The City’s Pulse Newsletter
By Mary Souza, May 29, 2009
Last week the CdA Press ran an article about local realtor Brad Jordan and his two business partners when their longtime GMAC real estate enterprise closed its doors. Their business declared bankruptcy and left in its wake a long line of folks waiting for payment.
Normally a business bankruptcy would not make headlines and is certainly not unusual in our currently challenging economy. This situation is different, however, and is a concern for our community because Brad Jordan holds two important positions of public trust. Brad is the Chairman of the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission and he is also on the board of LCDC, our urban renewal agency. (more…)
My May 3, 2009, post titled Bid-Rigging? linked readers to some indicators of bid-rigging, violations of federal anti-trust law.
Here is a recent example of a federal conviction for bid-rigging. The example and this Associated Press news story explains how sham bidding works. Though the guilty plea and conviction was for wire fraud, the crimes involved bribery to win federal government contracts for bullet-proof vests used by US troops and contractors in Iraq.
Get your wallets ready. The tax assessments came out a couple days ago and most people saw a decrease in the value of their property. But that doesn’t mean your taxes will go down…Au Contraire, get ready to pay up and pay big! This morning’s Press reports that NIC just raised their budget by the maximum 3% allowed by law and prepare for the city and county to do the same. The additional knife in the wallet will be if the city and/or county say they have to take the dreaded FOREGONE taxes too. (NIC is already taking their Foregone taxes from our checkbooks to buy the overpriced Mill site. No, you didn’t miss a vote on that, they didn’t give us one.)
Any comments, questions, sob stories?
The 2009 Kootenai County property tax assessment notices were mailed yesterday. Some of us received ours today. The Coeur d’Alene Press even ran a news article urging us to attend the budget hearings listed on the assessment notices, reminding us that it is the taxing district budgets and not the assessments that determine our property taxes.
One minor problem: The assessments were mailed May 26. The North Idaho College budget hearings were held April 22, 2009, over a month before the assessments were mailed out.
The Idaho Statesman headline on the Associated Press story reads UI professor questions money spent in New Mexico. The essence of the story may be in its last line attributed to professor David Egolf:
“I’m very fed up,” Egolf said, adding other faculty members agree with him but are afraid to come forward. “I’m the only person that speaks out. I’m a Vietnam veteran. I’m not afraid of anything.”
Most people apparently like having coffee at some location called “My House at 5:30 AM.” Interesting. I’ll have to check that out sometime. Our current poll is on your property tax assessment. Mine is down 18% under last years’, which was down 10% from the year before.
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Is a lie allegedly told by a public official a bigger lie with greater consequences simply because the official happens to be from New York and not from Coeur d’Alene? Is a lie told by a Coeur d’Alene public official less of a lie, a lie with lesser consequences because it was told in Coeur d’Alene and not Washington, DC?
I took this picture over a month ago. It shows a car illegally parked in downtown Coeur d’Alene, and it explains why parking is such an issue for our city.
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“Lower taxes, better service, more funding and little or no change to existing employees would be anticipated with the merger, Keck said.” This statement is by Eric Keck, the City Administrator of Post Falls, in a Press article this morning. http://www.cdapress.com/articles/2009/05/26/news/news04.txt
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Codes and ciphers have been around since man realized he sometimes needed to communicate the written word in a way unreadable except by the intended recipient. The Enigma cipher machine (shown left) proved to be a serious headache for Allied codebreakers in World War II.
Modern criminals encrypt their communications for the same reason, and that presents challenges to criminal investigators. If you’re interested in learning more about how criminals use codes and ciphers, read this article, Analysis of Criminal Codes and Ciphers, by Daniel Olson in the January 2000 issue of Forensic Science Communications. Then if you would like to see if you can meet the challenge, here is your chance. Have fun!
