No Exemption for Home, Sweet, Home

City, county, and school property tax statements were mailed out to homeowners last week. The only new wrinkle this year is that the City of Richardson's tax statement is now combined with the county's tax statement. Combining the two saves money. Good, smart move.

Combining the two also makes it easier to compare the taxes paid to support city services versus county services. The numbers are right there, side by side. Now, if we could only get more momentum behind movements like Taxpayer Receipt, taxpayers would know even more about how their tax dollars are being spent.

What stood out for me in this year's local tax statement is that the city doesn't give homeowners a homestead exemption. It's hard to avoid that big, fat "0" in the column headed "Homestead Exemption." This shouldn't be news to anyone. The lack of a homestead exemption was always listed on the city's tax statement in the past. It's just more prominent now. I'm curious whether residents will notice and lobby for the city to revisit this policy. Odder things have happened. If so, it'll be another example of the law of unintended consequences.

Homecoming: Lake Highlands 37, Sunset 6

From 2011 Football

In perfect weather, with a large home crowd, Lake Highlands celebrated homecoming with a big win over Sunset High School, 37-6.

More photos from this game, and all of the 2011 season, including the bands and color guards and drill teams and cheerleaders and everything else that goes into making high school football the best value in Friday night entertainment, can be found here.

Big Plans for US75/PGBT. Now, How to Pay.

Last February, the Richardson city council rezoned 300 acres of undeveloped land around the DART station at US75/PGBT as the first step in developing this prime real estate. The rezoning was, to say the least, controversial, at least among a vocal minority of Richardson residents.

That was then. After the jump, an update.

Excerpts: The Island of Lost Maps

Amazon

From "The Island of Lost Maps," by Miles Harvey:


At first, Bland had seemed to me an exotic and intriguing figure - but, as is often the case with familiarity, the more I learned about him, the less interesting he became. He was, I ultimately determined, a fairly unexceptional person who had happened to commit a fascinating crime."

After the jump, my review and more excerpts.

OTBR: An Old Barn in Italy

Latitude 45.640600° N
Longitude 12.704900° E


A child on a road trip with his family asks, "Where are we?" and the father answers, "Let's check the map. We're off the blue roads [the Interstate Highways marked in blue on the road atlas]. We're off the red roads [the US and state highways]. We're off the black roads [the county highways]. I think we're off the map altogether." It was always my dream to be off the map altogether.

After the jump, a few of the random places (and I mean random literally) that I visited vicariously last month that are "off the blue roads".

Tick, Tock, the Game is Locked

The late, lamented The Dallas Morning News religion blog has been reduced to a weekly "Texas Faith" posting in which a panel of local religious leaders are asked to comment on a provocative question, such as this week's, "Is it ever right to divorce a spouse with Alzheimers?" Unfortunately, the answers are seldom as provocative as the questions. Something seems to be missing.

Thanks to Unfair Park, we learn that the panel used by the News deliberately excludes a secular viewpoint. Zachary Moore, a coordinator for the DFW Coalition of Reason, has been lobbying the News for months to include a secular viewpoint on the panel, to no effect. Moore says one panelist told him that the other members of the panel voted down the request. Blog moderator Bill McKenzie told Unfair Park, "He's welcome to be a part of the discussion in the comments. I don't think he's being excluded."

After the jump, my thoughts.

Repeat Tweets: Football and Everything Else

Repeat tweets from September, 2011:

• 2011 09 01 - Final. North Crowley 6, Berkner42. It's a great time to be a Ram! #txhsfb
  
• 2011 09 01 - Wisconsin rolls in opener against UNLV, 51-17, in the hottest game in history at 94 year-old Camp Randall Stadium - 90 degrees.
  
• 2011 09 02 - Headline: "US marks first month with no troop deaths in Iraq." Our country needs a little good news right about now. This is great news.
  
• 2011 09 02 - Final. Irving 14, Richardson 37. #txhsfb
  
• 2011 09 03 - Thank you, Baylor, for making that Wisconsin loss to TCU in the Rose Bowl seem like ancient history. TCU, feel free to start a new streak.
  
• 2011 09 03 - Crystal ball: Boise State runs thru rest of their easy schedule undefeated, then watches unbeaten OU and SEC winner play for championship.
  

After the jump, more repeat tweets.

Cottonwood Art Festival

From 2011 10 Cottonwood

Richardson's twice annual Cottonwood Art Festival enjoyed picture perfect weather and large crowds for its weekend run October 1-2. For a look at more photos from this fall's Festival, look here.

Skyline 62, Richardson 7

From 2011 Football

Ouch! It was all Skyline, all the time, Friday night at Eagle-Mustang Stadium as the Skyline Raiders, ranked 10th in the state, beat the Richardson Eagles 62-7. The Raiders scored six touchdowns in the first half. The Eagles scored a 4th quarter touchdown to avoid the shutout.

More photos from this game, and all of the 2011 season, including the bands and color guards and drill teams and cheerleaders and everything else that goes into making high school football the best value in Friday night entertainment, can be found here.

When Four Stars Are Good Enough

Source: Texas Comptroller.

The 2011 update of the Texas Comptroller's Financial Allocation Study for Texas (FAST) was recently released. According to the FAST website, "Each district and campus is assigned a FAST rating of one to five stars, indicating its success in combining cost-effective spending with the achievement of measurable student academic progress. Five stars reflects the strongest relative progress combined with the lowest relative spending."

Some of the nearby school districts that earned five stars are Allen, Coppell, Garland, Irving, Mesquite and Wylie. Congratulations to all of them.

Where did the Richardson ISD land on this rating scale? That little red square at the top of the graph above is the RISD. Scattered around the rest of the graph are 40 fiscal peers. Richardson's position earns it four stars out of five.

After the jump, what the RISD would have to do to improve its ratings next year. And why I'm not sure it's a good idea.