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  2. That's correct. Mustangs definitely have a chance.
  3. These two teams share a common opponent. Both have played Center. Madisonville beat Center 68-44 and 55-36. Silsbee beat Center 70-18.
  4. But both those losses were still during football. Hoping that was a different team early in the season. Think we can take this.
  5. Always a chance. Hudson is tough but definitely getable. Mustangs will be one of the more athletic teams Hudson has faced this year. The key to me for WO-S is how well they shoot the three. They have a couple of common opponents. Hamshire-Fannett and PCA. Hudson beat both while WO-S lost to both.
  6. Lamar survives a scare in the 8th inning before hanging on to win 5-3. Next at ranked Texas A&M before returning home next weekend to start conference play against UTRGV.
  7. Any chance for an upset here?
  8. This is why Cornyn needs to go. This is why Cornyn WILL go! Vote Paxton!
  9. These are the four that I am interested in order: Huntington vs. East Chambers Hardin-Jefferson vs. Wheatley Livingston vs. Mickey Leland Baytown Sterling vs. La Porte That Huntington/EC game could have some residual from their game earlier this season.
  10. Today
  11. @thetragichippy knows. He and I usually agree on quite a bit. I'm surprised he likes the government involvement in rate setting. There's a good example of the differences between a conservative and a libertarian. One wants to control a social behavior based on their own moral values. (Even though it's an admirable desire.) The other doesn't.
  12. That’s an overreach… but i do like having a health department around to make sure that things are sanitary around those restaurants… food temps, extermination schedules , etc. But I doubt the guy who’s forced to buy a permit, then gets fined/shut down by the health department feels the same way.
  13. So, you think it's win for the government to involve themselves in private business? Is it also a great idea for them to tell restaurants what they can serve, and how much people can eat because folks love the food so much they eat too much and have health issues?
  14. Probably not that much. Similar geographic area. Would depend on labor and flood/natural disaster ratings since y'all are right together more I would think. But, people also forget, your locale's fire protection rating also has a major impact. If your city's insurance is cheaper (the insurance they actually buy for themselves as a municipality) because of the way they have their fire stations located, it would have an effect on your personal insurance. This could also affect your rebuild costs. That's another reason it would be almost impossible to have exactly the same tax rates. Not totally impossible. But very rare, as no two houses are exactly the same. Individual credit ratings are another differentiator if using replacement value as appraised value, since part of your insurance cost to rebuild is based on your credit rating.
  15. Amen!
  16. Stafford in round 3 would be an absolute tough matchup
  17. Are construction costs different in Port Neches than they are in Port Arthur?
  18. Unfortunately I don’t think so
  19. I'm lost. If the replacement cost is different, the tax bill would be different. If your land floods, and his doesn't, replacement costs wouldn't be the same. Insurance requirements to rebuild would be different.
  20. That was exactly my scenario. Same exact house. Greatly differing values, same tax bill.
  21. You are obviously very unaware of how construction estimating works. The prices are based on local areas as I've mentioned. The only way for the taxes to be the same--other than sheer chance--is if the exact same house was built in the exact same area, using the exact same materials, the exact same labor, and the exact same logistical costs. The scenario I described does occur. Drive up to Lower Greenville area in DFW. All you see now is McMansions filled with yuppies. Every so often, you'll see a nice, older home. But, not too often at all.
  22. I honestly think the 10% cap on credit cards is a great idea. The point about they would only give cc’s to people with high credit scores that had less of a risk to pay it back and not to people who have bad credit scores is a win for the bank! The truth is, it is a win for customers who get credit cards, go crazy and spend more than they can afford…. There’s also a way around that, limit risk by limiting exposure. The person that got a $2000 credit card limit with 30% interest, now gets an $800 credit limit at 10%. As for mortgages and taxes….it is typically not the loan that gets you, it’s the taxes and insurance that consistently goes up. I’ve always wanted a house on the water, but flood alone was $3900 a year….add windstorm and fire policy, along with taxes, that would add almost $1000 a month to your mortgage
  23. The trade deficit was down 0.2% in 2025, not down ‘78%’ Trump lied again. THE UNITED STATES TRADE DEFICIT HAS BEEN REDUCED BY 78% BECAUSE OF THE TARIFFS BEING CHARGED TO OTHER COMPANIES AND COUNTRIES,” the all-caps post began
  24. I hope they nail Clinton,Andrew, Prince, Diddy, R.Kelly The pudding man and anybody else you want to throw in there.
  25. There's no difference! Clinton needs to go down. Hopefully Prince Andrews was just the first to fall.
  26. Here are the problems with your scenario… I’ve got a friend that just looked at a 1.8 acre lot in Evergreen, Texas yesterday morning. New subdivision, concrete streets, underground utilities, HEAVILY restricted. The price for this 1.8 acre lot is $149k. If I give a 1/4 acre off of the east end of my place on a dirt road that floods to my kid and he builds the same exact house as my buddy, they’d be taxed the same under your plan, even though my kid’s house is literally worth a fraction of what my buddy’s would be worth. Not to point fingers, but a small, remodeled, frame house in the city of Groves would have the same insurable value as one on the west side of port Arthur that hasn’t seen a coat of paint in 25 years and sits in the middle of a few abandoned, burned down structures. Homes in Lum sell for completely different prices than houses in Kountze, despite their relative closeness. Neighborhoods matter in terms of affordability and value… your model calculates value on the price of lumber used to build the thing, while ignoring the actual value of the entire property. It’s not fair or equitable in my opinion. if your value is too high, file a protest with the CAD this spring. Round up your documentation as to what you believe it’s worth, and see what happens. Unfortunately, most people realize that homes in their area are going for much higher prices than they believed. One of my gripes is that the values are set based on sales prices… but that final sales prices usually includes thousands in repairs/upgrades to make the thing marketable, plus the 6% that’s going to pay the real estate agent(s) and often times it still includes the closing cost assistance that sellers give to buyers. Why are we all being taxed every year based upon sales prices that include the costs to market/sell the properties that sold down the street? It’s a legit gripe. My opinion is that a number that exists about 8-10% below the final sales prices of comparable sales should be used to establish appraised values for homes that haven’t sold in a couple of years. When you buy, your taxable value would stay static until your market value as determined by the Cad rose was 10% higher than your purchase price… then you’d start the ride upwards. Quite simply put, I don’t believe that the scenario you described occurs. Nobody is being taxed and fee’d out of their houses so that cities can improve their tax base. Municipalities move at the speed of glaciers. If some urban planner got the bright idea to raze a whole neighborhood and put in new housing, it would take years to get approval, legal fights, etc. What it sounds like to me is that your kinfolk had a property that wasn’t very well-maintained, while others around it were… subsequently they sold for ever-increasing prices while your kinfolks’ property sat needing paint, a roof, etc. Unfortunately those comparable sales are what is used to establish property values (and subsequent taxable values). Cities do have ordinances that require you to maintain your property. If you neglect your property, one of the last tools that the city has is to levy fines for violating city ordinances. There was a news story about two weeks ago about a house on 32nd street in groves that’s finally about to be cleaned up after years of neglect, complaints, etc… the entire yard is covered in used tires, appliances, etc. Some people would argue that the property owner has a right to do whatever he wants on his/her own little slice of Heaven. But I also bet that they wouldn’t want to live next door to the guy, either, based on the sight, smells, vermin, fire hazards, etc…. It’s an imperfect system, but to my way of thinking, it’s better than most of the alternatives, but it could use some tweaks.
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