He’s got my vote

Drew Marzullo will seek reelection. If you don’t know Drew, you should. He does old fashioned constituent work and I don’t mean Chicago style, just that he’s the official to approach when you can’t seem to wring an answer out of anyone else in town government. Drew listens – he’s been trying, for instance, to get the opposing sides of the Cos Cob synagogue together, at least to talk, and doesn’t seem to have any particular political axe to grind. For a Democrat, he’s almost respectable.

Plenty of time between now and next year to decide, of course, but keep an eye out for news reports on Drew and I believe you’ll see what I mean – a good man to have in our government.

Having voted for it, liberal Democrats find out what’s in ObummerKare and they don’t like it

 

 

So THAT’S what in it!

18 Democrat Senators ask Harry Reid to please defer implementation of the Obama excise tax on medical devices. Turns out, innovative medical device manufacturers employ tens of thousands of workers and because they’re mostly start ups, don’t have the profits to absorb a 2.3% penalty on gross receipts. In fact, that amount exceeds the profits. Obumpski had argued that the afflicted companies could make up in volume what they lost on individual sales but someone got through to these 18 clowns and explained basic economics 101 to them.

 

Too late, fools, the party’s just begun.

 

It’s awards time in Wally World

Bestest Urinal Cake Polisher November, 2012

A reader sends along a link to a Greenwich-Post reprint of a press release that seems from the header (the link itself is broken) to pertain to the monthly announcement of still more triumphs of local realtors. Real estate firms put this crap out, of course, to get their own name in their captive advertising vehicles – that would be both the Greenwich Post and the Greenwich Time – and to let their agents enjoy a brief millisecond of recognition. When I worked at Raveis, we’d get awards like “Listing Agent of the month” for listing one cheap rental, because that’s all the Old Greenwich office generated that month, or “Salesperson of the Month” or “Exceptional Customer Service” or “Tidiest Picker-upper of the Month”, and so forth. The idea is to find something nice to say about everyone in the office and cobble up a press release noting that you’ve done so.

Most firms engage in this nonsense and I long ago suggested to Fudrucker that we do it too. There are just two of us here in Greenwich at the International World Headquarters of Lockwood & Mead, “The Oldest Names in Greenwich Real Estate”, so my idea was that one month I’d present Francis with the “Salesman of the Month Award” while he in turn would bestow the “Chairman’s Award” on me. We’d switch roles every thirty days but we’d keep those press releases going, full time.

Fuddyrucker liked the idea but we’ve both been kind of busy lately and haven’t gotten around to it. Apparently, some of the other offices in town don’t have that problem.

Another land sale on Riverside’s Hearthstone

View from 116 Lockwood Rd (photo may have been digitally remastered)

It must the season to erase the founding settlers of Riverside, because here’s another property occupied by its original owner since it was built in 1957. 116 Lockwood (corner of Lockwood and Hearthstone) has an accepted offer. Asking price since last August was $1.275 million and I assume it’s selling for somewhere near there. Why a hundred thousand less than the by-now-standard Hearthstone/Bramble/Druid price of $1.4? I’d guess because, despite the listing’s description of this land as “level”, only a Swiss mountaineer could consider it such. Nothing a bulldozer can’t and won’t cure, but there’s work to be done here.

This will make approximately the 12th $3.4 million new house being built in this tiny triangle. Which will run out first, available teardowns or buyers in the $3.4 range? Wait and see.

What? Realtors gild the road apple even out west? I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked!

(No longer) Land of the Shoshone, $7.5 million

The Wall Street Journal has an article on hunting “camps” for hunters this morning and I’d say that someone was pulling a city slicker reporter’s leg. Of course, who pays prices like these except corporate city slickers who can charge the whole expense off to their shareholders (no, those shareholders are very much not invited to visit), and what do they know from Bullwinkle?

In any event, despite encompassing what a New York City denizen might consider a limitless swath of wilderness, 240 acres is not large enough to hold what the realtor promises will be  “mountain elk, mule deer, antelope and rhinoceroses” (I added that last bit of fauna, but you get the idea). The dudette ranch is in Cody, Wyoming, and close to Grand Teton National Park (where hunting is for all practical purposes forbidden) so it’d be a wonderful spot to hang out – hell, I’d like to live there permanently- but for hunting, either plan on using the surrounding public lands with all the rest of the hoi polloi or better yet, save your money and go on guided hunting trips every year for $10,000 per for the next 750 years.

But if you do buy this place, remember to invite me out next fall.

A time to bargain?

78 Doubling Road is now being sold by a relocation company, so presumably the original owner has been paid whatever he was due and now there’s a property on the books of a relocation company that has no use for it. The new price is the same as the old price: $6.5 million, but I’d think it’s more negotiable now – I don’t know that, but the bean counter at the Relo has no particular skin in the game so ….. This house sold new, by the way, for $8.6 million in 2007, which serves as a cautionary tale about buying at the exact height of a market.