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Square Pegs — News that doesn't fit anywhere else

In which my cynicism about Dallas County taxes is proven at least partially wrong

By Mike Orren

November 7, 2009

When April showed my the new-form Dallas County property tax statement we received this week, every one of my conspiracy-theory alarm bells went off. Instead of the usual envelope chock full of data and comparisons to prior years, it was a tiny postcard that told us what we owed; that the County had saved a precise $26,318 by going this route; and a myriad number of ways we could dig up the info that was in the old reports. I was enraged -- obviously, this was an attempt to obscure the faux tax increase that Texas Counties love to pull by raising the estimated value of your property and not the rate of your taxes. I seethed as I went online, relishing my upcoming performance at the DCAD offices and mentally writing my award-winning expose on how Dallas County was trying to pull a fast one... But then, as I pulled up the report from Dallas County -- a report that was less difficult to find than I would have imagined -- I discovered that they'd dropped our home value by 5% year-over-year and that our tax payment had actually decreased. Apparently economic realities have caught up even with tax appraisers. So now I have to wonder, how will our cash-strapped schools and public works be impacted by the $152 less they're getting from me this year?

Work In Progress — Like being a fly on the wall at PegNews.com World HQ

May 21, 2008: Harvesting the power of poop

By Catherine Cuellar

May 22, 2008

Chad is investigating the inner workings of Dean Foods' anaerobic digestor, a device that uses methane from manure to make electricity. McKinney Minnie this week profiles park and recreation director Lemuel Randolph. John is reviewing Errol Morris' new documentary Mister Lonely. Scott has wasted no time in his new post and will soon be interviewing Robbie Knievel.

Power Users — Tips and tricks to help you get the most out of Pegasus News

New video comment feature

By Mike Orren

May 6, 2008

Erin already covered this in the piece on the new Radiohead contest, but I thought I should also make an official announcement here: One of our relatively unique features has been allowing users, albeit only verified users, to post snips of code in their comments on the site. This usually means photo links or video embeds from YouTube or similar. We only allowed verified users to do so as a security measure to prevent anything that might goof up the site. However, we've now made it so any user can post YouTube videos in comments. And you don't even need to do the whole embed code. All you have to post is the URL of the video and we take care of the rest. So this: ...becomes this: Easy as pie. Note that this only works with YouTube for now. If you want to geek out with any of the other myriad video providers, you'll have to become verified. (Otherwise, we'd have to do individual programming for every new provider.)

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