regards Dave

If properties are assessed based on actual use, such as a hair salon on the beach, how do we appraise/assess the vacant lot next door? What if the vacant lot was purchased for a million dollars for future development and its the exact same size and zoning as the hair salon. Should we then assess the vacant lot for a million dollars and the hair salon for $100,000? What if you owned a vacant lot on the other side of the the hair salon. How should that be assessed? The same as the developer’s lot?

The fact is, property is assessed based on its value using the tried and true method of Highest and Best Use. If we as society want to give the hair salon or Mom and Pop motel a break, then let’s come up with an exemption, like maybe a “heritage” exemption if we want to preserve those property types. But straying from standard real estate appraisal principles will only create more inequity and potential for abuse.

Tim Wilmath, MAI

Don’t forget: Eisenhower found plenty of legal justification to use federal forces on behalf of school integration and to fight other racial injustices long before the civil rights acts was passed.

In general, Goldwater was not — in my opinion, based on my contemporary recollections of what he said and did as a U.S. Senator — nearly as much in favor of a small, non-interventionist government as he was in favor of a *simple* government with comparatively few, easily-understood laws.

In a strange way, “ultra-conservative” Barry Goldwater and my extremely liberal parents and my (even more extremely liberal) activist maternal grandmother shared a belief that seems to have fallen out of favor today.

I call this belief “techno-utopianism.” At its core was the idea that we would eventually solve the world’s problems through technology, and that we’d *all* benefit through having more material goods (and more energy-efficient lifestyles) and better public facilities, not to mention peace and harmony throughout the world and fewer and less-stressful work hours for everyone, through automation of farming and factory production.

Political disagreements among the techno-utopian believers were not about the desired end result, but about how best to achieve it.

If the techno-utopians’ vision had come to pass as I think they expected, whether through free market or government interventionist means, by now I’d only be working 30 hours a week, and on Friday afternoons, after work, my wife and I would hop into our flying car and zoom over to Miami for supper.

Oh, well.