Bravo to everyone in the Madison community who came out on a pitch-perfect April Saturday to spruce up the exterior of Academy School. What a difference a team of volunteers made in one day after years of deliberate neglect by the town.

A retired former director of facilities for Madison schools recently told me that the town chose not to undertake the most minimal maintenance, like keeping roof drains clear, thus contributing to deterioration of the building in ways that were fiscally irresponsible.

By my calculations, if the town had enforced its own 2015 Blight Ordinance fines of $100 per day, there would be more than $73,000 in the budget to put toward urgent, minimal remediation, like clearing roof drains and repairing windows.

While a little cosmetic work goes a long way toward revealing the Academy School’s potential, let’s keep going with structural changes both to the building and to the process we need to save it!

Carol Snow

Madison