Wednesday, June 17, 2015

At Last -- A Reprieve

I feel like I've been living under a dagger since March of last year.

Since the day I received in the mail the notice that my house was on a potential buy-out list by the City of Olathe.

For a stormwater improvement project.

I had watched, with great concern, a stormwater control project at 143rd Street and Locust on the east side of town. Three lovely homes, all much newer than mine, stood on the west bank of a small watercourse. I'd never heard of serious flooding at that location, can't even name the waterway -- if it even has a name at that point.

Those three houses are now past tense. They exist no more. In a very short period of time the structures were bull-dozed into eternity.

So all through the rest of 2014 and into 2015 I wondered if that was the fate that awaited my house. Not that I was idle. I've lived in this same house (it was the city that ordered a change in the address number) for a really long time. My basement had become the warehouse for an extended family, some members of which are no longer alive. I started trying to down-size, finding things in my basement I had never seen before. Could I possibly get ready for a 30-day eviction notice?

The city held a meeting a couple of weeks ago. My house, and four neighbors, are described as being in Phase II, for which the city does not expect to have the money for until 2019 or 2020.

Huge sigh of relief.