Can't Sell Your Property In Southbridge?

Neither Can the Town, But Either Way

It's Your Problem!

Ken O'Brien

Tomorrow will mark two years since our town manager announced his plan to sell surplus town buildings to infuse cash into the town coffers.

I want to thank Jim Sottile for reminding me of this fact.

With all the fanfare that can be afforded by the front page of the Southbridge Evening News it was announced on January 6, 2010, "Appraising properties: Subcommittee OKs Estimates Ahead of Town Buildings' Sale".

According to the article, "At issue are properties the manager hopes to sell to raise money for the new school project — Wells Junior High School, 70 Foster St., 115 Marcy St., and 114 and 62 Pleasant St. Except for Wells, they have assessed values between $318,000 and $971,000, but such values are not generally seen as useful on the commercial market because they don’t actually pay any taxes now. That also applies to Wells,which is assessed at about $6.3 million."

In what can only be described as the same kind of false hopes we've heard about the so-called "technology [formerly industrial] park", the article went on to report, "Clark said he’s already had several people express interest in some of the buildings, particularly those on Pleasant and Foster streets."

As we now know, those feeble words of aspirative assurance have come to naught. 

The town manager was confronted with the same reality that has stymied those who have attempted to follow the advice of our current council chair that if you don't like the way things are going, sell your house and move.

You see, even if you want to sell out and get out, virtually nobody's buying Southbridge property. And this despite the masterful marketing campaign “Make Southbridge Home”. More like "Make Southbridge Home of the Homeless".

We saw the consequences of this newest pipe dream policy when it came to confronting the new budget and the issue of our latest tax increase. The hoped for influx of cash just wasn't there.

In addition, there was the need to re-jigger the whole bond issue structure for the new school.

So we still have the maintenance costs for these properties, which had already been diminished by this scheme. From the same article, “...Clark said he intends to fund the $9,950 cost [of the appraisal] 'from various funding sources related to the various structures,' such as maintenance line items.”

Increased taxes, surplus real estate with the accompanying maintenance costs, complications with state agencies for restructuring the additional town debt associated with the new school and the wasted expense of a professional appraisal.

Perhaps all this is just one more reason to seriously consider the proposal that I put forward in Let's Pay for Performance in Southbridge Town Government.