Cary J. Collins for Judge

Courier News (Elgin, IL)
August 19, 2007
A vote for common sense
Author: MIKE BAILEY
Section: VIEWPOINT
Page: A8
Index Terms:
POLITICS; GOVERNMENT; CULTURE
Estimated printed pages: 2
Article Text:

Cary Collins is my new hero.

Collins, a trustee for the village of Hoffman Estates, achieved this minor honor by joining me in calling the dilapidated Lindbergh School a "piece-of-junk schoolhouse" at a recent village board meeting.

His disgust was directed at the desperate attempt to save the rundown school as though it were the site of the Last Supper.

Collins voted in the majority to amend a previous annexation agreement with Dartmoor Homes, owner of the property on which the school now sits in ruins. As part of the original agreement to annex a large development into the village, Dartmoor agreed to dedicate $100,000 toward renovation, presumably of the Charles A. Lindbergh School on Shoe Factory Road, which has sat empty for at least half a century. As a result of last week's vote, Dartmoor no longer has that obligation, and Hoffman Estates has officially washed its hands of any taxpayer obligation. Hallelujah! Someone has finally stopped indulging hysterical self-interests who demand that public and private support be accorded their personal passions.

All of this overwrought drivel about a wrecked old building has come about because a vast area of what is now farmland is going to be developed into yet another dense subdivision. The site includes this "piece-of-junk schoolhouse" that, though neglected for decades, has been elevated to consecrated ground.

Old buildings are nothing more than pieces of wood and concrete not noticeably unlike any other assemblages of wood or concrete, save for the importance that someone attaches to them.

This schoolhouse once was in a rural area where children from surrounding farms walked five miles uphill (both ways) through the snow to get there. Mercifully, it was replaced by modern facilities, which include air conditioning, separate classrooms, proper lighting, modern equipment and tools that enable the learning necessary for today's economy.
The schoolhouse is a relic of another time and place, just like an outhouse. No preservationists seek to preserve outhouses to remind us of what it was like before we had indoor plumbing. Yet. Perhaps to shield the plan from criticism, it has been proposed that the site become a "Shrine of the Innocents" - a place for parents of deceased children to grieve. It should be obvious how out of place that might be amid the merriment of suburban living. But places to grieve already exist; they're called churches.

What is most galling is that preservationists aren't just adamant that a worthless "piece-of-junk schoolhouse" be preserved for them to look at. That is not the final indignity. We (taxpayers) and private business must pay to indulge them their perception of historical preservation.

Mercifully, a strong wind removed the anachronistic Teeple Barn from view, if not memory. Given its condition, it's not impossible that a strong wind could end the Lindbergh School as well.

But in the interim, let us rally around Cary Collins, the new patron saint of common sense, and deny any more tax dollars to save worthless old buildings just because they are old.

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