February 23, 2009
Monday

I was talking to a friend of mine in church the other day and he was dazed, amazed, confused and not in a good way. And he is not alone in this. As many in Ketchikan have stared in awe at their borough's assessments and property tax statements, we marvel at the mysterious powers Ketchikan seems to have. We are in the midst of one of the nations worst recessions in our lifetime. In fact not many of the generation of a worse economic crisis are left to draw off of any sort of reference on how to handle such a serious economic down turn.

Throughout the nation - virtually in every state of the union - house values are plummeting. People are paying off houses that are worth much less than what their mortgage is and this is one of the fundamental straws that broke the financial camel's back.

Again everywhere in the nation house values are plummeting - "everywhere except Ketchikan, Alaska". It seems that house values are increasing and so are property values by some mysterious anomaly of nature our house values are skyrocketing, and what is even more mysterious is even though the dwindling population and the tough job market is affecting Ketchikan, we here in Ketchikan seem to in some way keep coming up with the money to pay the taxes for these mysterious property value increases. Also to add to the mystery we do not even have to do any home improvements or any type of upgrades to our homes or property for property values to mystically up themselves in value. Whatever magical system that has created itself in the form of houses automatically becoming more valuable without the aide of homeowner induced improvements is absolutely amazing.

Maybe we should send Obama our formula and he can throw that magical formula in his nation saving stimulus package and Ketchikan, Alaska will be credited with helping solve this economic crises by helping the nation up the value of their homes without any effort, improvements, intentions, or means to improve their home or property.

We should all encourage the borough assessment team from Ketchikan to share this potentially nation saving formula with the world .

Chas Edwardson
Ketchikan, AK

Received February 12, 2009 - Published February 23, 2009

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