Category: Miscellaneous

Mid-stream

Hospitals have been instructed to provide SARS-CoV-2 data to HHS instead of CDC. CDC falls under HHS so it’s a little like having the “parent company” handle something some subsidiary used to do. Which means the move isn’t as alarming as some people are making it out to be. The ‘parent company’ will authority to more readily mobilize resources, and moving responsibility for a project to the parent company can signify the importance of the project.
Which isn’t to say I think it’s a good move … from an IT perspective, CDC has the infrastructure in place to handle the reporting & publicizing of data. About the best case would be a reorganization — same people supporting the same thing, but adding in the uncertainty of a new organizational structure (new processes, new priorities, a new person’s take on what you should be doing). If HHS is taking over that system, there’s opportunity for failure because the new people don’t know what the old people know. If HHS is bring up a new system, there’s a LOT of opportunity for failure because, well, it’s a new system. Mid-disaster isn’t when I’d want to change my reporting process. Maybe run two in parallel because the new one is going to provide some great new insights. But I would never say “hey, everyone, stop using A and move over to B on Thursday”.
Additionally, it doesn’t inspire confidence that the HHS website has been throwing a lot of connection errors since the announcement. I expect it’s a load problem as people begin to learn what HHS is … but ‘the guy who cannot keep his website online will be taking over statistics for us’ is not exactly the direction I’d move critical reporting.

Statistical Coverup

I keep encountering people who cite the fact that “only” half a percent of kids who get SARS-CoV-2 are dangerously ill. A small percentage of a very large number is still *a large number*.
 
The Department of Education estimated 50,800,000 public school students started the 2019-2020 school year. School admission rates have been trending up, but 2019 is the latest available data. Data from the CDC puts ICU admittance for children infected with SARS-CoV-2 at 0.58% (between 0.58% and 2%, but I’ll use the lower number since I haven’t encountered an ‘only two percent’ argument).
 
If only 1% of the kids who enter public school get infected, that’s over 2,500 kids in the ICU. If 5% get infected, that’s over 14,000 in the ICU. I doubt anyone would make the argument “Schools should re-open because only 14k kids are going to end up in the ICU”.

Zoning Variance Request – Reduced Setbacks

There is a prospective buyer who has requested a variance to the township’s setback requirements in order to build his house on a neighboring property. The zoning requirements stipulate a 120′ front setback from the center-line of the private right-of-way (i.e. the park’s road) and a 50′ rear setback from our property. The original request cited a 90′ front setback based on a public right-of-way, but that is not correct. While the request states he wants to reduce the front setback by 40′ and the rear setback by 34′, I think the actual request on the front setback is 70′.

There are a few justifications provided for the setback request — that there are technical limitations that mandate the variance, that the elevation means the property won’t bother the neighbors, that the previous zoning would have allowed construction within these bounds, and neighboring properties have similar encroachments.

While we are not trying to create a hardship for the buyer, we were given notice of a public hearing and told it was the time to state our opinion. When we were shopping for a house, we specifically wanted to live in a rural environment. When I consider the use and enjoyment of one’s property, consideration is not limited to the structures erected on the property. We specifically wanted to purchase several acres of land with wooded areas because hiking in the woods is an enjoyable activity.

Hinckley’s Master Policy Plan highlights the community’s desire “to protect and promote the rural and natural character of the Township”. This is not a new initiative in Hinckley, the 2003 Master Policy Plan speaks to preserving “the existing rural character and image of the township”. Part of our house shopping process included reviewing zoning regulations — we wanted to maintain a large garden and possibly raise farm animals. And we didn’t want to learn after purchasing a home that we were legally precluded from using the property as we desired. One of the attractive things about Hinckley was the large minimum lot sizes and expansive setback requirements.

Technical Limitations — To me, a technical limitation of a lot would be where a combination of zoning regulations preclude building on the property. As an example, after accounting for setback requirements, the smaller non-conforming lots may not have enough buildable land to construct a home with the minimum floor area requirements with two off-street parking spaces. It may not be possible to build a compliant home on a two acre lot, once elevation and waterways are considered.

In this case, there is land available for the footprint of the structure. One of the things I would like to see during the site review is the dimension of the land deemed buildable. The fact a particular home design does not fit on a lot is not a technical limitation of the lot. It is reality. There are millions of other homes, of similar size and with similar features, which could be built on the lot and fully comply with the zoning regulations.

Elevation — While the structure in question may be 30+ feet in elevation over the park’s road, carpark, and hiking trail, it is not 30′ in elevation over the woods where we hike.

Non-conforming Lot Setbacks — Section 4.1.G stipulates minimum side and rear yard depths for R1 and R2 District lots covered in the “Substandard Lot Provisions”. Section 6R1.4.K lists three sub-standard lot minimum lot areas: 32,670 sq ft (0.75 acre); 66,000 sq ft (~1.52 acres); 65,340 sq ft (1.5 acres). The lots, as previously platted, were each under 0.75 acres. Survey Book 39, page 212 contained the “current” platting prior to the lots being combined. Lot A is 0.4947 acres, lot B 0.4707 acres, lot C 0.4780 acres, and lot D 0.4960 acres. As such, it was my understanding that anyone who desired to build on one of the lots would require a variance due to the lot size — which would allow us the opportunity to review and comment on the proposed structure.

Additionally, the fact that a structure could have been build with a fifteen foot rear setback on each of the previously existing lots is a specious argument. This isn’t a non-conforming lot. The property owner voluntarily combined the four sub-standard lots into one standard lot. This included adding formerly unowned property under Bellus Road. If the desire was to build within the allowable parameters of a sub-standard lot, then the lots should have remained sub-standard.

Setback of Other Neighboring Properties — The closeness of neighboring properties was one of the few negative points about our property — walking around the kitchen patio feels walking in the neighbor’s back yard. Walking from our back yard along the South side of the property feels like walking in the neighbor’s side yard.

The other houses in the neighborhood are well over fifteen feet from their rear property lines. These measurements (1) assume decks, patios, and above-ground pools are not used in determining setback distances and (2) estimates based on the aerials from the Medina County Engineer’s GIS system. About 20′ of our house is about 25′ from the property line. Because the Medina County Engineer’s GIS system has the aerial OSIP (Ohio Statewide Imagery Program) tiles and parcel lines misaligned, the house appeared to be about 45′ from the property line. It wasn’t until we’d lived here for a year or two that Scott and a friend searched out the property pins and we realized the line was really close to the house.

Z’s garage is about 40′ from the property line. Greg and Erica’s house is over 50′ from the rear property line with an accessory building very close to the property line. Larry’s house is over 50′ from the rear property line, although the rear deck and pool and accessory building are quite close to the property line. Mark and Rae’s is over 50′. Cynthia’s house is well over 50′, but there is an accessory building situated near the property line. Side lot setbacks are certainly not in compliance with zoning standards for two acre lots, but all of these lots are well under two acres

But, of the six houses in the neighborhood, half were built more than 50 years ago. Two of the remaining three were built 30 years ago, and the newest house was built 20 years ago. I do not know what the zoning regulations contained decades ago (i.e. these may well have been compliant at the time), and the older houses may well predate zoning regulations. Even if the zoning regulations were exactly the same at the time, we didn’t participate in the variance discussion because we didn’t live here. For half of the properties, we weren’t even born.

Owner Street Number Year Built Years Ago
Z 1830 West Dr 2000 20
Greg & Erika 1850 West Dr 1953 67
Larry 1860 West Dr 1990 30
Mark & Rae 1870 West Dr 1961 59
Cynthia 1886 West Dr 1940 80
Scott & Lisa 1006 Bellus Rd 1990 30

Something’s existence does not make more of it desirable. There is traffic on Bellus Rd, but having Center Rd rerouted to our street while the bridge was under construction was disruptive.

The variance process is not a common-law system — a variance being issued in once circumstance does not set a precedent that requires similar variances be issued.

Medina County: Finding Survey, Deed, and Permit Info

I had downloaded some PDF files of the county survey books after we first bought our house. We wanted a little more info, but were completely unable to find where I’d gotten the survey book pages. Fortunately, a very helpful individual at the County Recorders office knew what I had and exactly how to get there. Figured I’d write it down for the next time we want to pull up survey information. The trick is to not use the new Medina County GIS website.

From http://engineer.medinaco.org, select “Traditional” from the GIS menu. This will bring you to the old county GIS interface at http://engineer.medinaco.org/cgi-bin/mchequery.cgi

From the drop-down menu hidden between the red bar and an text input and select a search type (Parcel Number, Address, Owner Last Name)

Click Query/Refresh

You will now see information about the searched parcel and a map. Scroll down.

From here, you can access a bunch of different information – for the survey books, select “Scans”.

There’s a lot of information available. In the Surveys, there’s a cool feature — the top part of the page contains a portion of the document and a light gray outline showing the searched parcel — when you cannot figure out why a particular page shows up when your parcel isn’t involved — look for a tiny portion of your parcel that’s technically on the page. In this example, a few feet of our lot appear under the information block. There are a few pages where the little section of land on the public right-of-way appear somewhere along the bottom portion of a scan. I expect they’ve got the corners of each page tagged with geographic information & your scan query retrieves anything where any of your lot falls within those bounds. Survey and tax map go back over a hundred years, and it’s neat to see how the property lines have changed (and not changed). Plus, I now know Bellus Rd was named after the family that owned the farm across the street from us.

 

Since I’m writing down where I’ve found important documentation … I’ll add:

Building permits are available through the Medina County Building Department at https://medina.onlama.com/Default.aspx

Deed transfers, mortgage instruments, etc are available through the Medina County Recorder at http://recordersearch.co.medina.oh.us/OHMedina/AvaWeb/#!/search

 

Statistics and Mortality

I question the logic behind the “the worst is past, and it wasn’t as bad as we thought” faction that’s drove the Memorial Day partying and is gearing up for the 4th of July celebrations. The decrease we see in the NYC metro is impacting nationally aggregated data. NY and NJ have significantly reduced infection rates (and have since late April/early May). MA as well. Most other states have seen increases. Since the NYC metro had an oversized representation of cases (some 6% of the national population had, in late March, some half of the national infections), the reduction in cases there has had an oversized impact on nationwide data. Break the infection rates out by state, though? There are a lot of lines heading up, and steeply.
Hospitalization rates are already heading up outside of the NE corridor. Again, the drop-off in the “New England” and “Mid-Atlantic” buckets hide increases in aggregate. Death rates don’t have such a clear upward trend. Yet. Infection is a leading indicator, followed by hospitalization rates (it’s not like you are in the hospital on day one. Most people I’ve seen interviewed say they felt sick for a week or two), *then* death rates a month or two after hospitalization. We’ve seen infection rates on the increase since June. We’re starting to see hospitalization rates increase. I don’t doubt we’ll see death rates increasing toward the end of July. I don’t know if this misrepresentation of aggregate over partitioned data is a deliberate attempt to obfuscate the current risk level or a more easily comprehended visualization (my chart with 50 lines is a lot more difficult to read that the single-line national infection count graph). But the impact on public perception and public policy is dangerous.
What bothers me, though, is that … even if someone believes the mortality rate dropping significantly as more young/healthy people get infected or we “get better at treating it” or whatever their mental excuse for partying and venturing out without any type of protection, the hospitalization numbers *are* going up. It’s certainly better to go into the hospital for a month or two and emerge alive than to die alone in the COVID ward. Personally? I want to avoid a month or two on a ventilator. It’s a rather unpleasant experience. Not to mention the personal and national economic impact from millions of people out of work – the lucky ones have insurance that covers something like 80% of their normal salary, the less ones need SSDI, and the really unlucky ones have nothing. Even if hospitalization was a fun holiday experience? At some point, health care resources are maxed out; then resource constraint impacts mortality rate.
Risk mitigation isn’t about taking extraordinary action to avoid black swan events. When I worked in Arkansas, there would be an ice storm that shut down travel for a few days. The first year I moved there, it was a serious storm that shut down most of the state for a week or two. Access to the company network was via dial-up. We had some number of PRI’s — maybe ten, which would be 230 dial-in lines. Normal operation, we had fifty or so lines free. Ice storm? They were maxed out constantly. After that first week-long ice storm, the company executives demanded IT figure something out because they were unable to get on network. The company had 20k employees, which would require 800+ PRIs (a reasonable analysis was about 10k employees who could work remotely, so ‘only’ 400 PRIs) and the dial-in gear so those lines went somewhere. For the low, low price of a few million, we could ensure everyone could dial into the company network simultaneously. Of course, no one wanted to fund that initiative. What we did implement was a dedicated executive dial-in access number. One PRI, with one small modem bank, provided access for the 20 people who were special enough to get the number (yes, there was an authorization group preventing access by the unwashed masses who had the number). And the three IT people who supported those executives. It cost more than nothing, sure. But it was a reasonable expense to address the most critical part of the issue. In the subsequent ice storms? Lower-level employees would complain about busy signals on the VPN, their complaint would work its way up the chain, and the executives would pull out my multi-million dollar proposal to fix a problem that averaged two days a year. Technology advanced, and IP-based VPN became a thing. It has functionality beyond Arkansas ice days, and the company invested in it. Now everyone can connect to the network during the ice storm. A fairly reasonable cost that has utility 24/7.
For some reason, people are treating masks like the multi-million dollar VPN project. They’re not. It’s a cheap thing that most people can don safely. No, it’s not comfortable to sit in a warm room to attend the Township meetings wearing masks. I’m happy to head back to the car and cool off. But the hard plastic chair isn’t a big cushy couch. Their building is drafty and, while I am certain the space is conditioned, the ambient temperature isn’t as comfy as my house. There are lots of ways in which the environment isn’t comfortable. Masks are generally available — back in March, I wondered why more people didn’t just wrap a scarf around their face a few times.
People argue the efficacy of masks — most of which seems to stem from early recommendations against mask wearing that was partially driven by the reality of product availability and partially driven by the unknown of aerosol v/s large particle transmission. And, for large particle transmission, just staying physically distant from others minimizes risk. But the reality is people don’t maintain an acceptable physical distance from others. Our Township meetings have board members sitting at the far side of 6′ tables … but they move their chairs around and end up four feet apart and yelling at each other. There are people walking right next to us in the grocery store, people queuing up a foot behind me at the liquor store, people standing next to us in the aisle at Home Depot.
Even if a mask only prevents 50% of exhaled viruses from escaping and and prevents 50% of virus particles from being inhaled — that’s a huge reduction in risk. Even at 5% reduction, you’re reducing virus particles by a non-trivial amount.
I’m waiting for the lawsuits to start — it would be difficult to prove causality on a micro level (i.e. no one can sue Home Depot for failing to require customers wear masks), but at a macro level? Streets and businesses don’t altruistically have wheelchair accessible entrances. They have to. There’s a long legal history behind the requirement. Why shouldn’t businesses and government offices have to ensure access for those with compromised immune systems by requiring everyone wear a mask?

School Considerations

What exactly are the teachers using to clean the classroom? Stuff like Lysol and Clorox wipes have been on the “back to school” list for years because the school doesn’t have budget for basic classroom supplies.
These kids sitting 6′ apart … where’s that extra space coming from? In our elementary school, the “play” and “group” areas could be removed (no shared toys or sitting on squares together anyway). But kids are going to walk between desks, so you really need 12′ separation to allow a walkway. There’s no way to get 20+ kids into a classroom. And what about upper grades where students move between classrooms? There some large group of new hires disinfecting each desk in the three minutes between classes? Because having the teacher speed clean the desks seems counter-productive.
How do we accommodate both the ‘school shooting safety measures’ like keeping the classroom doors closed and the ‘COVID19 safety measures’ like minimizing contact with high-touch surfaces? The obvious COVID-19 solution is to have all interior doors propped open during school hours and possibly assign an employee to open/close the dedicated ingress and egress doors.
Everyone gets two scheduled times for the bathroom? Or how exactly does that work? Same for recess — hey, it’s your ten minutes to jog around the building. Go!
I’m already being asked to drive the kid to school because they cannot figure out how to bus kids safely. With the ‘normal’ number of kids being dropped off and picked up, there was a queue of cars backed out to the road. How’s this drop-off/pick-up thing going to work with a lot more kids? And what about someone who has kids in more than one school?
A significant part of early childhood education is learning to socialize and interact with others. How much social learning is going to happen this year?
And the biggest question of all — what exactly does the school do when the first person tests positive? The entire class has to be in quarantine for a few weeks? What about kids who have siblings in that class — everyone in their class has to quarantine too? Seems like the first positive test and the whole school needs to be in quarantine.

Marketing Fail

I find it ironic that the Republican, who brought us marketing campaigns such as the “Death Tax” which would cause Paris Hilton to pay taxes on her hypothetical inheritance but didn’t mean jack to 80% of the country seems unable (or, more likely, unwilling) to effectively market pandemic response.
 
Social distancing is a horrible phrase that speaks to isolation. OK, you don’t congregate in one big lump of humanity at the beach or discotheque. Why isn’t figuring out innovative ways to interact a national pursuit? Physically distanced social interactions — either online or in person. A few decades ago, I had friends who would all get on a call to watch a movie or TV show together. Start writing letters again (help out the post office, too). Back in March, when the lock-downs started, I surprised a lady at the grocery store by helping her look for her parent’s preferred type of coffee as I stood on the checkout queue. She didn’t have to get near me, I didn’t have to get near her, but the “social distancing” campaign had her thinking “head down, don’t talk to anyone”. We’ve got patio chairs set up under the big maple tree in our front yard. Two families sitting 10′ apart can easily converse, hang out, enjoy nature, etc. Putting chairs on either side of the fire pit is about 8′ apart too.
 
Then there are the masks. Social trends have convinced people to wear all manner of wild kit. There’s no way it couldn’t have been presented as some awesome fashion trend. I’m curious if it’s *masks* or *orders* that the non-mask wearing public finds so objectionable. Like, would they be down with wearing a confederate flag mask? What about helmets — we can dress up like astronauts, scuba divers, motorcycle riders. I introduced my daughter to pandemic safety by calling it the zombie apocalypse. It’s fun to get the masks and gloves on to take the recycling down the the drop-off point where she stands guard in the car watching for zombies. Or get a superhero cape and mask, adopt a secret identity. Not something I recommend when it’s 95 degrees … but when it cools off again, pretend you’re a less murder-y version of the invisible man with the head wrapping and sun shades.
 
The Republican promotion of preventative actions reminds me of the court-ordered PSA commercials that tobacco companies air. They have technically said what the court has ordered them to say, but there has been no attempt to engage the audience. Or attract attention. White screen, black text, monotone voice-over repeating what the text says.

School’s Out For …

I want to know what schools are going to do in September/November after what they did in August proves to be foolishly optimistic (either ‘the virus will disappear’ or ‘one person will be able to ensure twenty six-year-old kids wear masks and stay 6 feet apart, plus we can have a janitor in each restroom sanitizing after each use’) and they’ve failed to use the intervening 4-5 months to develop a decent online teaching approach.

Ohio Public Health Warning Level

Ohio now has a per-county public health alert level rating that reminds me of the terror alert color-coded system we had after 9/11.

Of course there will be people in red or purple counties heading out to neighboring counties to shop/eat/socialize/party because those neighboring counties are only in orange so they don’t need to wear a mask there. I don’t get why I’ve got to get my car e-checked because my county borders Cuyahoga but we wouldn’t have to wear a mask for the same reason … but it’s a step in the right direction deeming masks mandatory *somewhere* based on *something*.

Personal Finance Lesson – Credit Reports

Around 2000, I had a Key Bank account and paid for the “bill payment add-on” — it was like three bucks a month, but beat the late payment charges I’d incur for forgetting to pay bills, so worth it to me. Got transferred to another state where they didn’t have any branches, so I went into the bank and closed my account. They gave me a cheque, closed out the account, and I left to open an account at a nearby bank that did have branches in the state to which I was moving.

Years later, I got denied trying to open a checking account — like I tried to hand a couple grand over to a bank and they said “no thanks”. I’d gone across the street and opened an account with a different bank. Didn’t really think anything about it until I got a letter in the mail saying I was entitled to a copy of my credit report because information in that report had been used to deny me something. I’d never even heard of a credit report! When that credit report arrived, I learned that Key Bank had closed my account but failed to cancel my bill payment subscription (WTF?!?). They proceeded to charge me three bucks a month for years. And charged me a monthly over-draft penalty for having a negative balance. Forty bucks a month for a few years sure adds up! The eventually closed my account and got a judgement against me (in a state I hadn’t lived in for years, and I never gave them my new address because I wasn’t a customer for a few months before I moved). Absolutely refused to pay that — it aged off of my credit report because they didn’t bother to renew the judgement.

So what’s a credit report? There are three different companies (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion) that keep track of how well you pay your bills. Not bills like the electric bill (unless you don’t pay it and the electric company gets a judgement against you) — loans. Why three? Because capitalism, I guess. If you bought some server and database space and managed to convince thousands of lenders that it was in their interest to let you know about all of their customers, I guess you could be a credit bureau too. A bit like a certificate authority — once you can convince enough people to trust you, you’ve got a viable product.

When you take out a loan, they associate it to your record. They keep track of how much should be paid as well as if you’ve paid it. The idea, for someone who is thinking about extending you credit, is that your past history of repaying (or not) debts is a bit of an indicator of your future repayment history. More importantly, though, it allows potential creditors to judge your income against your known fixed expenses. If you make $1000 a month and don’t have to spend any of it, you’ve got a good bit of disposable income. If you make $1000 a month, but pay $800 in rent … you’re either eating or repaying the loan so not a good credit risk.

I’m sure companies looking to lend money to people pay something to access these credit reports, but these credit bureaus have another line of income — basically using your private information for marketing purposes. Some mortgage lender wants to offer people a loan — they could just send a mailer to everyone in a zip code, but some of those people have already paid off their mortgage. Others are renting the house. A more targeted advertisement would be sent to people with outstanding mortgages — even better, scope to people with either large outstanding mortgages (how much you’re save with a refi!) or small outstanding balances (think of all you could do with a second mortgage!).

Twenty or more years ago, the only way you had free access to the content of your file was after you’d been denied credit. Like happened to me. Since then, federal laws have changed. You can access, online, a copy of your credit report from each credit bureau once a year — this means you can get the Equifax one in January, the Experian one in May, and the TransUnion one in September. Then get he Equifax one again in January. Since the reporting is generally automated, there shouldn’t be much difference between data held in the three companies. Every four months, you’re getting a picture of what these bureaus record about you.

Why would you do this? Like anything, info in the credit report can be wrong. Sometimes they’ll have someone with a similar name linked up to you. Sometimes they’ll just have bad info — an account closure that got omitted or a ‘current employer’ that you haven’t worked for in years. There’s a “dispute” process that you can use to request they fix anything you consider wrong (although they may not consider it work fixing — employer related stuff — or may not agree is wrong). Sometimes you’ll discover someone’s opened an account in your name, racked up a lot of charges, and left you with the bill (i.e. identity theft).

As of Sept 2018, you can freeze your credit report so no one can access it. For free. This helps avoid unauthorized parties opening credit accounts under your name and should prevent your info from being used to make you the target of lender advertising.  Freezing your credit file restricts who can access the information — which means you have to unfreeze your file whenever you want to apply for credit. It’s an extra step, but how often are you actually applying for a loan? And the credit bureaus need to unfreeze your file within an hour of your online request … so it’s not a big inconvenience. To freeze your file, you must submit individual requests to Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. You can ‘thaw’ your file temporarily when you know you’re submitting a credit application — I usually unlock my file for a few weeks to ensure delays in data processing don’t mean my application gets processed against a frozen file.

You can also freeze the file of your kid who is under 16 — a great thing for most kids who absolutely are not applying for credit! But the credit bureaus don’t make it that easy to freeze a kids file — Experian and Equifax have a request form, TransUnion wants a letter requesting a “protected consumer freeze” on the specified individual. In each case, you’ve got to include copies of identifying info — your ID, your kid’s birth certificate, and your kids social security card kind of stuff.