There are blocks in Troy where it seems there are more boarded-up buildings than there are populated structures. That may be OK in a truly temporary situation, but in Troy the plywood palaces have by default become an architectural style.
Sheets of ugly wood covering doorways and window openings, many of them there so long their color has become weathered by the elements, are everywhere. The "s'' word immediately comes to mind when you travel down such streets. You fight against giving voice to the word because there are a few houses on these streets where people have made the effort to dab on some paint, plant a flower, sweep up trash. But the temptation to utter the "s'' word doesn't go away easily.
It is made stronger by the plastic bags of trash that tend to pile up next to the plywood palaces.
And the weeds that poke up in the cracked sidewalks near their foundations.
And the grafitti.
And the obvious fact not enough people care that the boundaries of such rundown neighhorhoods have a habit of spreading like a cancer in a community.
So, we will surrender to the "s" word and call them what they are: Slums, or darned close to it.
But what we don't do is give up. The situation can be remedied despite the feuding politicians of both major parties who spend more time playing "in your face'' with each other than grownups should.
You see, incipient slum conditions don't know from party labels. They are not affected by whether people in power can get even for political slights that happened when they were out of the majority. Or by whether they can exact some sort of dominance over one another for no reason that has to do with the common good.
Neither are such conditions affected by gratuitous budget squabbles, by term limit games, by weakly-researched park concession deals, or by any other time spent unwisely on such ego-centered scuffles. What those conditions are affected by is attention -- or the lack of it. If you leave them alone, they assuredly will worsen. Only the plywood manufacturers will prosper. The Plywood City and its people will lose. Guaranteed.
If one spends time looking at the conditions in terms of zoning, public nuisance eradication, property values and community pride, the potential return on time spent on them by elected and appointed city officials should become obvious. In this nation, there are enough urban planners, lawyers and experienced municipal administrators to tap for methods to limit the time a building can be a plywood palace; moves that can require building owners to maintain properties to certain structural and esthetic standards; methods that can force compliance for the common good by the inevitable foot draggers.
There are many communities that have enacted codes to act as the catalyst for pulling declining neighborhoods back from the brink of becoming permanent slums. Methods that have improved neighborhoods to the point people actually want to move to them and invest in their common future.
Troy can use them as a guide to putting together a master plan to overcome this form of urban blight. No, not one of those boondoggle multi-million dollar master plans. Not one of those multi-year "blue ribbon panel'' efforts that bog down in minutiae.
What is being suggested here is using the time now wasted on inter-party squabbles, on backroom politics devoted to nothing more than staying in power, for a real accomplishment: the sort of leadership, vision and achievement that starry-eyed voters dream about when they cross their fingers and cast their votes.
Dear Politicians: If you truly believe your own political rhetoric about community quality, let the discussions begin.
