REEVALUATING REVALUING

As an out-of-state resident and a new owner of a shorefront property in a small town in west-central Maine, I read with earnest your article (“A taxing situation,” Aug. 15) concerning the problems with the revaluation of similar property in Cumberland. Our small town has also voted to revalue our property and approximately half of the property consists of seasonal and year-round shorefront property on two small lakes. Due to the small size of the town (945 year-round residents in 2000), we can not afford to hire a full-time reval company and are attempting to do much of the work through volunteers and questionnaires sent to the property owners. Since I am one of the only property owners with appraisal experience, I have volunteered to help.

I am keenly aware of the shortcomings of valuing waterfront property both by reval companies and by local assessors in both New Hampshire and Maine and am offering some possible suggestions for solutions in the future. First, there is no question that both lakefront and oceanfront property values in Maine and other locations within a three-hour drive from Boston have increased dramatically these past five years, far in excess of similar property without shorefrontage. In fact, the town where my property is located is facing an especially difficult time due to the fact that the waterfront property is the only property that has increased in value over the last several years with other property showing little if any increase.

One thing a community must resist doing is hiring an out-of-state firm with little or no experience in valuing shorefront property. Another factor peculiar to Maine, which was a real problem in Cumberland, is that the state apparently allows only the most recent sales to be used in computing values instead of taking an average of the prior two or three years. This practice can result in distorted values as a major and possible temporary spike in values will be overemphasized. Both Massachusetts and New Hampshire prohibit using any sale which occurs within one year prior to the date of the revaluation for use in valuing property but instead use an average of sales occurring between one and three years before which tends to give lower but often more defensible values. Some enabling legislation should be filed in Augusta to change the law here in Maine with regard to the residential property.

Another aspect that communities ought to be aware of is the tendency of some local realtors to price shorefront property much too high when they are trying to sell to out-of-state buyers that come from high-priced areas such as Boston or New York. This practice is more common than local residents realize and is widespread throughout the lakes and oceanfront towns in Cumberland and York Counties. I deal with these problems frequently in my work in New Hampshire and I had to deal with it when I started to look for a summer home three years ago. I became so disenchanted with this situation that I finally decided to skip the Portland area altogether and look further north in Androscoggin and Oxford Counties where one can get the same lakefront property for half the price with only a drive of 45 minutes more maximum.

It would appear that some local investigating as to the actions of both the real estate sales and appraising profession with regard to this matter is in order and any misrepresentations should be reported to the appropriate licensing authorities in Augusta.

Thomas E. Novak

Peabody, MA

GO GARRITY

Do the people of District 31 want to be represented by someone long in ideals but short on experience, or by someone long in ideals, accomplishments, and experience? Against his opponents “new ideas and real solutions” (Phoenix letters, Aug. 23, 2002), let’s look at David Garrity’s values and how they are reflected in his record of public service.

David Garrity has long supported universal access to healthcare via a single-payer system. Like many of us, he supported and worked for Portland’s successful health-care referendum. In the early ’90s Garrity supported Dale McCormick’s “Single Buyer” bill. In 1995, Garrity fought hard against a bill to allow Blue Cross Blue Shield to convert from a charitable to a mutual institution as he recognized this as a first step to the sale of the company. The following year, as a member of the Maine People’s Alliance’s Health Education & Action Project, he was a leader in the fight to stop Maine Med and Blue Cross from creating a for-profit HMO that would have used nonprofit public assets to create a health-care monopoly that excluded Mercy Hospital. Just over a year ago, as President of the Maine Lesbian and Gay Political Alliance, Garrity worked closely with Rep. Ben Dudley to draft and pass a law that requires health-insurance companies to offer all employers and individuals the chance to buy policies with coverage for domestic partners. In that same session, he worked with Rep. Larry Bliss to pass a law giving equal hospital visitation rights to domestic partners.

A longtime worker for human rights, Garrity has also been a key player in the struggle to thwart much repressive anti-gay legislation.

On the local level, Garrity has been active with the group working to found the Irish Heritage Center in the former St. Dominic’s Church in Portland. Back in 1996, he was active in the effort to block Mercy Hospital from demolishing residential properties for more parking. Recently, Garrity attended meetings and hearings on the city’s new housing plan, advocating strongly for much more subsidized housing. Over the last couple of years, Garrity has also attended many of the public meetings regarding Oceangate and has convincingly argued that moving of the Scotia Prince to the east end of the waterfront is a very bad idea.

This small slice of Garrity’s political biography illustrates the value of being represented by someone who is not only able articulate and initiate action to implement good ideas, but who is someone smart enough to recognize a bad idea, and work against it, no matter how positively it is packaged.

The voters of District 31, who in the past have sent remarkable people to represent them in Augusta, will be well served by an outstanding Democratic activist, David Garrity.

Sive Neilan

Portland

A COMICS REBUTTAL

I understand that gay rights is probably one of Michael Bronski’s pet issues, but his article (“Comic Relief,” Aug. 30) about gay issues in the comic industry seems to forgo facts to further his own opinions. His assertion that the current controversy over Green Lantern is a “complete replay of the anti-comic-book hysteria that gripped the country in 1954” is laughable. In the ’50s, comics were a huge entertainment source for children. Sales of single issues were in the millions. Then Frederic Wertham came along and altered the business forever. His book was hugely successful and despite the rather spurious nature of its content, he instituted a sea change in the funnybooks. The whole of the industry shifted from the horror and crime books that were presently in vogue and whole companies disappeared. Other companies started self-censoring their content under the “comics code.” Sales dropped precipitously.

To compare the events of the 1950s to the current minor flap over Green Lantern is to greatly overstate the importance of the latter and diminish that of the former. The rantings of one easily-ignored right-wing group do not a hysteria make. As for the homoerotic subtext of comics, well, that is of course a matter of opinion, but it is interesting that Bronski comes down to agreement with a raving right-wing advocate of censorship (Wertham) on the matter. While Bronski chooses to view characters such as Batman and Robin as “the wish fulfillment of two homosexuals living together,” I think that is rather ignoring the audience for which comics of the day were intended: children. If you could strip away the things which young boys traditionally abhor (parents, school, girls, rules, structure) you’d be left with what Batman and Robin had. Perhaps the comic creators of their time were simply creating the wish fulfillment of two young boys living together, free from the annoyances of their lives.

Mr. Bronski might want to look more closely at the heroes he terms as “Roosevelt liberals” crusading against racism. In the super-hero comics of the ’40s, the heroes were more likely to be battling racist caricatures of “Sambo” and “Tojo” than battling for them. The next time the Phoenix wants an article on comics, it might go to someone who has an interest in them and their history, not to someone with an agenda to further through the issue.

James Whitten

Wells

MORE ON WHITON

I understand not everyone cares for professional wrestling. Not everyone appreciates the athleticism of the performers or the long and storied history of the profession. It, like tattooing or comic books, is a little-respected, little-understood facet of Americana that has been with us since the turn of the century. But what is beyond me is why they had someone with little to no understanding of the sport itself go to an event and write an article on it. (“Assault in the Armory,” Aug. 30)

But all that aside, it’s one thing to be ignorant of something, but it’s entirely another to be so mean-spirited about it. Your piece was just dripping with upper-middle-class liberal condescension for the crowd at the EWA event. From your very first paragraph, with its use of “hillbilly” patois (“Git Him!”) to the end, the article’s sole objective seemed to be to paint the people who would attend an event like this as hopelessly low-class “trailer trash.”

Of course, the whole thing is totally homoerotic, too. Anything women don’t enjoy or understand obviously has some sort of gay subtext. These poor dumb hicks are just too idiotic to even understand their own man-lust, right? Classism is just as bad as racism, sexism, or homophobia. Perhaps for your next article you should do a feature on your favorite coffee shop to have erudite little conversations with all your well educated friends at, “world music,” or what your favorite program on NPR is. You know, something more your speed.

Eric Whitten

Wells

IT IS GOOFY

Just read your article (“Assault in the Armory,” Aug. 30) and, no, I’m not insulted at all. I wrestled for small promotions for nearly a decade. And I have to say that sometimes it really is goofy.

See, I was an athletic, skillful, and acrobatic type. I stuck with it for so long because everyone encouraged me to, considering I had the super-hero look to go with my skill. Well, after being put aside for so long and having to lose to the most unathletic, out-of-shape, or just simply no-skilled Rasslers, I decided that enough was enough. To me, it didn’t make any more sense. I worked hard to look like a wrestler only to witness that people wanna see some underdog goofball perform with limited skills.

I hated the Hulk Hogan-type wrestlers because I’m more into skill and not a big mouth that can’t do the simplest holds. There are guys who work hard and the pain is real as it looks sometimes. But, then again, the fans are the actual goofballs because they want stupidity over smarts. And another thing I hated is the fact that it’s always the bigger man that wins. I wish these morons would watch the U.F.C. or reality fighting, because the smaller guy always wins because of skill. Yeah, wrestling is about as goofy as those martial arts films.

David Whitten

Anderson, NC

SHOW OF SUPPORT

I am not a wrestler and never have wrestled with the EWA, nor have I ever seen a show. I am not even in the area of Portland, but it seems to me you are giving these boys a rough knock. (“Assault in the Armory,” Aug. 30) It takes a lot of training and a lot of brains to come up with a wrestling gimmick and be able to pull it off, so the fans will believe that it is real.

WWE (WWF) is a very enormous biz, why not allow our local Mainers the chance to see a show and enjoy it if possible without listening to people like you put them down? No, they haven’t been trained by the best WWE, or the top gyms, but their hearts are all in the right place. They all have a dream. My boyfriend is a wrestler, he wrestled with triple H many years ago, he has nine years of wrestling under his belt.

No, he is not the best wrestler. No, he is not the title holder. He is a man with a dream. His life revolves around wrestling, almost like someone dreaming someday of being a singer, or an actor. All these boys have the same dream, to be the best wrestler they can be.

Jamie Richardson

Winterport