| reply to signmeuptoo
Re: Tax Assessor Seen in the Neighborhood Hee, hee... I figured you'd pick up on that little hint (not a dig, BTW) signmeuptoo. Fact is, I'd HATE to move, period. Been in the same house since 1966. I moved my way up the state over the years.. after WWII, settled in Stamford, on Palmer Ave, then moved to Bethel (too industrialized) took a brief stay in Sherman after Bethel's sewer assessment caused my home to go into foreclosure, and finally bought some swamp land in New Milford for $1850 and started building, the old-fashioned way, not with contractors and $$$, but with hard work and funded paycheck to paycheck. As such, the house has a strong emotional value to me--I ruined my health building it, but alas, with taxes rising to levels I could not have imagined in my wildest mental exercises, I may have to leave or face a bitter end if I can't negotiate a tax rate that is compatible with my income level (which has been on the decline since 2003).
I have been all up and down the eastern seaboard in 2005, looking for a new home, but was quite disappointed in all that I've seen out there. Raleigh, NC was one possibility. I even looked at Huntersville, SC, as well as northern FL from Tampa to Inverness.
In 2000, I looked at some land in Baguio, Philippines, the only part of the PI where I found the weather to be tolerable (I'm a cold-weather Nordic/Viking ancestry and despise anything over 70ºF). Was even looking at Lousisiana, until Katrina demonstrated a few things about the area that really turned me away. I spent time in California (and had to be on oxygen much of that time, the air was so bad), mostly Stockton/Lodi/SFO areas. I couldn't get out of there quickly enough. Reno, NV wasn't too bad, at least it was clean and the appearance of low crime was encouraging. But it just didn't feel 'right' to me either. Every time I return to CT, I feel at home, my body behaves much better (I can breath the air without need for an oxygen tank) and I sleep better. Must be something about the earth's magnetic field or some less obvious factor. Just the mountains, trees, fresh air and quiet seem so much more "me" here.
Some of the southern states are notorious for corrupt police, wrong address dynamic entries by local police/DEA, and other nasties. Of course, many communities are full of cookie cutter houses where every street looks the same as the one before it. My friend's son-in-law moved to Miami, FL, where the house number is twenty-three thousand-something and it's miles and miles of the same house, replicated thousands of times on both sides of the street. Ugh!
I'm a little extra worried this time around, because our neighbors pooled $12K and had the road (formerly a rocky, moon-cratered mud-puddled path) and refinished and smoothed into a nice surface. I voted against the plan and noted that the assessor would probably come around this year, as it's the tenth anniversary of the '99 assessment visit, but they went ahead anyway and the road was completed 3 weeks ago. Then my inlaws moved in with us 2 weeks ago, and, having nothing to do, started landscaping our yard by hand. My wife bought a bunch of arborvitae about 6' tall a piece, two at a time (because two was the max payload of a Ford Explorer--the tires were flat with the weight) and I and her father planted them along the edge of the property. So I think we're going to get whacked on taxes and I'm probably going to end up exhanging not very nice words with the assessor again, a mess I went through in 2000 and 2001, relentlessly until they lowered my assessment back down to about where it was, which is still too high, but hey, we live next to a country club and some houses worth over $2M a piece, so the way assessments are calculated, based on average property values, we're getting the short end of the deal by a wide margin.
I recently read a blog at the end of a news article about China overtaking the US, economically.. the fellow was an engineer from the UK, where he'd spent 17 years trying to launch a business, unsuccessfully due to the onerous laws and taxes. He moved to China four years ago, repeated his business efforts and is now living in a large villa, owns a Mercedes and is well-respected and relatively wealthy. That hit a chord with me, too. I and my electronic inventions got no respect in the US. I started selling my broadcast equipment designs in the Philippines toward the end of the last century, seeing that the US had its head of its legal arse. But now it looks like China may be the place to go.
Ultimately, I wish the US would stop being hipocritical and actually BE the free nation that it claims to be. These property taxes are downright enslavement and cause a great deal of anxiety, stress and anger for the less than super-wealthy residents.
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