Hmm, tearing down our house?

Our neighborhood has been a flutter with controversy lately because of plans to redo the water mains and sewer lines on our street, and resurface the street at the same time. Sounds like a good thing overall, but each homeowner on the street is expected to share in the cost -- to the tune of $3,500 each. Therein lies the controversy (after all, what do we pay taxes for?)

We have even more controversy because we live on the corner of Superior Street and a dead end alley. Our driveway is on the alley, and there are three homes down the alley from us. The other houses have very screwy water lines, including that one of them feeds off the other so one neighbor actually writes a check to the other neighbor each month to cover his water usage. Clearly these should be sorted out.

So Mike has been going to council meetings, and we've been talking with other neighbors about it. Mike and I both pretty much think the project should happen and that the alley should be included, we just want to make sure that we don't get billed twice, once for the street and once for the alley.

Imagine our surprise when we were told that the city was looking at three possible solutions, and one of them included widening the alley, which would require them to "purchase and demolish the house at 901 Superior Street." YES, that is US!

I was shocked at first to think that we may be forced to move quickly. Then we started to wonder how much we would get for the house, since, after all, they were displacing a family. During dinner I said to Mike, "Hey, you'd never have to finish the trim work." LOL

It's actually all a moot point now because the city has decided they don't have time to add the alley into the plans and will just be doing the street. Gotta love it that they decided they don't have time to do it right and fix the wacky way the lines were originally set up, so they will just move forward with the original plans.

So, for now, you can continue to send any snail mail to 901 Superior. :-)