James' TV Debut

...okay actually the title of this blog post is a lie. Few people actually know this, but my hubby has actually been on TV before. A few years ago James and his family went on a family vaca to California, and went to a live taping of The Price is Right. While James wasn't a contestant, he was seated on the front row and the camera panned by him multiple times. He also may or may not have pretended he was friends with the guy who won, jumping on the stage, cheering and celebrating enthusiastically at the end of the show. We have it on tape if you don't believe me. Its pretty humorous.

But this post is about James' most recent 15 minutes 15 seconds of fame. Like many Dekalb County property owners, we received our property tax bill in the mail the other day. Because the property taxes are paid out of our mortgage escrow account, we didnt pay much attention to it. Then emails started circulating on our neighborhood listserve about the land and structure values being switched from last year. Example:

2010 Land Value $60,000
2010 Home Value $150,000

2011 Land Value $150,000
2011 Home Value $60,000

It seemed a bit strange, so James being the nerd he is, contacted the 11 Alive Investigative Reporter. Bill Liss from chanel 6 actually called back and said he wanted to interview him! Anyway, here is the link to the news story, in case anyone is interested in watching:

http://www.11alive.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=201954

It was pretty exciting to see my handsome hubby on TV, event though they didn't really solve the issue at hand. Just for the record, Dekalb County gave conflicting information. They issued an official statement (in writing) saying that it was a computer glitch, but then the Tax Assessor that they interview on the video gives a different reason for the switch. Overall, we aren't super worried about it because our bottom line tax bill isnt drastically effected. We just thought it was a bit strange. Bill Liss called James the other day saying there may be a follow up story next week, because he wasn't pleased with the answer either. Also... James and Bill are BFF now.