When Worcide was destroyed, people were outraged. But did anyone stop to think that there may have been others outraged by its mere existence? Worcester implements a dual tax rate, which sets the residential rate $18.91 per $1,000 Assessed Valuation and the commercial rate at $34.03 per $1,000. If neither the city of Worcester or the rail company which owns the land directly above claim ownership (and potentially don’t pay the taxes on that piece of land) why weren’t the skaters responsible for some portion of the financial responsibility? They have gotten away without paying its fair portion for over ten years, while all of the businesses around them have paid a substantial amount for plots of land of equal size.
The chances of recouping that type of money now is gone, much like the thousands of dollars worth of un-permitted construction work that they erected in that space. Everyone tries to play this situation off as a bunch of kids just working on their hobby in their spare time, but the realization is, that this wasn’t a small operation. When these “kids” poured cement, they brought in proper construction equipment and cement mixers to get the job done. Why were they exempt from pulling permits for their work? Can we as a city, suddenly turn a blind eye to the procedures we have put in place when they are being purposefully ignored because we are to believe that this was just a pastime? If I suddenly took up building sunrooms and opted to build one onto my own property, I can be certain that I’d receive a citation for not pulling the appropriate paperwork.
The artwork. Oh the “art work”. Graffiti is an ugly stain on any city, even if it is disguised by the name of art. You want art? There is an art museum 3 miles away and it offers free admission on the first Saturday of each month. You can see original piece by everyone from Rembrandt to Warhol and no one else needs to be subjected to the vandalism that you claim is priceless. So what if artists came from all over the world to paint there? Curators scoured the same world so that people like you could live within walking distance to a Monet, and while it isn’t his finest work, they were decent enough to put it in a museum rather on the street where I’d have to be subjected to it every day.
The cities choice to demo this plot should teach these kids a lesson: that if you want to take ownership of a piece of property, you need to make sure that you are taking the correct steps in order to do so, and playing by the same rules that everyone else must abide by. No one can hide behind a thin veil of “art” or “hobby” in order to choose which rules they wish to follow. And for all of this headache, the kids will still get what they want: a new skate park in a central location that will be paid for now, with taxpayer dollars contributed by people like me – your average tax-paying citizen.