The Importance of Bored[sic] Meetings

In about a half hour I will be doing an endorsement interview for the Long Beach Board of Education elections on May 18. I did one earlier with the challenger and now I’m just killing time until I give the incumbent a call.

I admit that prior to working at the Herald, I had no interest in what was happening within a particular school district. Honestly, I still have no interest, but I do see the importance of being in the know. You can’t complain about the canceling of a program, the closing of a school or the approval of a teachers contract if you don’t keep yourself informed.

Most school districts do a couple of board meetings a month and they are the most boring thing you could ever put yourself through. Unless there is a particular issue that invokes some sort of community uprising, like the closing of a school, most of these meetings are uneventful and could go long into the night.

These meetings do provide the information a resident needs to make solid decisions when it comes to voting for a budget, bond or board trustee, but most often these meetings are sparsely attending with most of the audience consisting of district staff.

Since Long Beach are the only meetings I go to (because the nature of my work doesn’t really give me the opportunity to go to my own district meetings) I can’t really vouch for other districts, but I find it incredibly irritating when a crowd of parents show to up to watch their kids get a certificate for some wonderful thing they did, then leave once the presentation is over.

It’s irritating because A) I wanna go home toooooo!!!! and B) despite how much you love your child, his or her honoring at a board meeting is not the most important thing happening and you should probably stick around for the actual meeting. You are going to be the first one to complain when the board makes a decision you don’t approve of.

If you’re lucky enough to have a hyper-local newspaper that does extensive coverage of the meetings, then the next best thing is to at least read the paper. But, your best bet is to go to the actual meeting since not all papers cover the meeting. While I head to every Long Beach board meeting, I don’t write a story about the meeting itself and usually take the information to write a much larger story. We have too much news and too little space to sum up a boring meeting into 500 boring words.

Now that many of my friends are buying homes and planning families, I hope that they will suck it up and attend a night of torture that are school board meetings (city council, village board or town council should also be attended for the same reasons). You’ll probably feel like you just wasted two hours of your life that you’ll never get back, but when elections come along, you won’t have to rely on your local newspaper to tell you who to vote for. You can make your own educated decision.

No…well, some…regrets

I generally live my life with no regrets. I know that all the mistakes I’ve made and paths I’ve chosen helped me become the person I am today; A person that, inside, I’m generally pretty happy with. But, I am lying when I say I have no regrets, because I do.

My first regret is taking my high school figure for granted and not doing all that I could to stay as trim as I was (Ehh, maybe plus a few pounds, I was pretty frail). I was given a second chance when I was 10 pounds away from my goal weight after graduating Manhattanville. Instead of hitting the gym, I hit McDonalds and have been watching my waistband slowly increase since. Sounds pretty vain, but in the end, I’m unhappy with the way I look, I’m self-conscious and instead of having 10 extra pounds to lose I have….much more.

My next regret was only taking my mother’s financial advice half to heart. My mother used her powers of Italian Catholic guilt to make me feel bad about using my credit card without the means to pay the balance in full when the bill came due. Too bad for Capital One, since they didn’t make a dime of interest off me until two years ago.

That’s not to say that I didn’t spend my money. I did. I really couldn’t tell you what it was on either. I didn’t party in college so I didn’t really drink it away and I’m not much of a shopaholic so my closet wasn’t exactly overflowing. I made a few, and paid for, a few trips to and from Virginia when I was in a long distance relationship, but one year of flying SouthWest doesn’t account for the thousands of dollars I can’t account for.

Despite talk of saving money for a new car all through college, I never actually did and when my Escort died I had to borrow money from my parents for the down payment. I never really made that much, but I should have been able to put away a decent amount of my paycheck.

Sorry, I’m getting to my point.

Now I’m here at 27 years old, itching to head out of state, but my modest savings isn’t enough to make the trip without being employed. I ignored my mother all those times she talked about my IRA and how I could use it to buy a house one day and now that times are ripe to purchase a new home, I’m pretty short the required amount to actually use that investment.

Sure, hindsight is 20/20 and had I known I’d be in the this position 10 years ago I would have thought twice about making all those purchases I can’t remember. Maybe I needed to be irresponsible to learn the value of being responsible, but had I just been responsible in the first place, I’d be writing this blog from an apartment in North Carolina.

Real Estate Reality TV Junkie

I’ve been an HGTV junkie since October.

When my friend Katie bought her co-op in Mamaroneck, she said she used the network’s design shows as inspiration to transform her fixer upper into the amazing place it is today.  Being that I’ve been thinking about having my own place around the clock for about a year now, I decided to turn the network on as background while getting ready at my hotel in Hershey Park.

And I became hooked.

Now, I watch episode after episode of House Hunters, Property Virgins, My First Place and What You Get For the Money. I also get inspiration from the design shows, but being that I don’t actually have a place to decorate, I find myself more emotionally invested in the shows geared toward real estate.

Between the personal experiences of my friends and watching this network non-stop, I’ve learned more in six months about home ownership than I have my entire life. I think most of this zest for property comes from my burning desire to own – or at least rent – some of my own.

We could buy one of these historic homes that are for sale, but I'm afraid if I buy an old house it'll be haunted.

Through some chatting between myself and a friend and then my friend with her Realtor, I was contacted by a Realtor in North Carolina offering her services when Chuck and I finally make a move. (HOLY CRAP this is getting so serious I’m talking to Realtors [insert freak out here]) Initially, we figured we’d rent for a year or two so we’re not tied down in case we decide we absolutely hate southern living (not likely and worse case scenario we could rent said house to pay for rent here on LI).

I brought up the topic with my parents, who have finally decided to keep their thoughts about moving in before marriage to themselves. I told my mother we planned on saving the money by renting. Fiscally minded before traditionally Catholic, she said we would be stupid not to buy a place immediately, if we could afford it. She pointed out that with home prices being at a low and financial assistance being available, if we wait, prices will rise and assistance might not be there. In the end it becomes a wash and we save nothing.

Maybe something a little smaller for our starter home.

The idea of purchasing our first place within a few months of moving shot to the forefront of my mind and fueled my desire to DVR every episode of My First Place. Before making the decision to head south as soon as possible, even talking about home ownership was a depressing thought.

How much for a three bedroom?

$12,000 a year for taxes?

Electric is going up again?

While my friends have been able to purchase their own homes on Long Island, the option just isn’t there for Chuck and me. We’re both okay with that and now with newly restored hope and optimism we’re thinking about the new place we’re ready to call home.