AT WHAT POINT WILL THIS FARCE OF SHAM HISTORICAL "RESTORATION" STOP?

$404,000 JUST TO MOVE THE REMNANTS OF THE WILLIAM NEALE HOUSE,

AND ANOTHER ESTIMATED $0.5 MILLION TO TRY TO "RESTORE" IT

(Click to enlarge.)

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

The contractor who moved the Neale House said that the only parts that he could move from Texas Southmost College property to the Linear Park was the core of the building, which had been altered numerous times from its original design to house the local American Legion post and later, the Brownsville Art League.

He said that the wood – some of it in the the foundation dating back to 1824 – for the most part was rotten and that he had to replace part of it with new wood so it would remain together.

"There's some parts where you can't step on the remaining floor because it's rotten and you'll fall through," he said Thursday. That's more than 200 years old."

All this expense to honor Stillman, Brownsville's "founder" who swindled the land-grant owners of their land through legal chicanery before he left town and for Neale, the city's first elected mayor and a runaway slave catcher who went into Mexico for money to return these human beings to bondage.

(Click on graphic to enlarge)

The farce of historical preservation on this structure will continue, nonetheless, and the Brownsville City Commission seems wiling to plod on and keep pouring the city taxpayers' money into the charade.

This is about par for the course and has the Charles Stillman Laureles Ranch House "restoration" as precedent. In that case, a similar amount of cash was spent "restoring" the carcass of the structure that had been abandoned in a corner of a Corpus Christi museum as an eyesore. See the "miracle" for yourself below.

Expect the same with the Neale House compliment of your taxes.