As usual, I had another half-sleepless night which was most likely triggered by the moon, so once tonight’s official full moon is over, there’ll be a rapid decrease in the effects it has on me.
With the extra time I had early this morning, I went ahead and got all the news feeds read, and then buried myself in desk work most of my morning. Of course with it being a holiday tomorrow, there really wasn’t much real estate activity other than following up on phone calls which had come in over the evening hours.
One of the calls I had to make, was to a long-time friend of mine who lives out East who also has a love for gardening and the great outdoors. Considering the amount of stress my friend has to endure on a daily basis, I couldn’t help saying, “I’ve been told I have the patience of Job, but yours is light years ahead of mine.” All in all, it was a good re-connecting.
I did have several drop-ins this afternoon, and one of them ended up being the highlight of my day, and only because we had an opportunity to freely discuss what is appearing to be a continuous chain of irrational/illogical events and decisions that have been, and continuing to be made by our city government.
When I heard about our ‘city’ having ideas about selling a critically needed parking lot to a Des Moines developer who’s wanting to build an apartment house on that site, was just one more jaw-drop for me. Since our ‘city’ has their own private parking lot, and none of them live in the Downtown, they haven’t a clue why that parking lot must remain a parking lot, and only because there are businesses on all three sides of it that depend on that parking lot for customer parking. There are also a number of employees on 1st & 2nd Street NE who depend on those spots for their daily parking, as well as all the tenants living on the 2nd floor of the Delaware Building. It was bad enough they sold that parking lot on the corner of 2nd St. NE and N. Federal, and now they’re considering selling that one. Who in the ‘yell’ in City Hall has any sort of critical thinking left in their brains? The parking in our Downtown is already strained, because in spite of my having a ‘no parking’ sign behind my office, there are still people parking there.
One of my visitor’s comments today was, “It’s almost a rule where if there’s somebody from over fifty miles away walking into City Hall with briefcase in hand, the red carpet gets rolled out, but if there’s someone who’s living here and has the resources to make improvements, they’re shot down.” I fully agreed and then added, “I personally went to them at least three times over the years about making changes/improvements, and all three times I was shot down.” I’m beginning to think that the ‘N’ word which is always used in a negative context, stands in this town for ‘Native’, and I believe it’s now time for the natives to go on the defense.
These grants that are doled out by our city to those who’re definitely part of the upper crust, doesn’t make much sense to me because you’d think those grants would go towards upgrading homes and buildings belonging to those in truly need. Of course what really got my blood boiling, was when I discovered John Lee who’s on our City Council, having been given a $30K grant to fix up a building he bought which was placed in an LLC. As far as I’m concerned, putting new shingles on an existing building, wouldn’t be any sort of facade enhancing, because re-shingling a structure falls in the bucket of care and maintenance. There’s no doubt, it’s not what you know in this town, it’s who you know and from whom you can extract financial favors. Doesn’t sound like full transparency and fair play does it?
Because I received two separate messages on my office phone today regarding it being imperative I call an 800 number to sign up for that PPP money for the years 2020 and 2021, all I could think of, was all those many people and businesses who’d received some pretty big bucks from our Federal Government, where there was no paying it back, and no income tax being charged to it. Due to the number of people that’ve spoken to me about that program, I’ve decided to add a link to that government website, just so you all can see for yourselves, the people and companies who’d received those funds, and then let you make your own judgement call.
I’m sure the colleagues of mine who received those funds, never would’ve thought those monies would be of public record for all to see. Because I know many of the names behind those LLC’s, it was even more of a jaw-drop, and just remember, some of them double-dipped by filing for both the years of 2020 and 2021. When you click on the following link, that’s all you’ll have to do is type in our city’s zip code, and then hit ‘enter’. The list goes in the order of amounts received, so as you scroll down, you’ll definitely have your eyes widened just as mine were. Deep deep down, I firmly believe there were people and companies who’d received money who truly weren’t in financial need during the pandemic. Here’s the link: FederalPay
My mid-afternoon appointment was to go out and visit a past customer who’d called over the weekend, and only asking if I had time to stop out and have a look at the improvements they’d made. I assured them that their residence would sell for a good $50K more than they paid for it. Having known them for a very many years, we spent a good deal of time reminiscing over all those good times and bad. All three of us had joys and heartaches to share, but whenever talking about them, it always helps to put everything in perspective, and in the end, it’s just part of our job of living.
Tonight’s One-liner is: The future influences the present just as much as the past.