No Exemption for Home, Sweet, Home

City, county, and school property tax statements were mailed out to homeowners last week. The only new wrinkle this year is that the City of Richardson's tax statement is now combined with the county's tax statement. Combining the two saves money. Good, smart move.

Combining the two also makes it easier to compare the taxes paid to support city services versus county services. The numbers are right there, side by side. Now, if we could only get more momentum behind movements like Taxpayer Receipt, taxpayers would know even more about how their tax dollars are being spent.

What stood out for me in this year's local tax statement is that the city doesn't give homeowners a homestead exemption. It's hard to avoid that big, fat "0" in the column headed "Homestead Exemption." This shouldn't be news to anyone. The lack of a homestead exemption was always listed on the city's tax statement in the past. It's just more prominent now. I'm curious whether residents will notice and lobby for the city to revisit this policy. Odder things have happened. If so, it'll be another example of the law of unintended consequences.

Homecoming: Lake Highlands 37, Sunset 6

From 2011 Football

In perfect weather, with a large home crowd, Lake Highlands celebrated homecoming with a big win over Sunset High School, 37-6.

More photos from this game, and all of the 2011 season, including the bands and color guards and drill teams and cheerleaders and everything else that goes into making high school football the best value in Friday night entertainment, can be found here.

Big Plans for US75/PGBT. Now, How to Pay.

Last February, the Richardson city council rezoned 300 acres of undeveloped land around the DART station at US75/PGBT as the first step in developing this prime real estate. The rezoning was, to say the least, controversial, at least among a vocal minority of Richardson residents.

That was then. After the jump, an update.

Excerpts: The Island of Lost Maps

Amazon

From "The Island of Lost Maps," by Miles Harvey:


At first, Bland had seemed to me an exotic and intriguing figure - but, as is often the case with familiarity, the more I learned about him, the less interesting he became. He was, I ultimately determined, a fairly unexceptional person who had happened to commit a fascinating crime."

After the jump, my review and more excerpts.

OTBR: An Old Barn in Italy

Latitude 45.640600° N
Longitude 12.704900° E


A child on a road trip with his family asks, "Where are we?" and the father answers, "Let's check the map. We're off the blue roads [the Interstate Highways marked in blue on the road atlas]. We're off the red roads [the US and state highways]. We're off the black roads [the county highways]. I think we're off the map altogether." It was always my dream to be off the map altogether.

After the jump, a few of the random places (and I mean random literally) that I visited vicariously last month that are "off the blue roads".