The special town meeting to explain the 35 % increase in property taxes was held last evening. It was well attended and lasted over two hours. Many residents in attendance still did not have the opportunity to speak. I personally came away from the meeting with more questions than answers and based upon comments many residents felt the same way.

I learned my town does not have a charter with which to operate, it was lost. The selectmen have been spending “surplus” funds as needed without a public vote, one selectmen stated they did not want the job knowing what is involved and the tax collector said she “will not collect interest penalty tax at her window until November 1st” even though it has been pointed out to her it requires a referendum vote and would be illegal. The towns accounting process is a mess….and the list goes on

The superintendent of schools spoke and had a one sheet handout detailing the finances of the school district over the last four years. He was well spoken and did a great job explaining the schools situation. Had our own elected officials or the auditor shown similar information detailing the town expense history of  fire,  road, and muncipal expenses the same way it would have helped defuse the situation. If there really is no additional spending in the town and the issue is truly one of a change in accounting practices, it woud be self evident.

I hope based upon last nights meeting that citizens get more involved and stay involved to drive change and controls within the town. Clearly there are more issues occurring in the town than i am aware of. One gentlemen at the meeting accused selectmen Frizzell of getting 240k for trucking during a storm last year, Frizzell responded with he it wasn’t him who received the money, but his company that received the funds and he gave the town a discount on the materials hauled.  One resident pointed out six trucks a day, were hauling a mountain of timber off a town forestry project. The timber clearing project was ongoing even though a seletmen stated this wasn’t starting until the ground froze.  Clearly we need more oversight of the disperment, bid practices, and management in the town.

I personally believe if we could close the town offices until we could review the budget and controls that we would see a quicker and less apathetic response by the elected officials. If it were to take months to create a charter and get to the bottom of the budget woes at least we would save the expenses.

Lebanon needs reform and more community involvement by it’s citizens. Many in attendence including myself were upset, but one needs to only look in the mirror to see who is responsible; the citizens.  I am considering forming a group to help watch over the finances, encourage unbiased oversight of issues, and spread information of what i see. If you have any interest in being on the emailing list or participating even in the smallest ways please comment or send me you’re email.

I read long ago the definition of insantity is doing the exact same thing over and over again and expecting differant results. Lets stop the insanity, join me in invoking a change for the better. I don’t know all we can do,  but change will start with you’re involvement.

Security is or should be a concern to everyone. Although the information I am sharing here isn’t exactly new, I figured it might be good to point out, since the Switchblade / U3 platform is gaining momentum in the wild it’s important to educate the user.

Switchblade is a suite of applications that will automatically execute from any USB thumb drive and lift a systems password hashes, Internet account log-ons, browser history, product keys, instant messenger log-ins and more. The shell is completely customizable. It requires windows 2000 or better as well as the user to have administrative rights. To use simply plug the drive into the computer wait a few seconds and remove. When you get home open the drive and browse to the folder where the files were saved and view them and run a hash breaker like Ophcrack with Rainbow tables.

The weakness with Windows LM hashes is widely known but this tool makes it so ridiculously easy for anyone to use and compromise a machine it’s scary.  What can you do?    How do you protect yourself?

There are several things….

1. Disable Autorun / Autoplay (Use the shift key)
2. Use Least Privilege Use for applications and user accounts
3. Log out when leaving a machine
4. Use applications like DeviceWall or use Group Policy
5. Disable USB ports
6. Educate users on USB dangers.
7. Use long passwords 15 charecters or more (likephrasesstrungtogether)
8. Don’t save you’re internet accounts to you’re machine

Switchblade info may be found Here – DeviceWall Here – Antidote Info Here -

There is even a variant of Switchblade called Hacksaw which actually is a proof of concept USB thumbdrive worm that self propogates itself to other drives inserted and sends information via SMTP . See Here -

If this article raises the hair on you’re neck, then it did it’s job. You can readily Google switchblade and find more detailed information on protecting yourself.

It’s official tax bills received yesterday show the tax rate went from $10.30 per thousand to $13.85 per thousand. There will be a public hearing at the Lebanon Elementary School Sept 29 at 7pm.

There are several things that smell about this development and leave a bad taste in my mouth. When i read the initial report of the tax hike in the “Observer” it indicated the new Selectmen Jason Cole did not attend the meeting when this was voted on and when questioned could not provide any broad reasons or details. Are you kidding, how does a selectmen not have any idea as to why the rest of his co-selectmen would vote over a one third increase?

I next read in the Fosters on Sept 11th that selectman chair Judy Churchard said that “Lebanon’s current tax hike is not the result of increased spending in town, but rather lowered tax rates over the past couple years. The town had ample surplus funds which selectmen used to buy the tax rate down. Now the reserves, or surplus need to be replenished.” Churchard added that the increased tax rate had nothing to do with the construction of the new Lebanon Town Office. – Why do we need to replenish a reserve / surplus, the taxes are to pay budgeted expenses are they not?

LD1 went into effect in 2005 just to address this issue of municipal tax increases and place a statutory limit  on the increases state and local spending allowed. According to all reports I see issued by the State, taxes and spending have gone down across the board as one might expect. So why now the HUGE increase?

How is it the tax bills get issued on or about Sept 11 but the bills themselves are dated as being issued in April? Effectively the delaying of the issue of the bills increased the tax retroactively…why did they not issue the tax bills in April?  How is it the tax bill shows as of October 6 a late fee penalty will be charged of 11%? Because the town waited 5 months to issue the bills we residents are only allowed 3 weeks to pay?

How much surplus does the town have that it can operate nearly 6 months without the tax revenue coming in?

I attended the selectmen meeting this evening because i thought many residents might be in attendance and their might be some reaction or discussion from either side. Chair Judy Churchard was not in attendance and the only discussion observed on the tax topic was that explaining several residents called upset, and that they should have made a larger increase last year to soften and offset this large jump.

Other business discussed at the selectmen meeting was..Two requests by the State Of Maine were discussed asking for information. One was regarding statistical data on subdivided property values and improvements the other request revolved around campers at campgrounds or own their own property being valued for tax purposes. Finally a resident had inquired about the blocking of an old road crossing the Sewell property. Further reasearch would be necesary.

I believe residents of Lebanon need to wake up and demand changes in the management of the town and in particular the way budgets and finances are managed. There should not be any large reserve accounts or surplus slush accounts that can be used at selectman’s discretion and whim. I believe that line item budgets should be proposed and reported so residents can clearly see where the money is going.  Clearly when we voted this spring we didn’t have a line item asking for the tax rate to go up 34%.  If the town was in this TAX REVENUE CRISIS then they should have called a meeting before issue the bills and perhaps offer options such as cutting back projects and expenses and having a special vote.

I find these circumstances absurd and the last straw and I urge residents to get involved and effect change of our town government for the better. I love the small town we live in without all it’s big town services, and big town expenses, lets keep it affordable by ensuring it’s managed properly.

Selectmen should not have latitude and freedom they exercise over the coffers of the town and or the freedom to reach into our wallets so casually as they have. I believe given the option, residents might opt to close the town offices for a couple months to balance the budget (as we did before) versus increasing the tax rate 34%.

Small town government works when people are involved. C’mon people we don’t have to stand for this……

By the way the new town webite looks to be a more open concept allowing the viewing of minutes, tax bills and more, but none of the information is actually viewable….when it’s there were one step closer.

I saw an excellent podcast over the weekend at http:/revision3.com Systm regarding the usage and configuration of MythTV. MythTV is an O/S extension that is coming bundled into several Linux distributions and provides Tivo like experiences in recording, streaming and storing all sorts of media. The set-up requires you to get you’re geek on, but not in an extreme way and should be easy enough for person comfortable with installing windows say to perform. The system doesn’t use extreme resources, any old Pentium class machine will work. They recommend getting a TV tuner card that does some on board processing to lighten the load. The MythTV box will identify UPNP devices automatically so you can stream to you’re PS3, Xbox, and media servers. The package I saw demonstrated looked ready for prime time and serves as an awesome way to extend the life of the old machines taking up space in the garage.

MythTV isn’t for everybody but it certainly is worth a good look. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythTV

I came accross a great tool called WOAS Wiki on a Stick. The wiki is a self modifying XML file that can run stand alone on a laptop, usb stick, or even a floppy. If you’re the Wiki type this is a great tool for keeping notes, calendar, or documentation repository. uses standard mark-up and allows embedded images and java script. it can be downloaded here WOAS

The Stadig genealogy site has gone over 1600 persons this past weekend. That’s roughly 350 more individuals than the base data load that was completed less than two weeks ago. Video tutorials have also been added to the site to familiarize new users with navigation and basic principles of the site.

Here are couple quick tips and features you might be unaware of for Google’s Chrome browser.

CTRL + T  opens a new tab

CTRL + SHIFT + N automatically opens up a Chrome ‘incognito’ window which allows you to surf on a PC without leaving behind any digital footprints.

SHIFT + Escape allows for fast access to Chrome?s Task Manager utility that allows you to nix browser processes that have gone awry. Great for seeing memory offending web applications.

CTRL + SHIFT + T will open recently closed browser tabs. SO if you closed a tab or two inadvertently simply use this command and they are back. Exactly like Firefox does.

Larger Comment Boxes Comment boxes on Web sites soliciting feedback can sometimes be way too small. With Chrome you simply click on the corner of any Web-based comment field and stretch it out as large as you like.

Peel Tabs Chrome allows you to peel browser tabs off a browser so they can become their own browser window. Chrome also allows you to take two separate Chrome browsers and drag them together creating one window with two tabs.

Another Incognito Right click any link and selct  “Open link in incognito window.” This allows for browsing ingonito like CNTL+Shiht+N.

Jing is a light weight Video communication tool by Techsmith.

Jing allows you to capture images and video and share them via email, AIM, or blogs. In a nutshell Jing sets on the center top of your desktop, unobtrusively just out of way. Click capture and draw a box on screen or click anywhere to capture full screen, select video or image from the Jing toolbar. Once done with recording or capturing you have many options, copy, save to screencast, file, and embed. The beauty of Jing is in it’s speed and light weight. The Screencast feature allows the file to be stored out on a Techsmith server or anywhere and be shared via links. I find Jing great for sharing quick 2 minute videos and capturing error messages, web pages, pretty much anything on screen in four quick clicks.
“The concept of Jing is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere.” http://blog.jingproject.com/ Jing is not a replacement for capture applications like Camtasia (also from Techsmith) but small fast, simple and free, Jing is. Jing is a top recommendation.

It appears I wasn’t the only person who could’t enjoy the release of the Chrome browser. I found several posts of persons with the exact same problem. Google reportedly was blaiming Symantec Endpoint for the crashing error, but several people said they didn’t have Symantec Enpoint even installed.

The fix (on WinXP) if you are in the same predicament, open the Registry Editor, by typing regedit in the “run” window and locating the key;

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\SysPlant

Change the DWORD value to 4. Exit the editor and reboot you’re computer. As always use caution when touching the registery and be sure you have backed it up. Once I got the browserr operating it appeared stable and snappy. My common Firefox shortcuts like Cntrl-T for new tabs worked the same as well as Cntrl-Shift-T to restore a closed tab. I do miss my Firefox add-ins however…Fast Dial, Taboo, FoxMarks and Stumble Upon. In my early tests this the only major downfall.