What can Maplewood Online do more at the local level?

How does Morawski's tragedy fit in with this agenda?  Whatever the previous discussion was about, it seems to have been deleted. 

Edited to add:  I found the original discussion.


There have been a few flips on my street that sold for "no way it sold for that much" I suppose we will be rewarded handsomely as a result of the new comps with the revaluation. 


Why is MOL so difficult to use!?

I have given up on trying to post photos. Copy and paste doesn’t work here.  

Newish wrinkle- Today I spent quite a bit of time reading this thread and preparing a long reply that I typed in Notes on my iPad.  I couldn’t copy and paste here; so I redid it.  Improved version was better but it took a long time (over an hour).  Trying to navigate around the post- very last item before hitting REPLY- I hit command+Home and the entire effort disappeared!!!  Please note what time it is now.  That’s a lot of effort to just vanish.  Not the first time its happened, but I don’t do this enough to remember this quirk.

I’m so pssst I’m not sure what I’ll do a lot of work and good ideas.  Why is MOL so problematic?


Apollo_T said:

Why is MOL so difficult to use!?

I have given up on trying to post photos. Copy and paste doesn’t work here.  

Newish wrinkle- Today I spent quite a bit of time reading this thread and preparing a long reply that I typed in Notes on my iPad.  I couldn’t copy and paste here; so I redid it.  Improved version was better but it took a long time (over an hour).  Trying to navigate around the post- very last item before hitting REPLY- I hit command+Home and the entire effort disappeared!!!  Please note what time it is now.  That’s a lot of effort to just vanish.  Not the first time its happened, but I don’t do this enough to remember this quirk.

I’m so pssst I’m not sure what I’ll do a lot of work and good ideas.  Why is MOL so problematic?

I'm not sure that it's MOL where the problem lies.

Admittedly, I'm using a Windows PC, but this text has just been copied from a notepad screen to this one.

Sorry, this website is full of ads, but it might help you with the Copy and Paste function on your iPad - 
https://gadgetstouse.com/blog/2022/10/25/fix-copy-paste-ipad-iphone/


As a long time Apple product user, I know the iPad has a home button and the Mac has a command button, but I’m not sure which Apple product has both a command and home button, nor what would happen if I pressed them both at the same time.

Also, you can’t copy and paste images into mol. You need to download an image, then upload it using the box underneath the main text block where the attachments go. It’s been like this for a few years now, at least. However, you can drag and drop certain images into the attachments box, if that helps.


@ marksierra-  Thanks for the link.  I’ll check it out later.

@ ridski- My mistake with mislabeling.  I believe all Apple products have command buttons.  iPads have home buttons as well.  I haven’t diddled with watch or pods or whatever.  I keep my iPad in a case that has a bluetooth keyboard.  This lets me use the iPad almost like a lightweight laptop.

The keyboard has a command key (to the left of space bar same as my Mac Mini).  There are also cursor movement arrows.  Command + movement arrow should move the cursor to the ultimate point available.  In this case command + left arrow should move the cursor to the beginning of the current line.  It doesn’t!!!  It destroys my whole document—instantly with no  verification. 

Yesterday I spent the AM reading, thinking and preparing my thoughts on this thread.  Ince I couldn’t copy and paste I had to redo all that work with an improved edit.  All that time and effort just went down the toitty in an instant.  

Frustrated?  You bet!!!


Apollo T, I tried to recreate your issue on my laptop, pushing Command and left arrow, and all that happened was that the cursor moved to the beginning of the line.  Could this be an iPad bug?  

Sorry this happened to you.  I've been there with the frustration of losing writing that I've worked on a long time.  


mtierney said:

nohero said:

This is the second time you have misused this unfortunate person's plight for your own purposes.

I reported your comment.

Have no idea how thoroughly YOU CAN misconstrue my intention— I placed todays account on Jamie’s post seeking ways MOL could reach out to those so desperate! 

When I read that she was released after a month in jail, alone, in borrowed clothes, and took public transportation to get to a friend’s house, I had tears in my eyes. You, on the other hand, lash out at me. Better cancel your NYT subscription— don’t watch TV tonight, either.

your intent is clear. you continue to blame the neighbors for not helping this person. You don't know what they did or didn't do, or how much they knew of her plight before it was too late to undo the foreclosure of her home. 


the reality is that the homes that receive an increase greater than the average after a revaluation were being subsidized for years by homeowners who were paying more than they "should" have been.

but trying telling that to anyone who gets a double digit tax increase. We've had our taxes reduced in revaluations twice (once by about 16%). But we don't get a refund of the thousands we were "overpaying" for years and nobody seems to have much sympathy for those homeowners. 

but the people who wail about an "unfair" increase don't seem to want to hear about those who were subsidizing them with an "unfair" overvaluation.

So I don't even go into those FB or Nextdoor revaluation discussions. What would be the point? I've been here long enough to know how the process works, so I doubt I'm going to learn anything new. And the backlash I'd get trying to impart some of what I do know isn't worth it.


ml1 said:

the reality is that the homes that receive an increase greater than the average after a revaluation were being subsidized for years by homeowners who were paying more than they "should" have been.

but trying telling that to anyone who gets a double digit tax increase. We've had our taxes reduced in revaluations twice (once by about 16%). But we don't get a refund of the thousands we were "overpaying" for years and nobody seems to have much sympathy for those homeowners. 

but the people who wail about an "unfair" increase don't seem to want to hear about those who were subsidizing them with an "unfair" overvaluation.

So I don't even go into those FB or Nextdoor revaluation discussions. What would be the point? I've been here long enough to know how the process works, so I doubt I'm going to learn anything new. And the backlash I'd get trying to impart some of what I do know isn't worth it.

When a revaluation finds that the comparative value of your property supports a reduction in the real property taxes you should pay going forward, you don't know at what point in the interval between revals this shift occurred.  You may have been "overpaying" for a few days or for several years or more likely somewhere in between.  Without more frequent revals you really don't know.  This time the benchmark is going to be October 2023.  It is quite possible that none of us are overpaying or underpaying right now, especially given how crazy the present real estate market is. The reval will only tell us what our fair share is on the target date.


Part of the problem with doing tax assessments directly from comps is with the way prices react to taxes -- It has historically made it like a pendulum-swing at each assessment. Specifically, the assessments (and associated taxes) tend to swing most at the eastern and western sides of the town (as the prices of properties shift up faster when the taxes are lower, and prices don't increase as much when the taxes are higher).  I think the houses in the middle of Maplewood have less dramatic changes in their taxes... which will likely mean more proportional old-to-new assessments for those near the 'fulcrum'.


joan_crystal said:

ml1 said:

the reality is that the homes that receive an increase greater than the average after a revaluation were being subsidized for years by homeowners who were paying more than they "should" have been.

but trying telling that to anyone who gets a double digit tax increase. We've had our taxes reduced in revaluations twice (once by about 16%). But we don't get a refund of the thousands we were "overpaying" for years and nobody seems to have much sympathy for those homeowners. 

but the people who wail about an "unfair" increase don't seem to want to hear about those who were subsidizing them with an "unfair" overvaluation.

So I don't even go into those FB or Nextdoor revaluation discussions. What would be the point? I've been here long enough to know how the process works, so I doubt I'm going to learn anything new. And the backlash I'd get trying to impart some of what I do know isn't worth it.

When a revaluation finds that the comparative value of your property supports a reduction in the real property taxes you should pay going forward, you don't know at what point in the interval between revals this shift occurred.  You may have been "overpaying" for a few days or for several years or more likely somewhere in between.  Without more frequent revals you really don't know.  This time the benchmark is going to be October 2023.  It is quite possible that none of us are overpaying or underpaying right now, especially given how crazy the present real estate market is. The reval will only tell us what our fair share is on the target date.

all of this is true. but a lot of people don't want to hear it, and because of that they don't understand the process.

it's not worth arguing over, because I get your point. But aside from the 2000-01 reval, our taxes have never been increased by a revaluation, and a couple of times went down. So while I don't know for sure how many years we "overpaid" the evidence suggests that we've probably paid more than our share more years than we paid our "correct" share.

and I'm not complaining about it. It is what it is, and if we really got angry over property taxes, we'd never have moved to Maplewood. I'm just pointing it out because I don't think that part of the equation gets as much notice as the people who are ranting about their increases.


sprout said:

Part of the problem with doing tax assessments directly from comps is with the way prices react to taxes -- It has historically made it like a pendulum-swing at each assessment. Specifically, the assessments (and associated taxes) tend to swing most at the eastern and western sides of the town (as the prices of properties shift up faster when the taxes are lower, and prices don't increase as much when the taxes are higher).  I think the houses in the middle of Maplewood have less dramatic changes in their taxes... which will likely mean more proportional old-to-new assessments for those near the 'fulcrum'.

this does seem to be true. We moved from a home off Prospect St in 2000 to one on the western side of town. Our old home's taxes stayed flat. We got a 35% increase in the new home. But we expected a minimum 25% increase because we'd been shopping for homes all over SOMA. The taxes on a lot of homes west of Valley were ridiculously low back then, relatively speaking. We'd see a home valued at 50% more than our old home, but with taxes only 15% higher.

the revals are kind of stressful but thankfully they're done a lot more often than they were in the 80s and 90s (which was never).


sprout said:

Part of the problem with doing tax assessments directly from comps is with the way prices react to taxes -- It has historically made it like a pendulum-swing at each assessment. Specifically, the assessments (and associated taxes) tend to swing most at the eastern and western sides of the town (as the prices of properties shift up faster when the taxes are lower, and prices don't increase as much when the taxes are higher).  I think the houses in the middle of Maplewood have less dramatic changes in their taxes... which will likely mean more proportional old-to-new assessments for those near the 'fulcrum'.

It depends.  There have been a surprising number of recent sales at 1 million dollars +  in the geographic center of Maplewood in the past year or two.  It will be interesting to see how that impacts this year's revaluation.


Or drag the 

Apollo_T said:

Why is MOL so difficult to use!?

I have given up on trying to post photos. Copy and paste doesn’t work here.  

You can copy and paste text.  To add a photo - you need to click in the attachments area and find the file on your computer or ipad.  Or drag the photo into the attachment box.

This editor is strictly for text.  


@Elle_Cee

Thanks so much for your time and effort.  The result you got is the result I get everywhere else.  That includes email, posts to other sites, personal notes… it’s obviously what I expected.  It’s just here the few times a year that I forget about it and then get burned.


Can you just highlight the entire text on the iPad then paste it in the box? I would think so.


Elle_Cee said:

How does Morawski's tragedy fit in with this agenda?  Whatever the previous discussion was about, it seems to have been deleted. 

Edited to add:  I found the original discussion.

what should I search to find the original discussion?


I checked out posts just after the date of the fire, 12/7.  If you click on names, you can see people's posts.  


Initial thoughts on the thread topic:

First, remembering when Jamie successfully fended off the NY Times "Local" and "Maplewood Patch" hostile takeover attempts of the local online market. Facebook's a tougher adversary and times have changed.

Second, if there was a simpler and more direct way to link to MOL posts, perhaps more people on MOL would link discussions here to Facebook discussions, attracting more interest in MOL. Similarly with Twitter. 

Third, probably a big ask, but if there were ways to speed up the page-turning and improve the search function, that would help induce newcomers to check the site out if and when when they get here.

Finally, are there 50 volunteers to drop MOL flyers on doorsteps in Maplewood and South Orange? You could cover both towns in a couple of months that way. Or you could invest in a mailer and cover some of the costs with with donations from the users. Posters, leafletting in town, etc., to improve visibility and stir up interest.

Retail marketing with a couple of tweaks of a great product.


Jamie, you are free to repost this greeting on FB, should you care to...

-s.


Elle_Cee said:

I had no idea about the situation described in today's article.  How on earth did I miss it?  Was it talked about on Facebook, but not here?  I would have contributed to this poor, benighted human being's GoFundMe, although it probably wouldn't have done much good.  

I knew about it from Facebook.


Paraphrasing SAC's above post: "I knew about it from MOL"  is the answer to the OP's question.  I and many others had not heard about MOL until the Reval of 2000 - 2001.  It was the search for answers to so many questions regarding the Revaluation and its impact on each of us that led us here.  Discussion on the subject became so heated that a separate category was needed to contain it all.  Those who came for Reval, stayed for other issues until the issues trickled and many went elsewhere.  

Jamie:  You need to find something MOL does well  that the other Online discussion providers do not and stress that in your publicity. The discussion format here is a strong plus.  The opportunity for discussion of hyperlocal issues is a second.  A platform for building community is a third. I am sure others can provide additional aims. 


joan_crystal said:

Jamie:  You need to find something MOL does well  that the other Online discussion providers do not and stress that in your publicity. The discussion format here is a strong plus.  The opportunity for discussion of hyperlocal issues is a second.  A platform for building community is a third. I am sure others can provide additional aims. 

The fact that we are not bombarded by predatory advertising on MOL is a big plus.  Facebook and Instagram are chock full of crappy advertising.


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