Author Archives: Jon Lowder

A Familiar Refrain

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At the end of a Bloomberg article on the increase in commercial credit defaults that banks are seeing you'll find this gem:

Most troubled commercial properties have loans that are either syndicated or packaged into securities and sold to investors, and aren’t owned by a single lender. One Riverwalk Place, an 18-story office building in San Antonio, defaulted this year, as did Riviera Holdings Corp., a Las Vegas-based casino owner. Neither loan is owned by a single lender.

Banks, like real estate developers, sold off most of the riskiest debt, said Dan Fasulo, a London-based managing director at Real Capital Analytics.

“They keep the good deals for themselves, and they do the riskier, shadier stuff with a partner,” Fasulo said. “What are you going to do with the bad stuff? You’re going to try to syndicate it privately.”

Sound familiar?

ACC Sucking Wind

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Seven ACC teams made the big dance and four didn't make it past the first round, most notably Wake Forest being thumped by Cleveland State.  If you go buy tournament results you'd have to say that so far the vaunted depth and parity of the ACC was vastly overrated.  Personally I think a better gauge is the overall record of the conference's teams versus non-conference opponents during the season, but since so much emphasis is put on the tournament you can't totally discount the idea that the ACC teams are second-class citizens in March.  My reply is this: does anyone really believe that, despite winning the ACC tournament, Duke is a better team than North Carolina?

As for Wake I want to say only one thing: one of the reasons they were beaten so handily was that they couldn't stop two players from having all-world games against them.  Although Wake's defense is much improved this season they seemed to have a habit of letting players "go off" on them.  Hopefully for next season they'll find someone that they can designate to lock down on other teams' go-to players much like their opponents did to Jeff Teague at the end of this season and during the tournament.

North Carolina Ahead of the Curve

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It might be hard to believe right now, but we here in North Carolina might be leading indicators for the US economy.  Just as we started feeling the brunt of the recession before most of the rest of the country we might also be the first to feel the 'bottom' and see a recovery.  This occurred to me when I read that foreclosures in February were down almost 50% compared to February of last year in North Carolina, but the rest of the country experienced a 30% increase in foreclosures.  Yeah, yeah this is just one indicator and it's surrounded by other negative stories like the sales of existing homes in Greensboro falling 38% in February, but since foreclosures were a key factor in the start of our economic collapse it would seem that a decline in foreclosures would be a good sign that the bottom might be near.

Call be a pie-eyed optimist, but I'll take good news anywhere I can get it.

$54,000?

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In a story about a proposal by NC Republicans to give a $2,500 tax credit to families who pay to educate their children at private schools there's a very interesting figure: $54,000.  That's the amount they say that North Carolina spends on each student in public schools each year.  That's an incredible number when you think about it and it leads me to ask a few questions of my own:

  • If the Summit School can educate kids for $16,000 in tuition a year why does it take almost triple that to educate public school children?  Before you start hollering about lunch programs and the like, let me say that I can understand why it has to be more expensive in general to compensate for the mandate of educating all children, no matter their economic, emotional or intellectual status, but does it really have to be three times more expensive?
  • Why wouldn't you give a $2,500 tax credit to any family that takes their kids off the public rolls?  They are literally saving you $50,000 if they send their kids to a private school or if they home school. One answer might be that the cost per child will go up because you're shrinking the pool of children, but I think that only highlights the inherent inefficiency of the system.  
  • I wrote a bit about the Winston-Salem Forsyth County Schools' budgeting last fall when I was befuddled by their textbook purchasing procedures.  At the time I was hoping to dig into the school budget so I could see how exactly funds are allocated, but I just haven't had the time to do it.  I'd still love to see how the school system spends its money, and after seeing the $54,000 figure I'd really like to know where it all goes. 

I have to believe that there's a better, more efficient way to get our kids educated. 

Talking About Driveways

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Last night we had a public meeting of the Lewisville Planning Board to show the public an early draft of the access management ordinance we're working on for the Lewisville business district.  In a nutshell we're trying to plan for what we think will be some pretty significant growth through the 2035-ish timeframe and trying to make sure our Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) is up to the task of managing that growth.  A big part of the future plans are to build a parallel road to Shallowford Road (the main drag through town), turn make both roads one way with two lanes, to build some connector roads between the two and to put in a couple of new traffic circles at entry points on either end of town.  That's the big picture, but as with most things in life the real work is in the details. 

Until we started this process I didn't understand the impact of driveways on traffic design.  Simply put you have to make sure that driveways, or road cuts, are spaced far enough apart and far enough from intersections so that they don't create a hazard by having people exiting and entering the roadway in close proximity to each other.  It sounds mundane, but if you've ever tried to enter a busy roadway from a parking lot that happens to be too near an intersection with cars turning into your path then you'll know why we're spending so much time on this.

As you might expect we ended up with quite a few comments from the 20+ members of the public who attended the meeting.  There was some understandable concern about the increased traffic through town, about motorists speeding even more than they do if we go to two lanes in each direction and about the impact on commercial property.  All were valid concerns and I think Marty Myers, our town planner, did a good job answering them.  Since we're only at the draft stage of the process we'll be able to incorporate any changes that might need to be made based on the feedback we get, but based on last night's meeting I think we've made some really good progress. 

Taking One On the Chin

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My daughter's soccer team (West Forsyth JV) was 30 seconds from a 0-0 tie with arch rival Reagan High School last night when the Reagan girls scored on a really nice break away goal, so the West girls had a tough loss to swallow last night. Besides the built in rivalry of the schools' location this one is even more special because most of these girls play with or against each other regularly on their club teams.  For instance one of my daughter's club teammates played for Reagan and a bunch of girls from the sister teams from our club and who practice and scrimmage together all the time also played for Reagan.  That made it a great atmosphere because while we were definitely rooting for our own kids we were also giving "atta girls" to the Reagan girls.

The next big rivalry game will be Davie High School.  There are quite a few of my daughter's club teammates playing for Davie and since I was the assistant coach on the club team I'm going to definitely have some mixed emotions going on.  Of course I'm pulling for West, but the perfect game to me would be a close win for West with all the girls from the club team playing great.  I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Followed by a Foxx

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My Blackberry beeped.  I looked at it.  The message from Twitter: "Virginia Foxx (virginiafoxx) is now following your updates on Twitter."  As much as I've written about disagreeing with my Congresswoman I have to say that I'm flattered that she'd bother to follow me.  If I was in her shoes I'd have completely ignored me.  Welcome Congresswoman Foxx, and whether or not we agree on anything I'm glad to know you're listening. Now about that stimulus bill…

Gimme Some Big Love

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One of the positive sides of business travel for me is the opportunity to watch HBO in my hotel room.  We don't pay for it at home so I don't get to see many of the excellent HBO series like The Wire until they come out on DVD, or when I go on a business trip.  Last week I caught up on HBO's Big Love which has a plot centered on a polygamist in Utah played by Bill Paxton who seems to constantly be battling the leader of one polygamist group on the one hand and the mainstream Mormon church on the other.

As you can imagine many Mormon's aren't too thrilled with the show, but I find it an entertaining show and don't think it provides any harsher treatment to the Mormon's than film and TV have been doling out to Catholics for as long as I can remember.  Can we say "The Exorcist"?

Apparently there's an upcoming episode of Big Love that will include a depiction of a temple ceremony and this is really irking some Mormons.  Some are worried that without the proper context the ceremony will come off looking kookie, but given the show's producers' approach to this point I don't think they'll do anything over the top.

Reading about this reminded me of when the Mormon temple opened in the Maryland suburbs of Washington.  I was a little boy (must have been around seven or eight) and I got to go in the Temple with my Dad who was very active in the church at the time.  The memory is vague, but I do seem to remember lots of maroon carpet and what I thought of as a really big, brass bathtub.  If I remember correctly it was used to baptize boys as proxies for people who had died before having the opportunity to be baptized themselves but I'm not entirely sure that's accurate. 

My family left the church when I was about 10, but as you can imagine I have a keen interest in how the Mormon church is treated because of my early involvement.  To give you an example of what I mean I can tell you that when I was a senior in high school I was attending a small Lutheran school and the principal insisted on trying to cure me of the influence that the Mormon "cult" had on me.  While I didn't consider myself a Mormon any more I also knew that what I'd experienced hadn't been a cult and I let him know that.  In fact it's one of the few times I remember arguing vociferously with an adult.  So I tend to be sympathetic towards the Mormons' sensitivities to their treatment by others, but in the case of Big Love I don't think they're getting treated any differently than other religions have been by the entertainment industry.

The Package

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Yesterday we arrived home to find a full mailbox.  A couple of Celeste's clients regularly send her packages full of bills that need to be paid so I assumed that the big envelope that was taking up most of the box was for her, but when I looked at the front it was addressed to me and the return address was my Mom's.  I could feel the outline of a book so my assumption was that Mom had sent me a book she'd come across and thought that I'd enjoy.  Oh, how wrong I was.

When I opened the envelope I found a soft bound book with a cover that featured blown up pictures of leaves in fall colors and the words "The Living Years" on the front.  When I opened the cover I found on the title page "The Living Years" and the author Rachael Garrity, aka my Mom.  I quickly thumbed through some pages and realized that this was the book on her family that Mom had been trying to write for years.  A couple of years ago at Christmas she'd given my brother and me binders with the first piece of the book, but we hadn't seen anything since.  Needless to say I was stunned to find 150 pages in soft bound glory in the package I opened.

Mom wrote a specific version for me and another for my brother and since the voice is first person and addressed directly to me it is incredibly intimate.  She begins with her grandparents and carries it through to 1972 which is when I was six.  She wanted to get it done by this week because this Tuesday would have been her Daddy's 100th birthday and the book is also meant to commemorate that event.

I've yet to get too far into it, but already I'm fascinated by my family's long ties to this area.  Family names include Motsinger, Mock (think Mocksville) and Sink.  Still, the most interesting aspect to me are the childhood stories about people I have only known as adults. It's a truly amazing heirloom combining Mom's memories, letters written between family members, poems written by my uncle and family pictures.  I think I'll be mining it for years to come and my simple call to thank her isn't nearly suitable as a gesture of appreciation.  I'm blown away.