City promises to do a better job maintaining its buildings. Here’s an opportunity.

To her credit, Mayor Mary Rossing acknowledges in her budget presentations that the City has not properly maintained the Safety Center, something I complained about in a blog post last November. (On taking responsibility for 20+ years of deferring maintenance on the Northfield Safety Center.)  She promises that the City will do better.

The hole in the external wall of the Muni is an opportunity to deliver on this promise.

Back in April, Northfield News Managing Editor Suzy Rook wrote in an online column called ‘Walking the Walk’:

For several months I’ve seen a section of the liquor store’s south side wall crack, buckle and come apart, leaving a hole I could fit both fists into with room to spare. I’ve wondered how long the city planned to let moisture impact a building that’s already in poor condition.

Two months later, the hole is still there (right under the display window on the sidewalk), getting bigger, letting in rain water, and prominently countering the Mayor’s promise to do better at the very time that the City ramps up its pitch to the citizens on the need for new police and fire facilities.