At a July 1 City Council business session, council members received a thick list of owners' names and addresses of buildings deemed hazardous and potentially in need of demolition.
Councilwoman Jan Marcason was surprised to read her name and that of her husband, Richard Purucker, connected to two addresses on the list.
Two weeks later, the City Council's Finance and Audit Committee members reviewed an updated list of dangerous buildings. Marcason and her husband's names and properties were nowhere to be found. What gives?
wrecking balls almost as much as Homer does
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It was oddly fortunate that the councilwoman's properties were listed, Borge says, because it alerted city officials to the fact that the list of so-called dangerous buildings was painfully outdated. "That brought the issue to light," Borge says. "There's really no mechanism for keeping the list up-to-date."
The new, updated Dangerous Building Case List is shorter, and includes seven addresses that are considered "priority demolitions" because they're threatening to collapse on their own.
Rather than tasking some other city employee to run around looking at the buildings on the list in the 4th District, Borge says Marcason canvassed the district herself, noting whether the issues at each address had
been taken care of or the structures already demolished.
"This falls in the category of, 'Just do it,'" Borge says. Which would be a mighty good future campaign slogan, if it weren't already taken.
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