“They’re cleaning up downtown,” someone told me a while ago. “There’s a special visitor coming from the state to see how the grant money has been spent.”
That visitor - Deborah VanAmerongen, New York State Commissioner of Housing and Community Renewal – was in town the other day, as reported by the Press-Republican. She visited various businesses that made use of state funds to improve their properties. It’s good to see taxpayer money being put to practical use. Some landlords were letting their buildings rot; they didn’t want to spend the money.
There was one building downtown where the landlord let the upper stories decay. A college student took photographs of a pigeon skeleton on one floor, picked clean by decay and insects. When that site was finally fixed up, they hauled away bags of pigeon waste. The building was behabbed for new apartments and businesses.
But what gets me is a special cleanup for a state visitor. Obviously VanAmergon didn’t have to worry about scraping dog *hit off her shoe. Shouldn’t downtown be clean for us average citizens? Or should we get used to carrying putty knives and a bottle of disinfectant with us?
LINK: PR
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