Second St. Marys taxpayer's meeting was indeed "SRO".

Yep, standing room only, just as I predicted. The ranks swelled from last week's 50 to between 150 and 175. The fire marshal would have stroked out. Four people from the tax assessors office, including the chief tax assessor, one Rick Daniel, were brave enough to show up. Only Mr. Daniel spoke - well, mumbled. There's clearly part of the problem. It is painfully self-evident that our chief tax assessor is a feckless twit and should be replaced immediately, if not sooner. ostensibly, he was there to answer questions. He did not. In a scene reminiscent of what happened when Toto pulled back the curtain to reveal the Wizard of Oz, Daniel tried floating a hapless explanation that the web host had just been playing around with those numbers that everyone is so alarmed over and released them without authorization. That's why he had them removed. We were asked to believe that none of them had any basis in fact and that no properties - ZERO - have actually been reappraised yet. The firm they hired out of Augusta to do the job is still working on it. Get this: they were awarded a three year contract to "equalize" county tax valuations by visiting all 30 some odd thousand parcels personally. For this, they were awarded a contract for $115,000 for a three year process. Apparently, you really do get what you pay for. If it were exactly 30,000 parcels, that comes to the princely sum of $3.83 per visit. Hell, Girl Scouts selling cookies probably average better than that per property. Something is very wrong here. I'm told the clowns on the Board of Assessors are appointed by fellow GOBs on the grand jury. That would be the grand jury that praised Bill Smith for doing a bang up job. Who in the hell appoints the grand jury and what can we do to change it? Rindy Howell, who apparently is a local legislative liaison for State Senator Jeff Chapman, read a press release from Chapman. He is introducing some home rule legislation to try to get tax relief specifically for St. Marys homeowners. Watch the GTU and T&G. Commissioner Sears showed up to explain why she did not attend the first one (didn't know about it), but had cancelled her trip tonight to a very important St. Marys River cleanup meeting to show solidarity. It seems she is so concerned that she is having and early morning meeting with the county administrator at which they will both go on the record as being very concerned. Sandy Feller sat up front on a high bar stool off to the side of the organizers so that the uninformed might assume he was one of them. He did not speak. Many people got to a microphone and spoke passionately about he situation. One native of St. Marys, a 61 y/o former mill worker, was nearly overcome with emotion at the prospect losing his home. Michele Donini Bellisle was , well, Michele. Then there was this one ass, a Cauco -American male of about 45 or so, who obviously had a snout full, who apparently thought it would be a good idea to grab the mike and castigate folks for being rude to the tax assessor (they had not been) then proceeded to talk, in his heavy Yankee accent, about how he was damned tired of having been constantly told for the last ten years or so that he is not from here and that by God he wasn't going anywhere, paid his taxes, etc. Trust me: this guy was universally regarded as an obnoxious ass where ever he came from. When asked to give his name, as everyone else had done, he refused, saying something about they would just have to try to find him at his home. The he made some "tar and feather" remark. He finally realized -and just in the nick of time, that some of the locals were, understandably, just about to whip his ass on the spot. He slinked on off into the back part of the bar. There's white trash, and then there's Yankee white trash. I'm not sure where they will hold the next one of these things, but I'll try to be there.