Come Stitch With Me

Today’s enrichment activities at school were a bust. (For those new here, I’m retired, but still teach 3 literacy enrichment classes each week for a local home school consortium)

We learned about ferries as a mode of transport when we travel. I even incorporated some snippets of our recent trip to Cumberland Island and shared the bounty that the NPS ranger had given me to pass out to my students. No dice.

I had to resort to a YouTube read aloud because the book I wanted to share wouldn’t make it here in time. Great story; however, it was read by someone with a very nasally, whiny voice that grated on everyone’s last nerve.

I decided to use my laptop for today’s activities because I wanted to make sure my video clips would play. Sadly, it also meant using my phone as a hotspot as no one authorized to share the wifi password with me was around. The connection was so s-l-o-w.

The ferry boat origami project was well received, but required a little work and thought on their part. The usual suspects threw up their hands when something didn’t go exactly right on the first try or if the activity took more than 5 minutes to complete. That’s typical of today’s students – whether public, private or homeschooled.

Administration is putting out feelers to see who wants to teach again in the spring. I enjoy the camaraderie with the staff and the sense of purpose this part-time job gives me. However, today was akin to herding cats. If they’d asked me today, my answer would have been, “No.”

As a retired teacher friend remarked, this opportunity has been a great way for me to transition into retirement. Once I’ve gotten my “teacher fix” or when it begins to impede my ability to participate in other things I discover I want to do – then I’ll know it’s time to move on. Wise advice.

We knew our property values would go up this year, but the disparate size of the hike compared with three other houses with the same floorpan in my neighborhood left us trying to figure out why. So we appealed our assessment and the appraisal appeal folks deemed our new value “fair and equitable”. With no change in value, our appeal was automatically escalated to the Board of Equalization.

I went before the BOE folks today. There was a $98k difference in value between my neighbor’s house and mine. Exact same floor plan, permit for basement finish and screened porch addition. As I asked the BOE folks, what is it about my house that makes it that much more valuable than my neighbor two doors down the street?

Well, I opened a can of worms. Turns out there are several errors on our property card. The BOE reps voted to continue the appeal pending a property inspection by the property appraiser’s office. They should be out next week to do their inspection. We’ll reconvene a week after that.

One BOE rep told me she’d wished I handled this before now. Me too, but I had no reason to question things before this last round of property value hikes. Besides, now that I’m officially retired and things have settled down, I have the bandwidth to tackle thorny projects like this.

A $2000.00 property tax hike in one year is outrageous. There’s no way on this earth that I would be able to sell my house for what they say it’s worth.