Morin says he had no choice except to knock down old house

City Building Official Guy Morin said his decision last Thursday to condemn the oldest house on Main Street was necessary because the structure was unsafe.
Morin said he condemned the house at 313 Main St., which belonged to Ken Karl, because its rear half had failed.
“The back was starting to fall off. It was collapsing in on itself,” Morin said. “It was scary.”
Karl had opened the back of the house up to the weather and rain this fall had caused saturated plaster to fall, boards to warp and other problems to develop, according to Morin.
Morin said Karl yanked out the bearing walls inside so the house had become fundamentally unsafe.
“This was just awful inside,” Morin said.
Since the city sold the Federal-style house and the property to Karl in 2004 for $1 – for his part, he paid to have it moved across the street to make way a new library parking lot – officials have fought with Karl over the slow pace of renovations.
Morin said he did not act under political pressure.
“I was forbidden to talk to anybody on the council” by Mayor William Stortz, Morin said, so he didn’t. He made the decision himself, though he sent Stortz a memorandum a month earlier outlining what was going on.
Morin said the mayor and city attorney’s office knew what he was doing. They never notified the public.
Morin said that he couldn’t even allow Karl to have electrical power in the building because the work inside was “so poorly done” that he worried it would go up in flames.
Tom Lavigne, the city’s code enforcement officer, said the house sat on its foundation in such a way that it would have been all too easy for someone to tumble 10 feet into the basement.
Morin said he made it “very clear” to Karl that he considered the building unsafe and that something had to be done to fix it quickly. But Karl never offered any sort of competent plan that showed he could do it, Morin said.
“It was obvious that he didn't know what he was doing,” Morin said.
Both Lavigne and Morin said Karl admitted to them that he didn't know how to repair the old house.
By the time Morin ordered the house razed, Lavigne said, he was afraid to go inside.
Lavigne, a former city councilor, said Karl “had hundreds of opportunities” to prevent the destruction of the house, but botched them all. He said the city “bent over backward” to be fair to Karl, but it was no use. He said Karl had no money or skills that would allow him to do what was needed.
Morin said he did the right thing last Thursday when he declared the house a hazard. He said he called Laviero Construction that afternoon to see how quickly it could send a crew over to knock down the house.
The company came Friday and did the job for about $17,000, Morin said. A lien for the cost will be placed on the property, he said, so Karl is responsible for paying the money back.
Lavigne said he watched the house come down. He said it collapsed “like a house of cards” with only a tap from a crane. He said he was astonished how fast it disintegrated.
Morin said he began talking with Karl in May and spoke to him regularly for months. In that time, he said, he warned Karl that he needed to show with specific plans how he intended to restore the house and ensure its soundness.
Karl never complied, Morin said.
Morin said that Karl had stripped away any historic value from the house. It no longer had the antique mantle or staircase railing that made it special when Karl took possession, Morin said.
“The center fireplace was all concrete block,” Morin said.
The stairs that once curved gracefully to the second floor were a wreck, Morin said.
“He ruined the historic value of the house,” said Lavigne.
The cabinetry inside the house was useless junk, both Lavigne and Morin said. They said Karl collected used cabinets from people who were throwing them out because they were no good any longer.
The site where the house stood holds nothing more than bulldozed dirt now, with some bricks, boulders and a few broken boards strewn around. A half-dozen dead mums are planted off to one side.
Morin said a fire-damaged house at 390 Main St., also on the city's historic registry, is going to be demolished soon. The owner is picking up the tab rather than have the city hire a contractor, he said.

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