Metropolitan Rural

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Am I the only one who is intrigued by this? My wife mentioned to me just yesterday that November is National Novel Writing Month. Sounds interesting you say? Well, this was actually started by a small group of California twenty somethings and has gone on to include thousands of participants around the world and now an official not-for-profit charitable organization.

So, if you follow the link above you can get all the gory details. You can plan your novel ahead of time, but can not write one word before November 1st. You get until midnight on November 30th to complete a 50,000 word novel. Of course, not everyone makes it, but many try. In their own words, “it’s about quantity not quality.”

Of course, it’s bound to be difficult. Fifty thousand words is a lot to write in a month for a single story. At least for those of us who are not actual writers. But, I suppose they are right in saying it can help you get past mental blocks of smaller writing tasks.

Whatever the risks, I think this would be fun to try. I doubt if I’ll make it the first try, but I won’t know until I do. Any suggestions for a story line?

So, after my round of Golf on Sunday morning, we got our chance to head over to the International Institutes Festival of Nations in Tower Grove Park. This is the second year we have been and had a ball both times. My biggest problem is that we never have enough time there to try food from EVERY vendor!

We took our stroll through the nations to scope things out and then came back for our selections.

First Stop - Ethiopia. We love this food. My wife’s best friend growing up was part Ethiopian and her mother helps out with the booth. She was there so we stopped to say hello. She was also recently featured in the Post-Dispatch for being involved in a local test kitchen business incubator. She started a company that is making and selling Afeeza (a sort of spicy lentil dish). According to her she is making twice weekly deliveries to the new grocery store on Morganford (Local Harvest, which I really need to stop by sometime soon) and will soon start selling it to the local Whole Foods as well. Her Afeeza was excellent, though a little spicy for the 8 year old. He preferred the potatoes and carrots dish.

Next Stop - Brazil. Cafe Brasil had a tent set up and we’d heard lots of good things about their food. It is on our list to go visit as well. We had the Vatapa (a chicken and sauce with rice). The flavor was excellent, my 8 year old took one bite, waited for us to try it and then started begging to have the rest of it… no way! you’ve got to share!

Lastly - Norway. We swung by the Norwegian food for the sausage. It was good, as to be expected, but I LOVED the kraut. It was a sweet and sour kraut. My wife said it was caraway seeds, I’ll take her word for it. Would love to find some more of that some place.

Anyway, after that we did some shopping with the vendors and met a nice man from Minnesota selling Bulgarian products. He said this was their first festival here and they would definitely come back. He had high praise for St. Louis and said he was really enjoying both the festival and the city.

Next, it was off to our first CYC soccer game of the fall. What a busy day!

I hadn’t picked up my golf clubs in months. Went out to Tower Tee with my 8 year old back in maybe April and haven’t touched them since. I had said something to my wife about it back in July. Told her I was bummed that I had been so busy with work and teaching I hadn’t had time to get out to play. Well, she went and bought me a gift card to my favorite course for our anniversary last month and told me that now I HAD to go. What a great woman!

So, this last week I took my son out to the driving range at Tower Tee to try and dust off the cobwebs and that went pretty well (at least other than the head of his 3 wood flying off the shaft and about 60 yards out into the range). Called up the course at Forest Park (the Norman K. Probstein Memorial course, not Triple A which almost no one knows about it seems) and the only tee times left for Sunday morning for as single player were with groups at 6:10 and 6:18! On one hand I hate mornings and on the other I know it goes faster to play early, plus you get home and the whole day isn’t wasted.

Anyway, had fun and got done and back home by about 11. All in all, I played well and shot an 88. Not my best, but not bad for not playing for months. I would love the chance to play on a regular basis again. I really think I could start playing well again.

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The link above from CNN Money shows the most recent report for Median Home values in the US. Now, before we go to far, let’s remember what median denotes. It means that 1/2 of all homes are more than this price and 1/2 are less. An average can be skewed by a few really expensive properties while the median is not affected.

The NAR is showing the median price has fallen 1.5% from the end of June last year (now down to $223,800). However, that represents 149 metropolitan areas around the country. St. Louis individually actually showed growth of 2.7%.

NAR is predicting the median price to begin rising again by next spring. I would tend to agree with them. The current mortgage market is starting to look better as Countrywide is getting some loans from Bank of America and even the Oracle of Omaha himself (Warren Buffet) is rumored to be considering an investment in Countrywide. All that adds up to a stronger footing for the mortgage companies and should lead to more decreases in mortgage rates within the next year. As rates go down, more people will borrow and buy a house, thus causing home prices to go back up. I tend to believe we are at or near the bottom of the pendulum.

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I’m sure many of you read the article above in the Post-Dispatch earlier this month. The revelation that Aquafina is getting it’s water from the city and then further “purifying” it before bottling.

I’ve never used a lot of bottled water, though when travelling and on the run I might pick one up to have something to drink rather than a soda (or pop for those native St. Louisans). My wife brought this article to my attention and pointed out the part about the plastic bottle. She has seen some information somewhere about how many plastic bottles used to bottle water are actually recycled. The number is not pretty.

It really makes you think when you are out at the store and see that “health conscious” couple with 4 or 5 CASES of bottled water in their cart. Why people think buying bottled water is healthier than using the tap is beyond me. Much less doing it and adding all of those extra bottles to our landfill.

In return, my wife and I have gotten rid of all plastic drinking cups in our house and got out the good glasses. We’ve also been more aware of stuff we are using when we are out to eat some places. For instance, the plastic cups used for drinks at The St. Louis Bread Company. Those go right in the trash there in the store. There is no recycling bin. So, we bring it home and put it in our recycling boxes to take to the drop off later.

Hopefully, you might be more aware now and help out in some of the same ways!

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The article linked here details Wal-Mart’s plan to convert several St. Louis County stores to Supercenters that include groceries. Those plans have been causing havoc with our local stores over the past few years.

There has been a strike of the grocery workers’ union and more recently all major grocery chains in town have lowered prices on thousands of items.

Why the fear? After all, Schnucks, Dierbergs and Shop & Save are well established and shouldn’t loose much business, right? Well, truth be told, Wal-Mart has run a number of grocery stores and chains out of business over the years. They key for Wal-Mart is their diversity.

The grocery business is extremely competitive and doesn’t exactly have huge profit margins. With Wal-Mart’s core retailing business, the grocery is merely a way to bring more people into the store. If Wal-Mart took a loss on groceries they would probably still increase profit due to people staying to shop for other things. However, Wal-Mart has been making money recently in the grocery business and still has lower prices on many of the same things you can find elsewhere.

So, how do our local chains compete? They are actually doing quite well here according to this Post-Dispatch article. Wal-Mart’s main competitive focus is always price (the cost leader). In order to compete, you need to be anything OTHER THAN the cost leader. Target, for instance, pitches themselves as a more mid-scale retailer and can charge higher prices for wider aisles and better quality merchandise. They target (pun intended) a different sort of shopper. By differentiating themselves by their offering, they not only survive, but are thriving. Our own groceries appear to be doing just that.

There is room in the market for all of our chains. Probably the worst hit of the bunch will be Shop & Save as they are currently the local market cost leader. They will likely lose more shoppers to Wal-Mart than Schnucks and Dierbergs combined. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them shut down a number of stores.

For those of you who don’t know, I have been teaching part-time in addition to my full-time work as an IT Consultant. Hopefully all this extra work will allow my wife and I to get out of debt and start investing in real estate (my true love) and maybe start a small business of some kind.

Anyway, I’ve been teaching both Economics and Quantitative Analysis course at the undergraduate and graduate level. It has been a very interesting experience.

There has been an amazing amount of news over the past few weeks and months about the mortgage market here in the US. I go into more detail of how it got in it’s current state in a previous post, so I won’t do that here. The end effect of mortgage brokers getting rich has started to hit the financial markets as well.

Investors got worried a couple weeks ago about the large banks having trouble borrowing money to make more mortgage loans because their assets from current mortgages are difficult to value (no one knows how many of them will end up in default). Eventually the Fed stepped in and dumped another $38 Billion into the economy. Yes, that’s right Billion with a “B”. Oh, and that was just 1 day. That curbed investors for a while, but the Fed eventually came back and lowered the discount rate (interest rate that banks get when borrowing from the Fed itself) by 1/2%.

On one hand, that’s kind of nice. Hopefully it will help as I’m wanting to refinance our house by next summer to roll in the loan we took out for the central air. On the other, who said it’s the Fed’s job to bail out banks from making stupid mistakes and paying the price? Hopefully they will learn some lessons from this, but most likely they people who learned them will move on and we’ll be back in this same position in 8-10 years.

There is at least 1 investor who may not be worried. Rumors have it that the guru of Omaha himself, Warren Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway, may make a bid to purchase a considerable portion of Countrywide. Buffet is rarely wrong and Berkshire Hathaway stock has trumped the average market return to a pulp over the last 42 years. Maybe he realizes now is the time to get in on a lowering market, knowing that things are bound to pick up in the future.

Whatever happens, things are bound to be interesting.

There have been numerous blogs and newspaper articles over the past few months about the McKee properties in north St. Louis and the proposed Land Assemblage tax credit bill in the state congress.

It has been extremely interesting to read about much of this and especially to see the videos by PubDef during a recent tour of Old North hosted by local officials for the state politicians.

I have a very simple take on the whole matter. I really don’t understand how anyone can consider it a good idea to give someone money for letting their properties become blighted. Sure, help people or developers out if they are buying properties that are already blighted and in poor shape. But to reward someone for buying perfectly fine, occupied housing and letting it rot into ruin to become blighted is one of the silliest things I’ve ever heard of.

Below is a list of links you might find interesting on the subject. Oh, and do me a favor, be sure to drop your state rep and senator a note letting them know you oppose this new bill and why… I did.

What’s New in Old North - Notice the new developments starting on the 14th street mall in an area McKee is supposedly saving. Here is $30 million being spent without his involvement. Looks to me like they don’t really need his “help.”

PubDef - Lots of good political information and some great videos from the recent tour of the McKee properties given for state legislators.

Ecology of Absence - Authored by Michael Allen who is contributed with first exposing the link between all of the McKee/Blairmont properties.

Happy reading!

As you may have noticed from previous posts, I have been considering starting up a business here in the city. In order to help me make the decision, I put together a survey on Survey Monkey. If you’ve got a few minutes and live in the St. Louis area, please follow the link below.

Click Here to take survey

Thanks a bunch.

Okay, I admit it, I’m a numbers geek. I was just looking over the city FY08 Budget. In the revenue section they talk about the Graduated Business License. Here is a quote:

The graduated business license tax and provides a consistent source of revenue
of just under $8.0 million per year. As indicated by the chart above, the
level of employment activity has remained relatively constant. In 2006,
voters approved a new rate schedule with the estimated increase in revenues
of $3.2 million to be allocated to a Public Safety Trust Fund. The license
fee structure under the new schedule is as follows:
Number of Employees GBL Tax
501 or more $37,500
401-500 $34,500
301-400 $30,000
201-3002 $25,500
151-200 $20,250
101-150 $15,000
76-100 $11,250
51-75 $7,500
41-50 $4,500
31-40 $3,000
21-30 $2,250
11-20 $1,500
6-10 $675
3-5 $325
2 or fewer $200

Now, this differs from the previous schedule where the lowest amount was $150 and the highest was $25,000. Great, so that was done in 2006 and estimated to increase revenues by $3.2 million. Here is the budget actual for 2006 and the estimated amount for 2007 and 2008.

Graduated Business License
8,077,692

7,800,000

7,800,000

Umm… Okay, our revenue is expected to go DOWN? What happened to that increase of $3.2 million? I stand by my statement that we need to lower the fees associated with the Graduated Business License.