could never be added to a category, only removed as they were re-sold. Categories could never be split after maturing.

If categories got too small (say less than 300 properties) as homes were sold out of the categories, they would be consolidated to keep the law of averages working for that group of individuals. It is likely though that those that lived in their houses a long time would be in smaller categories, as the standard deviation should also be kept low for fairness' sake. While it isn't perfect, it is tractable and increases fairness significantly over market value alone.

What if businesses are moving out of the city because they can't afford their property taxes at the same ratio as residential? Or what if residents are moving out because their portion of the tax burden is too high? Balancing the tax burden between types of taxpayers brings us to the fourth corollary.

Fourth - The property tax burden could be based on zoning type (i.e. commercial versus residential.)

Adjustments could be made to the ratio of the tax burden for real estate in various types of zoning. If a city wants to charge businesses more or less for the same market value as a residential unit, then the tax burden for categories in that zoning type can be modified accordingly by changing their ratio.

For example, the market value of all categories of real estate in one zoning type could be multiplied by 0.9 to reduce their portion of the burden. The modified value would be used in the summation of all the total taxable real estate equity of the city and their tax ratio would decrease. Let's say that Springfield added two businesses. It still has ten homes. The commercial real estate is also worth $100,000 each. So now Springfield consists of:

2 businesses each $100,000
10 homes each $100,000
Total city equity: $1,200,000
Tax Ratio for businesses and homes: 1/12 (8.3%) of city budget.

Perhaps the city wants to boost commerce and so gives a tax break to commercial real estate. They could modify the market values of the commercial real estate in computing tax ratios:

$200,000 (commercial equity) * 0.9 = $180,000, taxable commercial equity
$1,000,000, taxable residential equity (unadjusted)
Total taxable city equity: $1,180,000

Each business would be taxed for ($90,000 / $1,180,000) or 7.62% of the city budget.
Each resident would be taxed for ($100,000 / $1,180,000) or 8.47% of the city budget.

As expected, the tax ratio goes down for businesses and up for others to make up the difference. This option allows for economic stimulus or the equalization of ability to pay.

Implementation

With the advent of computers, all this information could be calculated efficiently. The software could be run yearly to consolidate old categories, generate new categories, average market value over categories each year. Market value is already calculated, that isn't new work. Only some extra number crunching would have to be done. The categorizing would be done by the entity that calculates the taxable value of properties. The old data would still be available. So if the calculating entity added this information, taxes can still be done the old way for taxing entities that haven't changed yet.

Taxing entities would also have to change, ensuring that approved budgets for the following year are ready before taxes are calculated and collected. City's must instantiate slush funds if they don't have them. There may be some pain as the budget would grow some the first year to establish a minimum slush fund value. The tax burden should drop the next year once in place and only change as necessary to keep the slush fund within a proper range. Or the slush fund could be built up over a few years, if the city felt it worth the risk.

Taxing entities do not have to switch over at the same time. A taxpayer could pay the "old way" for the school district (rates based on market value), while the city had switched over (ratios based on hybrid market/purchase/date values). The taxes would just be added together on the tax bill. The purchase price, the market value, and the average market value of a property's category would all be available for the taxing entities to use in calculating the old or new way.

We believe we really have something worthwhile with this plan. It addresses all the core, tractable issues we could think of affecting property taxation, it can be implemented, and it would force taxing entities to plan for the future (which some do already of course). We believe it is a significant improvement over current property taxation methods, and could result in better managed taxing entities and a fairer balancing of the tax burden.

Exercise?

Well, the usual is going on all around the country. New Year's Resolutions.

I made one, though I thought it cliche'd of me to call it a resolution, so I haven't said that yet. It just sort of happened.

Joanna found a free aerobics class going on at a nearby church house from a friend, at 6 AM. So we decided to get up at 5:30 AM. I sit on my indestructible Health Rider Glider thing I got from the local goodwill (Deseret Industries) for a whopping $12 and ride away, while she goes to her class. I like it because it's quiet and I can watch TV if I want while I do it. Plus it is nicer than this one (which was on ebay for $25) so I feel I got a nice deal! Actually this thing would probably collapse completely under anything but a skinny five year old. I wonder who made it.

Anyhow, so with the Health Rider and Netflix and the Roku player I am set up with a fine low budget exercise option! We'll see how long we keep it up. Joanna really likes the class so she seems good and motivated too.

The key is that when your life goes crazy to get back on the horse. We'll see how it goes the next time our life goes crazy! Hopefully we get on the horse like we should.

Joanna is gung ho and is good at sticking with things, so I just have to ride her wake and I should be okay. Hopefully the "joy of the holidays" can slowly recede from my body.

Great Holiday Break

I had a very good time over the holidays. Thanksgiving was a very nice weekend. Oh, and so was Christmas, and New Year's. Having multiple 5 day weekends has been very relaxing.

I was just thinking I need to post something to the blog. And after wandering around the great and vast wilderness of Facebook, I had a few things going through my mind.

Like how strange the world would be if it were like Facebook. After about five minute on there my mind was screaming at me, "Serenity Now!" I felt like the little pictures popping up on the right would drive me crazy. They demand attention yet are never satisfied.

Is this person a friend? No. Is this person a friend? No. Is this person a friend? Hmm. I think I saw that person once in the hall at High School. How did Facebook know that? But, no. Is this person a friend? No. And so it was.

Kind of like swatting at flies, except it is a perpetual part of the page. One of those kind of busywork activities that can keep you going for hours and you think you should stop doing but really have to work to pry yourself away from?

Finally I went to the big friends page. I thought, I'll show this thing. I'll get it! After about 60 of them, I got them all to leave. Only to refresh the page and have a bunch more show up! And if I added a new friend, the list grew exponentially.

So as a word of advice, you cannot satisfy the perpetual friend finding machine. It is insatiable.

Work is going well. I seem to generate documentation ad nauseum. Sometimes I wonder if it is my fault, if I only did things the right way I could work on programming. Maybe its a matter of priorities.

No prospects yet for adoption. If you hear of a child looking for a home, or more appropriately, a mother looking for a home for her child, let us know!

I got no presents except a very nice set of pajamas. Made from cotton broadcloth. Its very nice and cool. Except if I eat in them, the large cuff continually catches my utensil when I rest it on the plate. My spot at the table looked like a year old baby had dined there after several times inadvertently flipping food off my plate.

I kept putting off posting because I didn't have pictures. Well today I am at home. I should insert a picture or two. Perhaps from the holidays. Enjoy!













The first is the two of us with our fine Christmas Tree (capitalized). The second is the train that I love setting up with my cheap little village. Joanna gave me the train for our wedding. Huh huh I like trains.

The pile of gifts was for another family. Joanna and I wanted to help someone out because we don't really have kids to buy gifts for. My mom and dad helped us with that too, it was really fun!

This last picture is from Joanna's birthday. Now that we are in our 30s, the cakes can generate a lot of carbon! I leave it as an exercise to the user to count the candles and figure out how old Joanna is now.

Even though people are talking doomsday about the economy and all sorts of other things, I think life is pretty good in our corner of the world. We are grateful for that.

Adoption Approval

Today we received a call from our case worker Shannon that we are approved for adoption! We are looking forward to adopting and adding a child to our family. Now the searching and waiting. It will all happen in its own due time, and of course we'll need to do our part too to find that special someone.

If you hear of someone that is looking for a home for their baby or child, we have one here under our humble roof! We are planning to create pass along cards in the next little while. They are like business cards and the hope is that they will fall into the right hands as they foray out into the world with the help of friends and family. If you want to have some to give out when the moment arises, let us know! You can add a comment to this post or email us or give us a ring.

Six Great Years... and counting!

This is Daniel writing. This November 16th will be our sixth anniversary. I can't believe how fast the time goes by! We celebrated by having a special dinner at one of our favorite restaurants here in Salt Lake, Tiburon Fine Dining (www.tiburonslc.com). It doesn't look like much from outside, but this was our third time and yet again it was a marvelous experience. That's sort of a miracle for us to go to a restaurant three times and not have a bad experience at least one of them. And for the prices, it seems that we'd set our standards a little higher. It is expensive, but that's why we save it for special occasions like this. And it still meets what you'd expect for a pricey meal.


Honestly, I am not a food critic and I don't make a habit of writing for the food column. But they prove that food can be an art. The scallops on the right were our appetizer. Indeed they were as good as they look here. Like butter, the searing adding just a hint of smoky goodness. They always have a marvelous salad with many flavors that just work, but at the same time are unique, not just salt, like ranch dressing... The entrees are amazing, prepared to perfection. I had beef Wellington. I was full but forced myself to eat it all anyway. Joanna had some amazing portion of halibut. They were served with spaghetti squash and beans/spinach. They give you sorbet to cleanse your palate before the main course.

One thing I really enjoyed was that we were there for almost two hours but never ran out of things to talk about. Work, visiting teaching, friends, politics, extended family stuff, funny stories. That's the best thing about being married is having my best friend always around.

It is a little discouraging not to have any kids around yet after six years, but we still have a good enjoyable life. I like my job, Joanna takes great care of us and gives of herself to the ward and community. No need to pout, we are just going to soak up the freedom for as long as we can. We have all the paperwork in for adoption, we are waiting on final approval. Then we will be officially able to adopt! We're excited to participate in this method of building a family.

So on to the seventh year, I expect it will be a great one. I love you Joanna!

Amy is married!

This is Daniel writing. I am thrilled with this news: my sister Amy got married on Friday!

So Ben got married, then six years later I got married, then six years later Amy gets married. We just needed to be patient, right? Well, she was beautiful in her wedding dress and seemed very happy. Kevin was beaming as well, and it was good to see him, he's a great guy. I enjoyed his family as well, they are all great folks, and it was nice to meet his brothers. The temple ceremony was in the morning at about 9:45 AM in the Salt Lake Temple.

Kevin Player and Amy Gowans. They were an adorable couple. I took pictures outside the temple, candids and things, that I had developed in the afternoon and displayed at the reception. It was fun, and the weather was beautiful! I used dad's new SLR camera and the pictures turned out great. Later there was a luncheon at Christopher's restaurant. I enjoyed the comments from the parents, often along the lines of "why didn't they get together sooner, and I am glad they saw the light." My mom cried very nicely. She's so big hearted. My younger brother Adam got up to give her a hug when she started crying, it was great.

Here's some photos from the event. Amy and Kevin, Kevin's party, Kevin's beaming parents, Amy's beaming parents, Amy's party, and Amy and Kevin again, looking great!





























After the luncheon, Joanna and I dropped the lucky couple off at the conference center to get their car and we took off to develop some pictures to show at the reception. We went to Sam's Club but their one hour photo was down. There was a Kodak picture center that prints pictures from memory cards, but someone was using it. So we took off to Super Target but soon found they didn't even have a one hour photo! We were about to run off again, but time was getting short. Around the corner in the Target we found one of the Kodak photo centers, and it served us well. We printed some very nice photos (the couple was wonderfully photogenic) and headed to the reception center. We were the first there and waited maybe a half hour or so.

Here's some more fun pictures. Left, Bridal of the lovely bride. Middle, Groomal of the lovely groom. On the right, a somewhat out of focus picture of the marvelous cake and couple!















Soon everyone arrived and we posed for more pictures in the reception center, in a beautiful greenhouse. It was really nostalgic, if sometimes a bit awkward (I don't get to socialize that much) to see so many old family friends.. We saw maybe 10 or so couples from the ward I grew up in. That was nice, and it was fun to chat with them. The line consisted of Amy, Kevin, and their parents. It was pretty much full of people from 7 until 9.

Eventually we saw off the happy couple! They went on a short mini-moon before heading back to Kansas. They'll have an open house there this next weekend. Then Kevin's final semester for his masters in Electrical Engineering will be in India! That will be a real adventure, and I look forward to hearing about it.

The bottom has fallen out

Well, it happened. I was determined that I wouldn't get emotional, I wouldn't over-react to this credit crisis thing. I should have understood that everyone else would overreact. There hasn't been a drop like this since the .com bust. Maybe it will get worse.

The pain isn't even that bad for me, I only lose maybe 10-20 thousand bucks in my 401K. Some people, those nearing retirement, may be in a real world of hurt. I'd have lost more if I didn't move about half of it toward the end of last year into money markets.

Truly, the financial foolishness of this decade has been beyond stunning. When I see this stock market crash and look back (you know hindsight) it seems so obvious, so inevitable.

The national debt clock recently ran out of digits, we hit $10 trillion and it had to drop the dollar sign.

I like to be happy, I like to keep a positive attitude.

But I just spent the last 10 minutes at work sitting at my desk just grief stricken with a sense of the loss at the reality of the economic situation before the world.

Things are going to change. But even with the desire strong, I think many have lost even the ability or capacity to make proper financial choices. My hope, my desire to not over-react has left my retirement account as yet another casualty. But the real casualties will be much more fierce.

I hope people can change, will change as a result of this.

The Great Wall of Sunhurst

As of September 30th we completed sifting soil in the back yard. What a load off! We are so grateful for the many helping hands that brought about this completion. Pictures from last year show the Gowans' family helping and this year some great help from others such as friends and ward members. Grandpa Gowans kindly transported the excavator both years - he's the best!

The vision of the wall was never realised to be very difficult until the project began in the summer of 2006. It began with a lot of rocky dirt and many blocks.

Next came the sifter that Daniel built using many materials including the motor for an old treadmill.

Next came building the wall,

which was soon followed by sifting soil for two seasons.

The ending result is quite nice and will be followed by planting a garden and fruit trees next spring.

Now to figure out what to do with the rocks!