Tax Foreclosure, Part II

Introducing Pat and Reuel. The husband/wife duo are the county's eyes, ears and hands when it comes to managing the tax foreclosed properties.

Their company secures the properties after the county takes possession of them. They do regular checks to ensure they're secure, in addition to all the maintenance (like lawn mowing.) Pat tours each one, making assessments and then recommendations to the county about what condition the property is in, as well as what is fit to feature for open house. On the years when the county hosts open houses, they fix up the interiors for show.

Pat and Reuel work between 10 and 14 hour days as the annual auctions draw closer. Both take their jobs very seriously, and feel a deep obligation to be good neighbors in the community. They were great to work with.

Thanks for looking.

Tax Foreclosure, Part I

This is the first part of an ongoing project I'm working on here at the Citizen Patriot. I'd wanted to do a project on the impact of foreclosure in our community for a while, but this March Holly Klaft approached me about doing a ride along with our county treasurer while she checked on properties acquired because of tax foreclosure.

Once we realized the instance of tax foreclosure was growing rapidly in our community and that few, if any, avenues of help were available to help those in need, we decided to expand the story into a project. Well, the first two stories ran Sunday and Monday. The links to the written stories are:

http://tinyurl.com/44lxvwy
http://tinyurl.com/3zsjrzc

There's also a video and a gallery of images, though I'll be posting a tighter edit here.

These images are from the house visits I did with Karen, our county treasurer. She tries to get around to each of the houses, particularly if there might still be people living in them.

Thanks for looking.

From the County Fair

Floydfest II

The adventure continues. . .

Floydfest

Finally got around to editing my photos from the road trip down to Floyd, VA. Marcus and I hopped into the mom van with Jeana and Dylan and made our way south for the music festival. These are a few frames from the first night of our trip, mostly from Ohio and West Virgina.

As always, thanks for looking.

Recent Work

A few images I've shot over the past week, including a salmon dish from a local restaurant, our annual Hot Air Jubilee and the midnight premier of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.

Thanks for looking

Belated Fourth of July

Marcus and I spent the Fourth of July with my parents in Grailing. We went canoeing, swimming, had a few lovely fires, took a trip to Hartwick Pines and went to a demolition derby. Good times indeed.

my job rocks my socks

Tuesday I was lucky enough to spend some time with a Tin Goose. The 1929 Ford Tri-Motor takes off, lands and cruses at a brisk 85 miles per hour. It was one of the first mass produced planes. This particular one used to make mail runs from Havana and Puerto Rico. Oh, and Johnny Depp also flew on it for Public Enemy.

Pretty swanky stuff.