Remove the eyesores

It is encouraging to hear our city leaders are focused on removing nuisance buildings in the City of Cape Girardeau.

Some in the community believe the city should not be responsible for condemnation and demolition expenses incurred for owners not maintaining their private structures. I agree with this position.

Unfortunately, waiting on irresponsible property owners to do the responsible thing is not a realistic option. Waiting has created the current problem of numerous nuisance buildings scattered throughout our city.

In my opinion, our city leaders, and members of the community, must swallow the bitter pill of reality, and initially pay for condemnation and demolition costs using city funds. The city can attempt to recover these expenses after the structures are removed.

To show the city is really serious about condemning and demolishing nuisance buildings, I encourage our city leaders to budget sufficient revenue to remove a minimum of 12 nuisance structures every year until all of the buildings are demolished.

The city has a stable source of revenue generated by the casino to finance this effort. It would only require allocating 5% of this revenue in each year's operating budget to meet this goal.

Most in the community would agree, it's time to adequately fund and implement an aggressive condemnation and demolition plan for nuisance structures in the city's annual budget.

We definitely have the need. We have funding available to meet that need. Let's use this revenue to remove these eyesores from our neighborhoods!

GARY HILL, Cape Girardeau