Price Gouging

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Summertime is baseball time! My dad and later stepmom were sports nuts and always had a radio or TV on listening to some game or post-game talk show, and my brothers were into football, wrestling, and basketball in school.  My nephew went to play in the little league world series. I was happy during college to discover at the time, the Salt Lake Angels (formerly the Salt Lake Bees), which later became the Salt Lake Gulls playing minor league baseball here. The Angels won the PCL title in 1971 and then the Gulls won the last PCL title when they played Hawaii here in 1979. Sadly, the Gulls struggled financially and after 1984 the team was sold and moved to Calgary, Canada but then Joe Buzas moved the Portland Beavers franchise here and named the team ‘the Buzz’. In the mid 2000’s Larry H. Miller bought what had become the Salt Lake Stingers and then changed the name back to the Bees.

Minor league baseball offers major league teams the opportunity to develop young players to hone their skills and prepare for the big leagues. I remember when Mike Trout played for the Bees, the Triple-A affiliate of the L.A. Angels back in 2012. It was only 20 games before he got called up and once there became the first player in MLB history to hit 30 home runs, steal 45 bases and score 125 runs in one season. When Trout was called up to play with the Angels in 2019 he was offered a ten year contract which at the time made him the highest paid athlete in the country at $426.5 million.

That’s the fun of minor league baseball-you never know who’s going to be sent up or sent back from the big leagues from the minors. Seats are usually cheap and families can opt to bring a blanket and sit on the grass making it an extremely affordable activity, not to mention exciting when a home run ball lands at your feet!  We’d go to the stadium on Monday night games sponsored by Smith’s grocery stores for the $5 ticket and hot dog and have great seats. During holidays like the 4th and 24th there would be fireworks after the show and seats would be @$30. But whoaaaa Nellie, have you been to the new stadium ticketing website for the Bees at Daybreak? Those same seats are now $180 each!

Despite PR efforts by the Bee’s, friends who live at Daybreak say the stadium isn’t full at all during regular games. We’ll be boycotting the Bees stadium this summer (and possibly forever) and hopping on Frontrunner to spend $15 to see the Ogden Raptors at Linquist Field by the train station to play the Missoula PaddleHeads, Great Falls Chukars, Boise Hawks, Grand Junction Jackalopes or Billings Mustangs in the Pioneer League.

Con Artists

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Scammers and fraudsters are just a common fact of life these days. From credit card hackers to criminals who pretend to be family members, cops or IRS representatives, it seems everyone has been or is a potential victim of something nefarious crime. One of the most costly crimes can be what is known as title fraud or deed theft and we’re on high alert in the real estate industry. Almost weekly I get notices from the Washington County, Park City or Salt Lake Boards of REALTORS about someone pretending to be someone else to sell a property they don’t own. So how does this set up?

The crooks look up public records of owners of land or homes in the county. They may or may not drive by to see what it looks like but simply pretend to be the owner and call a licensed real estate agent to say something like, “I own this piece of land and need to sell it fast-I’ll sell it now for half of what it’s worth because I’m in a time crunch-can you help?” They go further by forging documents showing ownership or transfer of ownership with their name on it and forge driver’s licenses or other ID’s, so if you’re dealing with someone via text, Facetime or Zoom you don’t necessarily see the real documents when they photograph or hold up to the camera proof of their ID and ownership. The goal is that they can sell the property they don’t own fast, get the cash and not get caught before the whole thing unravels. If your property deed gets illegally transferred it could be hell getting your property back without the thief encdumbering your property with loans and liens you never were a part of as the true owner.

You may get phone calls or mail from companies wanting to sell you ‘deed insurance’. Forget that! You can sign up FREE for ‘Property Watch’ through the Tax Assessors office  that will enable you to keep track of recorded changes to your property with free alerts you can get by text or email. This allows you upon notification to take immediate action in making sure that bogus effort to own or encumber your property with a fake lien can be investigated and hopefully cleared. I’ve heard stories from escrow officers around the state of X-wives and husbands, estranged family members or even neighbors who attempt to gain what isn’t their right to own via fraud,  and some do succeed for awhile until the police and or courts get involved-which can take time and cost money. It’s standard at the close of escrow to sign a notice that wire fraud is rampant and that if a buyer or seller is asked during the transaction to transfer funds BUT to change the wire /routing number to call to verify with the title company that change or you may lose all your money in an instant, forever. Ugh.

Heat Wave

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Naaa, there’s no global warming-right? Bah! Our planet is warming and from all predictions this is going to be a summer of record breaking heat in the state. Make yourself a checklist to prepare for summer:

-Reduce your air conditioning costs by keeping curtains/blinds closed in the day, seal around windows with weather stripping where there are gaps, and replace furnace filters.

-Work on putting in eco-friendly landscaping with drought resistant plants and native plants that don’t use much water to keep your bill down. Lawns here generally need water 2-3 times a week in summer and it’s best to water deeply and less frequently rather than shallow and often. About 1” per watering session, and don’t water between 1-4 pm.

-Use a smart thermostat to automate your cooling inside. Try to keep AC at 78-80 degrees when you aren’t home.

– Before we all feel like we’re melting, schedule a tune-up to keep your AC running all summer to avoid breakdowns and lowering bills. One of the most common calls to AC contractors goes like this: “My AC stopped working and there is ice all over my furnace!”  That ice is there because you neglected to regularly change your furnace filter! It’s cheap to do the replacement and will save you money on an emergency call to get your furnace back up and running.

Salt Lake City has a lawn watering guide at slc.gov/utilities/conservation that suggests  you water lawns ½” per interval and during the summer once every 3-4 days but we all may need to water less or more depending on if Mother Nature is giving us more or less rain.  Trees need water and to properly hydrate them it’s best to focus on slow, deep watering at the base of your tree(s). New trees need more frequent watering and put mulch around the base will help retain soil moisture. You can dig down with a trowel a few inches to see if the ground is dry (time to water!) and avoid midday watering for any outside plants to avoid evaporation/waste of water.

I heard a piece on NPR recently that trees in drought actually make a ‘crying out’ noise that’s not heard by human ears and that when trees face drought the water tension in the tubes that transport water increases. This can cause air bubbles to form, break, and collapse in a process called cavitation. The breaking of water columns within the xylem (tissue) generates vibrations that can be detected as sounds.

According to utah.gov, severe drought covers 45% of the state, with 3% in extreme drought. About 75% of all our water goes towards agricultural water use and yet we have extremely cheap water bills (average is $38 a month for the average household). We definitely need more water for so many reasons and let’s hope our plants, grasses and trees survive the predicted heat wave across the state this summer!