To the Editor:

The mayor of Troy asked an interesting question at a recent Planning Commission meeting on the apparent never-ending saga of the Odd Fellows/Old Courthouse demolition.

“I am really biting my tongue here,” prefacing her question (hopefully she did not need stitches). “I do not understand for the life of me why we are telling a privately owned building owner what to do with his property.”

To answer her question, I offer this modest proposal: Should I win this week’s MegaMillions lottery, I shall buy the old building for what the current owner insured it for. Because only I as the new owner — in the mayor’s opinion (based on what tenets of representative democracy?) — have the right to decide the use and/or fate of my property, I plan to demolish it and erect a metal pole barn, which I shall use as a strip club.

After all, it is my property, and I believe in “rugged individualism.”

I note that two adjacent businesses worried that demolition of the building would threaten the integrity of their buildings. But those businesses, the mayor appears to believe, have no standing in the matter.

I am not biting my tongue. It is firmly in my cheek.

Except to wonder when did they stop teaching civics in school?

— Doug Page

Troy