Todays General MLS meeting was led by John Bidwell filling in for Don D. Davis, who was ironically delayed in traffic on I-5. There was an announcement about Scholarship programs from the board for children of members.  Another announcement that AHS Home Warranties was providing a $50 gift Mastercard for home warranty recipients from March 1 to June 30. Steve from Fidelity announced that buyers using their title services will receive 1 year of Experian Credit Monitoring for no extra charge. You can’t be too safe when it comes to identity theft.

There were a couple of mortgage minutes. Of note was that the Access Program for First Time homebuyers was being reinstituted. Of course the big buzz is the historically Low Interest Rates.  The always active Mark Gazzigli  of Vitek announced that he was in an affiliate group that finds books to donate to Juniper Academy kids to take home over the summer. To whatever home they can find. Many of those kids come from severely disadvantaged backgrounds so any donation is welcomed. They are looking for age appropriate reading material to be donated. See Mark or any active affiliate. Great work, folks!

Seen above, Ron Largent displays something he called a “newspaper” which was apparently used in the old days for disseminating news. It seems that there is still a local hardcopy version of Redding.com in circulation (who knew?), and they had today written some articles about housing perhaps relevant to the membership. But since few present had read it, we mostly just nodded our heads at the quaint notion. Imagine having just one place to get local news! People had to struggle to get accurate local information in the old days, like the 1980s, but folks were tougher back then. (That was tongue-in-cheek folks, settle down. Just trying to lighten up a bit;-)

Our guest speaker was the feisty and fiery Mary Machado of Shasta Voices. Her topic centered on the proposal you probably remember as Fix 5, but which is now reincarnated at SCRIP.  In a nutshell, the idea is to plan for expansion of Interstate 5 by adding fees to building permits. While the idea of planning for growth along I-5 seems favorable enough, some have expressed concern that the fees amount to an arbitrary tax with no guarantee that the funds raised will be used for the purpose intended. Also, these fees will impact local economic activity, affecting housing, building, and rents. Unlike a gas tax, these fees amount to costs for local businesses and consumers that are not directly related to transportation infrastructure. That’s probably much too simple of an explanation, but Mary did a good job of describing this complex proposal at the meeting, and the harsh implications it holds for local businesses. Representing Shasta Voices, Mary asks the tough questions of the bureaucrats that they might not otherwise hear.

She was kind enough to pass along her presentation from the meeting, so you can at least see it. Without her explanation, it won’t be as informative as it was to those present at the meeting, but do take a look. The one bit of explanation I would offer is that the proposed  fee is (a seemingly completely arbitrary figure) set at $1697 per EDU. EDU is then a factor which is multiplied according to the type of building permit. It’s complicated and costly. Mary has broken it out to a few alarming examples.

  Fix 5 now SCRIP 3-25-09.pdf (40.01 kb)

Shasta Voices has a website at : http://www.shastavoices.com/Home_Page.html

Be sure to click on the tab marked Accomplishments to see what they've been doing, and do consider joining.

It was another interesting and informative meeting. Thanks to the board for another great program. Skip Murphy