Current Real Estate Market

The real estate market in the Meadows is poised for its Spring movement. We have 27 homes for sale and the average asking price is $895,319, the average size is 3,795 square feet, and the average dollar per square foot figure is $273.

The lowest listed home is $485,000, and 9 of the 27 homes that are listed are at or above $1 million dollars.

The most recent Meadows market perspective is this: Many homes that have recently gone into Pending have subsequently fallen out of escrow because of a failure to attain loans. People are willing to pay prices for homes for which either they, or the home is not qualified according to the Lenders.

Future Calender Events

April 16 – Food Drive at the Meadow Lake Golf Course from, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Call Gwen Herbert at 751-1857

May 4 -- Gift Bag Assembly 9 a.m. at Gwen Herbert’s home, (11025 Meadow Glen Way East) 751-4095

June 14 – Flag Day Ceremony at the Meadows Community Center (Pavilion), 751-1857

Goodbye to Perry and Opal Mills

I rise to invoke personal privilege, to say my personal good bye to Perry Mills, a (very) friendly competitor. This community will miss him. Seldom frowning, even when he was physically hurting, Perry is a Prince of a Man.

His friends will gather to say goodbye at the Pavilion on Saturday, March 26, 2-4 p.m. Please join us.

When Jean and I moved to the Meadows more than 10 years ago, we bought our home from Perry...and I hung my license in his office for several years while I was inactive in real estate. I acted as Perry's marketing arm, pro bono, for years, then he worked for me in Hidden Meadows Realty for several years.

He and his wife came to dinner many years ago and his lovely wife, Opal, broke her hip in our living room. I offered to pay for her care, or to have my insurance take care of his bills -- he refused the offer with a wave: "I sold this home to you...I should have warned her about that step. I knew about that step."

He was always the nicest man, and honest beyond reproach. An old-fashioned hones man in a less-than-honest modern world.

He helped me open the office next to his, and when our office was not quite ready, he left on vacation and brought me the key to his office: "Use my office, my telephones, my computer, and my files...every dollar you generate from my office is all yours."

That is the attitude of a friend, not a competitor. When he ran into computer problems, I helped him and finally placed him on my wireless network without charge.

This is the passing of an era in the Meadows. Perry will be missed.

Coming Events

Coming Events:Four Corners of The Meadows Tour - For many years, the HiddenMeadows Newcomers Club has sponsored a tour of The Meadows. The tour is open to newcomers and those who have lived for a long time. The tour for 2005 will be held on Saturday, April 9 at 9 a.m. and again at 1 p.m. It will start from The Pavilion. Visits are made to the south, the far east, and northern view spots. If you would like to attend, reserve your spot by calling Cliff Krueger at 749-3999.

Sing-along Party: The next Sing-along Party will be April 15 at 7 p.m. at ThePavilion, sponsored by ARO. Everyone is welcome. You can sit and listen to the music you love or you can sing along with the “karaoke” style recordings and lyrics. Lots of fun! Reservations not needed. Mark your calendar ahead. These parties will be held the third Friday of every month.

Escondido (and North County) School Analysis

Apparently, we have attained Lake Woebegone status, where all children are above average!

Reporting on the latest API scores, the North County Times page one headlines above the fold proclaim, “Most North County students outpacing their peers on test scores.”

That certainly is placing the best face on the actual numbers. When it comes to “ranking,” the experts are on the sports page where statistics are a way of life. I do not recall any headline saying “Padres above average” – because in all sports the criteria is comparison against the best. The Padres, Chargers, whomever, are x number of games behind the best. Being “above average” or even “above .500” is a feel-good aside, and absolutely meaningless.

The average in California education is none too good by every measure, so being “better than average” is a measurement against a highly diminished standard.

In the one page of statistical data of North County schools, the “best” is the Gold Standard set by the Poway Unified School District (PUSD). The PUSD is not the best school district in the state – not even the highest scoring school district in the County – but overall in North County it probably is the best we have. (Actually Del Mar Union and San Dieguito Union High both are perfect on exceeding the announced numerical standard, but they are much
smaller.)

Comparing other school districts against the PUSD is a simple mathematical matter because the State has declared a school API score of 800 as the minimum goal for every school in California. PUSD has 29 regular schools, of which 27 exceed the 800 standard. The Escondido Union High and Elementary districts combined have 25 regular schools, of which only five exceed the 800 standard. Vista’s combined regular schools number 23, of which only two exceed the 800 standard. Oceanside has 24 regular schools, and only five exceed the 800 minimum standard. At the top end of the smaller districts, San Dieguito Union High District has seven regular schools and all seven exceed the 800 standard, while Del Mar Union Elementary has six regular schools and not only do all six exceed 800, but five of them exceed 900! (1,000 is “perfect.”)

At the bottom end of the small school district scale is Valley Center/Pauma Unified and the Ramona City Unified, with seven and eight regular schools respectively. The Ramona district has one school above the 800 mark; Valley Center/Pauma has none.

There is a lot of chaff placed in the statistics as a bow to political correctness, and there are separate scores and rankings “adjusted” for socio-economic and ethnic factors. Again, turning to the sports pages for guidance, sports and business each representing more “real life” experiences than does academia, it is easy to determine that PC scoring is pap. Sports rankings are not scored in baseball by factoring in bad childhood, or English-speaking. Fortune 500 rankings are not adjusted for ethnic hiring.

No one adjusts…just academia.

The pure numbers are there for anyone to see, but, admittedly, most people will only read the headlines – and headlines do not always represent the impact of any article, and in some cases an article does not represent the facts. Journalists are not necessarily experts in education (or anything else), and almost certainly are not experts in reading statistical reviews – particularly statistical reviews encumbered with ethnic and socio-economic garbage.

I urge everyone to read the numbers, and not take the spin assigned by whatever educator happens to be within earshot. There are always people who can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig. Remember that there are good schools in bad districts, and bad schools in good districts.

In the end, your child only attends one school, and there are many criteria by which to select that school. API numbers are only one criteria, but it is a useful shorthand to assess one measurable aspect of the selection analysis.

The Median Strip Mess

The Median Strip Committee, populated by the leaders of the major Meadows Organizations, and under the leadership of Faye Elliott is working hard to "fix" the medians. They have raised $24,000 but have faced insurmountable delays caused by the County, the blasting of the new sewer line to the Brouwer Nursery subdivision, and the several submitted landscaping plans.

The current intention is to get the Meadow Glen Way East median completed as soon as a landscape plan is approved by the Committee, because the Mountain Meadow Road median is still being blasted.

It seems that the Panama Canal was built in less time than the sewer connection to the Brouwer Nursery, and that is a current problem. Fortunately, a local resident, Mr. Argleben from Mountain Lilac Road, has twice cut the grass on the median as a volunteer, or we would be in much worse shape than we are.

There is light at the end of the tunnel – but the median project appears to be six more months to completion. That will be followed by a "Landscaping and Lighting District" community vote that, if passed, with add $25 a year (or less) to local tax bills for the maintenance of the completed median project.

There are still questions to be resolved – like how to berm the projects to keep idiot drivers from driving on the medians and breaking sprinkler heads – but the Committee is working as quickly as possible. Anyone who has worked with Faye knows that she could lead a five-person party into hell and put the fires out…

Tech Help on the Radio

Leo Laporte "The Tech Guy" on KFI (640 a.m.), Los Angeles, is simply the best technology person on radio...although Kim Komando is the prettiest, by far.

Kim limits herself to computers, but Leo ranges far and wide…TiVo, networking, plasma and LCD TV, you name it. Kim seems to get more basic calls, but Leo is more technically competent and gets calls on some fairly esoteric subjects.

"The Tech Guy" is on every Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. and he is simply terrific. You can check http://www.komando.com/ for when and where Kim is on…she is not on a San Diego station except at 5 a.m. on weekdays, but there may be a Los Angeles, Long Beach, or Las Vegas station that you can receive on weekends.

"The Tech Guy" should satisfy your need for a technology fix. I am seriously considering buying Radio Replay, a software package ($29.95) that will "TiVo" his radio show just in case I must miss it.Yes, he is that good! Beginner or expert -- you will learn a lot!

A New and Very Different San Diego Newspaper

There is a new Sheriff in town! Not that kind of Sheriff, and let’s just say "town" is a metaphor. It’s the entire San Diego county.

It’s a new newspaper, but more importantly it is a new kind of newspaper.
Neil Morgan is the Managing Editor…and you can’t get better than that!

www.voiceofsandiego.org is only an on-line newspaper – there is no print copy. Starting with a new concept means starting without baggage and bureaucracy, and obviously it means less start-up costs because printing and distribution are the largest cost of a newspaper.

www.voiceofsandiego.org will put its money into bright writing and broad coverage. Without the space limitations of the printed page, columns and articles are invited from a broader audience – and several of my columns are already scheduled for production. These columns will be different from the regular business and economic columns I publish in the San Deigo Business Journal.

Great Educational Website

The Internet is now growing as a great educational tool, and this is one of the best sites I have seen: http://www.animatedatlas.com/movie.html . It runs as a 10 minute movie, so turn on the sound. I commend it to your school-age children/grandchidren, but you may not remember some of it from your youth...

Ready to go public

This is my final "tune up" blog before going public. I regret the long address but that seems to be "normal" so I will announce. I will solicit information from the Fire Council, the Maven-in-Charge of the Median Strips, and others for "news" commencing tomorrow. Please send in information or comments...this only works if you participate.

Music in the Meadows

Our Meadows topography does not lend itself to good radio reception, and many of us have to depend upon the internet for radio reception. Among the latest stations available is Jazz 88.3 online at http://www.jazz88online.org/ . The station is sponsored by the San Diego Community College System, and features swing music from the 30s, 40s and 50s. If you have decent speakers on your computer, and enjoy music, you can improve your reception immensly on the Net. For classical music, I recommend http://www.xlnc1.org/ (they display the name of the music playng on-screen as it is played, as well as upcoming pieces), and for talk radio I use
http://www.kfi640.com/interactive/streaming.html as my LA talk station, and http://www.kogo.com/main.html for San Diego talk artists.

Real Estate Roundup

On March 5, there were 25 homes for sale in the Meadows...an inventory well below the historic average for this time of year. The average $/s.f value ($275) has been stuck in the Meadows for many months, and we have a disproportionate number of homes listed at $1 million or more. There are six million dollar homes listed, five in the Meadows and one in Rimrock. The average asking price of the listed homes is $873,038.

Welcome

This is an effort to exchange information within Hidden Meadows, so you are welcome to post your comments, questions, or recommendations. Unfortunately, our community only has a monthly newspaper, so much of the information available is outdated before we read it -- this blog is dedicated to passing information more quickly. When I am not available, there will be another Moderator.