The mailman delivered my Landmark last week and turns out Foley sold my office space in Platte City without telling me. So far in three years I had never used it, but what if an emergency came up and I had to get this column out and my home office was not available? No respect is what I felt. He reports that he has moved to a smaller space, I’ll stop by this week to see where my “spot” is. I’m assuming opulent level finishes.
When my wife and I purchased the newspaper in Savannah, Missouri back in the early 2000’s, pounds and pounds and pounds of lead were included. The old typeset material was everywhere. We paid our then-teenaged son in lead. Not kidding. When he needed paid, we would tell him to run by the office and get some lead and take it to St. Joseph and sell it, which is what he did for a few summers.
Kind of meth lifestyle training, just in case. It’s important to train your kids in life skills is my philosophy.
Speaking of train wrecks, I took the family to the Mizzou football game last week. If Kansas State does not roll the Tigers this weekend, I will be shocked. Mizzou will be looking for a coach within a few months. The only positive of that is that the Mizzou athletic director is a no-nonsense type of decision maker. Desiree Reed-Francois has already shown her hiring prowess with basketball coach Dennis Gates, so I like our chances with her pulling the trigger. But it’s been a lot of fan misery getting to this point.
Maybe Foley and I could share an office, he strikes me as a team type collaborator. Honestly, no grown man has ever said “collaboration” without being required to by his job description. Same for “synergy.”
Not sure the 900 square feet he says they need would fit both our egos, unlikely to be honest.
Don’t shoot the messenger but it’s probably a little disingenuous to continue attacking county assessors over the increase in property valuations. The system in Missouri is so broken that the shock the system has seen this year is many years in the making. For one thing, assessors, aided by lack of attention to the process, have kept values in many areas below market value for years, if not decades.
This has been exasperated by lawmakers who can’t quit fiddling with a system that is not made to be fiddled with. Passing laws to protect seniors, corporations and any number of specified groups from higher market values defeats the very purpose of a market-based valuation and mixes apples up as oranges.
Missouri assessors have also been hamstrung by non-disclosure laws that prevent them from crucial sales data as well as property information systems and data collection over the years that lack the crucial property data needed to perform accurate appraisals. When compared to our neighbors in Kansas, it is embarrassing the level of detail on property information that has been amassed and available. Go look at Johnson County, Kansas appraiser property data and the difference will blow your mind.
None of this helps the current situation and while I’m always good at throwing a little blame at an elected official, it’s a little more complicated than many want to believe.
Just to honor my New York Jet fans, I wrote this entire column during Monday Night football without hurting my ankle. All heroes don’t wear capes.
(Guy Speckman can be reached at Foley’s opulent office collaborating on column writing synergy)