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August 14, 2011
To the Editor:
The time and place: June 2050, a man and a boy are driving along the six-lane Shore Interstate, past a weedy, rusty-fenced enclosure. "Daddy, what's that building?" The boy points to a large, plain shed standing foursquare amid a welter of weedy, overgrown, antique, gasoline-powered trucks, as they whiz past at 20 mph in their hydrogen-fueled Fiat.
"Son, that's the old DPW building. It was built before consolidation, before this all became the City of New Vailswallburgh. Cost $900,000, which is the equivalent of $500 million today. Hard to imagine, eh?"
"But why is it empty? Looks perfectly good to me..."
"Well, it's a long story. It was actually once used, for a couple of years, but somebody who had nothing better to do suddenly discovered that a piece of paper was missing, and without it, nobody had permission to go into the building. All the people who worked in it were kicked out and told to find somewhere else to work. Anywhere, didn't matter, just not in the DPW building. Nobody could find the paper, and everybody was suing everybody else, but nobody did anything about the building. When the case was about to go to the Supreme Court, they finally found an old man to sue--can't remember who it was, but he used to sell hot dogs from a cart in the old Village Square.
"They got him, and they got him good. He'd used the piece of paper to start the fire in his hot dog cart one day, and the paper was gone forever. Had him dead to rights. 'So sue me,' he said. 'I've still got the cart, and you can have that, and there's my old Corvette parked somewhere, can't remember where, which might be worth something if only there were gasoline to run it. It's all yours.'
"So New Vailswallburgh sold the stove and the Chevy for two million dollars, but it wasn't even enough to hire a locksmith to open the padlock on the gate to the DPW building. The old Village of Cornwall-on-Hudson went bankrupt as a result of it all but fortunately became part of the City, which was actually governed by professionals. But it was too late to do anything about the DPW building."
Stephan Wilkinson
Cornwall-on-Hudson
Comments:
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And you may of left out when the son asked the father why is it that a small village built a building that cost taxpayers a million dollars maybe that could be the reason why consolidation occurred
posted by J Buescher on 08/14/11 at 4:42 PM
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Nice work of fiction.
The truth is there are 13 major points of failure to be corrected.
Any one intrested in the facts can watch the presentation of the engineering solution to the board.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmiEreRk1hY
posted by Andrew Argenio on 08/15/11 at 1:10 PM
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Splendid story. But I kind of like "Greater Cornwapolis", or perhaps, "Grosslandia".
posted by J Klein on 08/15/11 at 4:58 PM
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"The truth is there are 13 major points of failure to be corrected."
Andrew when you're 90 years old and doddering around the Village with your walker, that building will still be standing just fine. As I remember, some of those "13 points major points of failure" involved the building's inability to withstand snow loads...and then what happened? The Village, and the DPW building, went through one of the worst winters in years just fine.
If you want to bombproof it, earthquake-proof it, al Quaeda-proof it, goldplate it, go right ahead and spend the $350,000 to do so. As a pilot, I'm familiar with post-and-beam airport hangars way larger than the DPW building, and they don't hold garbage trucks, they hold $30 million business jets by the dozen. They never seem to fall down.
posted by Stephan Wilkinson on 08/15/11 at 7:58 PM
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This Fractured Fairytale doesn't hole a candle to Rocky & Bullwinkle. At least their social satire had some humor. All we have is a sorry mess.
posted by Rick Gioia on 08/15/11 at 9:53 PM
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As I commented in a prior letter. My advice is to sell the lot recoup the money and place the DPW someplace else.
posted by j h on 08/16/11 at 10:06 AM
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Mr. Wilkinson,
Instead of snarking about the people who noticed the proper documentation for occupying the building was missing (and thus opening a huge can liability whoop-*ss for the Village if something were to happen), perhaps you should focus on the cronyistic, and poorly handled process that lead to the building's construction in the first place.
Surely you're capable of coming up with an appropriately sarcastic yarn set in the future that address the following questions:
Why was a building of that size and cost needed for a small Village of just over 3,000 people?
Was a proper bidding process put in place to find the most suitable and capable engineering and construction companies?
Who in the Village government had golfing buddies, in-laws, or patrons of some other sort amongst the companies that ultimately were hired to design and construct the building?
Why were attempts by the most recent former Mayor to get to the bottom of the above three questions sabotaged at almost every step of the way, often by current and former trustees?
posted by Ted Warren on 08/31/11 at 4:09 PM
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