More cool news, Propertize.ca (and myself) were featured in Ben Schmidt’s latest YouTube video on NB Property Taxes!
Check out the video below:
You can find more great information on Ben’s website – http://www.benschmidt.tv
Propertize.ca featured in more New Brunswick newspapers!
I did a quick search today, and I found a few more newspaper articles today where my website http://propertize.ca was featured!
Both the Times & Transcript and the Daily Gleaner featured the same article that appeared in the Telegraph-Journal on Friday.
It didn’t make the front page in these papers; but, it’s great to see it out there making news and getting people talking about the property tax assessment system in New Brunswick
I also made it into the news section on the PropelICT website.
I also love getting feedback from people using it – please keep sending it to me!
If you haven’t checked out Propertize.ca yet, what are you waiting for?
Propertize.ca Featured in the Telegraph-Journal
Today’s Telegraph-Journal featured my website Propertize.ca, and it was listed on the front-page!
Read on for the full article:
Trying to make sense of his property tax bills after buying his first home, Shawn Peterson decided to take matters into his own hands.
The computer-savvy Saint Johner designed a website that takes public information from a government database and presents it in a more user-friendly way, allowing people to compare their property assessments with their neighbours’.
“It’s human nature,” Peterson says.
“Everyone wants to put in their street and see where their house is in relation to their neighbours’.”
It’s the second year the website has been online and now has the updated assessment and tax numbers for 2011.
Peterson says the frustration with the property tax system drives people’s curiosity.
“People are dealing with crazy, crazy assessments right now,” he says.
“In Saint John, there are an insane amount of houses for sale right now and nothing’s moving. But while housing prices aren’t really changing,” he says.
“My house is almost going down. I probably couldn’t put it on the market and sell it for what I paid for it a couple years ago when the market was hot. But that doesn’t mean my assessment’s going to start going down.”
Originally just for his own use, then for his friends and family, Propertize.ca covers homes across the entire province.
“After we bought our home, we were interested in the whole property tax system and how houses were assessed,” he says.
“I was talking to a few people at work and they were interested in it, so I sent it along to them. They sent it along to some of their friends and it kind of spiralled out of control from there.”
Since property tax bills started appearing in mailboxes this week, the number of visitors has begun to skyrocket. About 1,300 unique users have logged on this week, with 600 of those coming on Wednesday alone.
“It’s all straight word of mouth. This isn’t something I’m advertising or making money off,” he says.
Service New Brunswick offers the same information on its own website, but the design makes it harder to navigate, Peterson says.
“New Brunswick does have one which is barely accessible. It’s pretty open, it’s just a pain to use,” he says, since it makes users look up neighbours one house at a time rather than presenting a comprehensive comparison on one page.
“It’s a very painful process.”
Peterson’s site doesn’t have its own database, but rather instantly retrieves the information entered from the government website, along with relevant figures for nearby houses.
Brent Staeben, spokesman for Service New Brunswick, says he’s aware of the limitations of the government’s website.
“That’s certainly in our plan right now to improve that front interface to make it a little easier to use,” in time for next year’s tax season, he says, adding that Peterson’s version is a welcome addition.
“The more people see sale prices and compare assessments, the better they can gauge the fairness of their assessment, which is the foundation of the system.”
Premier David Alward has said his government will meet with stakeholders to improve the current system, while also instituting a two-year cap that limits assessment increases in the meantime.
Staeben says the cap resulted in a total of $6.5 million of savings across the province’s 450,000 properties this year. Property taxes provide about $1 billion in revenue each year.
Contrary to popular belief, Staeben says property values do occasionally go down – three per cent of properties decreased in value in 2011.
“It’s kind of an urban myth that property assessments don’t go down. There were actually 13,506 properties in the province whose assessments went down,” due to decreases in market value, he says.
The rest of the properties saw increases, with 66 per cent increasing by less than three per cent, 20 per cent by three to five per cent and seven per cent were between five and 10 per cent.
Staeben says the four per cent that increased by more than 10 per cent mostly consist of a specific type of home.
“If you look at the amount of properties that had renovations in the province in the past year and also the amount of new properties that are built, that pretty much reflects people who are doing renovations and building new properties.”
If you haven’t checked out Propertize.ca yet; do so – and let me know what you think!
Propertize.ca – Search New Brunswick Property Tax Assessments
To prepare for upcoming 2011 Property Tax Assessment letters in New Brunswick (and the eventual flood of people who can’t believe their eyes), I’ve re-written Propertize.ca from the ground up to be faster at searching and compiling results, and more stable then ever.
I’m continually updating Propertize.ca based on YOUR feedback!
So contact me today and let me know what you like, what you hate, and what you want to see added.
To see what all the fuss is about, check out http://propertize.ca, and start comparing NB Property Tax Assessments on your street!
First Saint John Tweetup!
Join us, this Thursday evening, from 5:30pm to 7:30pm at the Ale House for the first ever Saint John Tweetup!
You can find all of the details on this event (and RSVP) here: http://twtvite.com/sjnbtweetup
Come one, come all to the first Saint John Tweetup! The tweetup will be held at the Saint John Ale House on June 24 from 5:30pm to 7:30pm.
Door prizes from T4G, Bell Aliant, PLEIS-NB. See you there!
I am hoping to use this first event as a learning experience and to gather ideas/feedback from everyone so that we can grow it into a larger event!
Stay up-to-date on the event on Twitter using the #SJtweetup tag!
Update: A sneak peek at some of the door prizes from T4G:
Generation Y’s real attitude toward working
I was included in an article in today’s Telegraph-Journal, check it out below, and let me know what you think!
Canada’s workplaces should be prepared to provide meaningful work to its next generation of leaders, who could be eyeing high-level positions within a few years, generation Y researcher Carolin Rekar Munro says.
More so than previous generations, Canadians born between 1981 and 2000 are generally ambitious to take on leadership roles in organizations, the management professor at Victoria-based Royal Roads University says.
The cohort wants to be engaged in their work and won’t wait around for employers that can’t give them meaningful things to do, says Rekar Munro, who spent the last two years conducting a country-wide study of Gen Y’s attitude toward work.
“This is going to be a group that is very values driven,” she says. “We’re going to see a very strong focus on work learning and work balance.”
Where gen X – which she defines as born between 1965 and 1980 – put a strong emphasis on having free time to have a life, gen Y wants to add continued learning, but not necessarily to the benefit of their current employers, Rekar Munro says.
“It’s for their own personal development so that they have a strong sense of their skills so they’ve got mobility from job to job and career to career,” she says.
Rekar Munro says The Conference Board of Canada’s 2006 prediction of an accelerated retirement rate in 2012 would only be slightly affected by ailing retirement funds.
“We’re going to see 30 per cent of baby boomers reach 65, that’s 6.6 million Canadians,” she says. “By 2016 we’re going to be looking at a shortage of about one million workers.”
This means organizations are going to need the new younger workers, she says.
Research has generally shown gen Y to spend two to five years in one workplace, but Rekar Munro says they now consider one year a long-term commitment.
“There’s research that shows they can size up an organization within two to three weeks and have a pretty good idea if they want to stay any longer,” she says.
Shawn Peterson, 25, agrees his generation doesn’t want to waste much time in a job they don’t like.
“I’m really expecting to be at a company that gives out a lot of opportunities and will really go the extra mile to conform to the way I want to work and the things I want to do,” the Saint John resident says. “If they don’t do that I’m not too likely to wait around for that to happen.”
Though Peterson has been fortunate his employer, T4G Ltd., has continued to provide him with new experiences and challenges for the last five years, he has seen friends and other peers bounce around from job to job.
“I don’t think my generation would have as much loyalty as my parents’ generation would have,” he says.
“My parents would have been fine doing the same thing for say five years before moving up the chain. But we want more variety and we want to take things on early on.”
When engaged, Peterson says gen-Yers will want to stick around and work hard.
“If you are working on something that you personally can get behind or believe in you will go the extra mile regardless,” he says.
Rekar Munro says gen-Yers really want a boundary-less work environment and don’t want to be micromanaged, and most importantly they want an answer to the big question: Why is this important work to be done for the organization?
“We’re not doing a good job in organizations answering the ‘But why?’ question,” she says. “This is a group that really needs a high degree of feedback and immediate feedback.”
Gen-Yers are attracted to fast-track promotions and to some degree the money, but also perks such as flexible work hours and having fun, Rekar Munro says.
“Organizations need to create training and succession programs that attract gen Y,” she says. “If they can do that I think we’re going to be ahead of the game.”
T4G launches energy monitoring service
My company, T4G Limited, had a great article in today’s Telegarph-Journal, check it out below:
In the wake of the green shift and on the cusp of the birth of smart grids, a national software-for-businesses firm has launched an energy-efficiency practice headed out of its Saint John office.
T4G Ltd. announced Thursday it has hired energy-efficiency consultant Mike Carr to run the new line of business he said could exceed the firm’s current operations.
“Our whole economy is in a whole new paradigm,” said Carr. “From all sides everyone’s energy conscious.
“What we’re planning on doing is getting the user better information about how they’re using their energy so they can conserve,” he said. “The economic benefit of energy management is about 20 to 30 per cent of the energy bill.”
T4G offers customizable software and consulting in more than eight different areas of expertise to at least six different industries and employs more than 230 people in Saint John, Moncton, Halifax, Toronto and Vancouver.
With the new line of business the firm has about a dozen consultants spread across the country and in a new office in Maine.
“I’m building a team in every location because there are markets in every location,” said Carr, adding the line of business could expand to be larger than the rest of T4G.
Though there are plenty of other businesses and services emerging to target the energy-monitoring market, Carr said it’s so early stage the competition isn’t a concern.
“The market opportunity is bigger than the delivery capability of the market,” said Carr, who resides in Fredericton and works from the Port City office.
T4G has a customizable web-based service that allows non-residential customers to monitor and analyze their energy use based on existing monitoring tools attached to energy intensive equipment such as boilers and heating systems.
The firm will also consider custom software for large firms and provide energy management consulting and training to help its clients reduce their carbon footprint and energy bills.
“We’re a full-services business. We give them the complete package,” Carr said, who work as an energy-efficiency consulting before joining T4G in February, and has 10 years experience in the oil and gas industry. “We’re not interested in the hardware. The hardware is pretty standardized.”
As jurisdictions across the continent are either considering or implementing smart grids – which add a layer of information and communications technologies to the existing power distribution grid with the goal of making the whole system more efficient – Carr said T4G’s new business will play an important role in the new grid.
The firm’s software will become the user interface for communicating on the grid, he said.
“Right now they’re looking at their own use,” Carr said referring to his customers. “But in the future if (businesses are) going to produce energy and (they are) going to want to know when to buy and when to sell.”
The company also wants to help people make their homes more energy-efficient, which Carr said would be through the utilities.
“I expect in five years most jurisdictions are going to be on smart metering,” he said, adding many communities in California already use the real-time meters.
T4G plans to sell its software to utilities, which can provide the real-time energy use numbers and analysis from the software back to residents through their websites.
“Everybody’s panicking to reduce their footprint on fossil fuels to protect themselves from the volatility and the threats of high prices,” he said. “We hit peak oil in the 90s so it can only go up.
“Everybody’s facing rising energy costs and we have to be more energy efficient if we’re going to survive.”
Peel Plaza issue goes into the Twittersphere
Today’s Telegraph-Journal had a great article about people using Twitter to let everyone know what was happening during the recent Peel Plaza meeting at City Hall.
I was following along that evening, and I found these tweets to be very informative.
I really like how it allows everyone reading to be connected to what was happening in the room.
Below is a blurb from the article:
Anne McShane knows not everyone wants to sit through a council meeting to find out what’s going on.
But that doesn’t mean they’re not interested.
And when it came to common council’s vote on Peel Plaza on Monday night, she knew it would be no different.
So as council members debated whether to issue tenders for the multimillion-dollar project, McShane used her iTouch to post comments – called “tweets-” on Twitter, a popular social-networking website.
“I just tweet so some of those people can know what’s going on,” said McShane, who owns the Feel Good Store on Germain Street.
“It’s just another way to get the information out.”
McShane was one of several people lighting up Twitter with a Peel Plaza play-by-play Monday night.
Twitter allows users to post short bits of information, in 140 characters or less.
“Chase trying to slow the train down. Mayor throwing more coal on,” McShane wrote at one point, referring to Deputy Mayor Stephen Chase and Mayor Ivan Court, who were engaged in a heated debate.
Nathalie Godbout, a lawyer and the former chairwoman of the Saint John Board of Trade, was also posting live tweets right from the council chambers, using her BlackBerry.
She said politicians need to realize this debate is happening on the Internet.
“There’s a whole other demographic that’s having that discussion online – so you can’t be afraid of it, you’ve got to get in there and at least follow it, and if you feel so inclined, participate,” she said in an interview Tuesday.
“It’s a discussion that’s just being immortalized in a whole different way.”
Godbout said she’s tweeted from other events. She knew a lot of people would be interested in council’s Peel Plaza decision, so she wanted to get the information out there.
“Sounds like Pat Woods leaving door open for council backing out after tender process if #s that come back are not favorable,” she wrote at one point in reference to city manager Patrick Woods.
Thanks again to Anne and Nathalie!
Be sure to check out the tweets from that night, and beyond, using the hashtag #peelplaza!
Propertize – Compare New Brunswick Property Assessments at a street level
Well, it’s almost been a year since I created Propertize, an application that screen-scrapes the existing government website to make is easier to compare your property assessment to the rest of the street, and it seems that a lot of people have been asking about it lately! If you are wondering why I did this, then just try using the existing government application – the user interface is terrible!
Just click the image below to check it out:
As always, send along any feedback!
Unleashing the Inner Geek @ T4G
The Saint John Board of Trade’s latest Currents magazine featured a great article on T4G Limited and our GeekFest event (including some details on our team’s idea):
