infrastructure

Today at our house in Fuquay Varina, all the lights went out, followed in seconds by a loud boom. It took us a few minutes to figure out that a local electric transformer a mile or so away had probably exploded, most likely from an overload in the 99 degree heat. It took about 2 hours to restore electricity in our neighborhood.

There's been a marked uptick in NC Realtor and Homebuilder attempts to derail the local transfer tax option as they make a final attempt to secure the low ground. Attacking Chris Fitzsimon in radio ads yesterday, a new round of melodramatic TV ads and a full page ad in today's paper attacking everybody who is not feeding at the bottom with them.

Read more below the fold....

An Associated Press story about this week's Manhattan explosion highlights the dangers of aging infrastructure. Just this Wednesday a large sinkhole caused by a 12-inch water main break in a Greensboro street swallowed a car and caused traffic headaches. Last week a sinkhole opened up in the middle of a Charlotte road. This follows another road closure in Charlotte the previous week due to a sinkhole caused by a water main break. While in June a parked SUV fell into a sinkhole in Shelby caused by a water main break.

It's a critical issue for North Carolina explored here: Report Paints Dark Picture of State's Infrastructure and here: Reality Check

Most people write "Thank You" notes to express their gratitude. Tim Kent of the North Carolina Association of Realtors takes out 2/3 page ads in newspapers like this one for Dan Blue. Between the PAC ($750,000) the 527 ($350,000) and direct lobbying by NCAR ($500,000) when you've got $1.6 million to spend on legislators there are some things you just can't say with flowers, Hallmark or a horse's head.

Today is the due date for the NC Association of Realtors to file a "Principal Report" for lobbying expenses with the Secretary of State's Office. NCAR last week reported pumping $380,162 into its 527 committee, "North Carolina Homeowners Alliance" (sic).

In 2002 The North Carolina Association of Realtor (NCAR) reported over 26,000 members. That grew in 2007 to a claimed membership of over 42,000, a growth rate of 10% per year (30% increase in last two years).

Hey, guess what? Brad Paisley's coming to North Carolina. He'll be in Raleigh July 20 and Charlotte July 21 and he'll be checking you for Ticks:
Brad Paisley: Click for "Ticks"

It is clear that the large sums of money involved in real estate transactions are attracting a lot of people to the business. Individual realtors may be seeing a decline in income because there is more competition. More competition has not led to a substantial lowering of cost for consumers because of NCAR’s strong hold on the market and, it seems, on legislators.

[Read more below the fold.....]

Money Buys Power

The NC Association of Realtors reported new spending of $128,771.20 for lobbying expenses in the month of May, bringing lobbying spending for 2007 to $494,886.36

What Would Angie Drive?

The NC Realtors campaign against local funding options features an alleged average homeowner "Angie" driving a red pick up truck. In real life "Angie" has been spotted in west Raleigh tooling around in a shiny black Mercedes-Benz E430 with cream leather interior, a 2002 model that retailed around $50,000. Not exactly average.

Well I've been out of town with limited access to the tubes but I've been busy as you can see with a video debut:

The people who take 6% of the value of a home every time it is bought and sold are opposed to using 1% of the value of a home to pay for roads, sewers and, schools which help to maintain and increase the value of homes and our quality of life.

The virtual monopoly of Realtor®s (who have an actual monopoly on the word Realtor®) is spending thousands of dollars in a multi-media campaign opposed to a nominal land transfer tax. This is puzzling from a number of perspectives.

In North Carolina the provision of public services is largely dependent on property tax, sales tax and income tax. County and municipal governments are largely dependent on property tax and sales tax. Sales tax revenues are volatile and, in many cases, are regressive and only capture 1/3 of commercial transactions. Property tax is the beast of burden for counties and is overloaded by the costs of growth in booming areas and low property values in poor areas.

Kirk Ross has an excellent review of the miserable state of maintence in state and local government, which has been one of my pet peeves for decades, ever since I was responsible for routine upkeep of the bridge on the USS Charleston (LKA-113), where I was the navigator.

In the Navy, they spend what must be at least a third of their time doing maintenance on equipment and facilities. It's a never-ending job and they're very disciplined about it. Which makes perfect sense given the huge upfront investments we make in ships, aircraft, weapons systems, and more.

We the People make those same kinds of investments in public infrastructure. Whether its a sewage plant, a bridge, a highway, a government building, or any piece of capital equipment, we're spending millions or billions of dollars initially - but then, when the budgets get written and allocated, we're cutting corners like crazy when it comes to maintaining our investments in good shape.