Published: June 30, 2009 10:07 am      

Vacant house becomes a ‘monument’

Someone needs to tell our Goshen city leaders that we are in a recession. I expect them to be frugal with our money just as we have to be with our own finances.

Drive by the junk house at Fifth and Madison to see what I’m talking about.

I noticed that someone was painting it and I thought “how stupid, the house is uninhabitable trash.” I’ve since learned that the house belongs to the city of Goshen. Goshen had purchased it so it could be torn down to make room for improving Madison Street.

Even if the U.S. 33 project ends up going another direction, this house is still deteriorating trash and needs to be torn down. Instead, we are spending much more than the cost of demolition to cover the ugly with paint.

From what I’ve been told, the mayor approved spending $9,000 to give it a coat of white paint. That’s bad economics. But, it gets worse! Some influential people convinced the mayor that it should be multi-colored instead of white. So, the cost increased to $12,000. They expect to get the additional $3,000 from the Redevelopment Commission, after it’s spent. Hopefully, this group is frugal enough to not waste our money on something so stupid.

Now, we wonder what the city is going to do with this junk property with pretty paint. It still has no real value. It needs a lot of expensive repairs inside to make it livable. I’m guessing it would be very expensive to heat during the winter. And it still might need to be torn down for the U.S. 33 project.

I guess it’s a monument to bad judgment by city officials.

— Carl Van Gilst

Goshen