The People's House: a home for rats...

   

     Did you miss this fact, too, or am I the only human who did not know that the Arkansas Governor's Mansion is falling in on itself. Over the past few weeks, I've read with interest the articles reporting rat infestation, rot, and mold, those issues being minor to some.
    The so-called GM commission should have had everything that was in disrepair addressed when they had the chance, when the Huckabee family moved into a Triple-Wide, parked on the lawn (or grass as we say in Arkansas).
    The Arkansas Governor's Mansion is a public building, first and foremost. Its first floor is for public meetings and receptions, dinners, and other public events. Adjacent is an annex serving as the Governor's offices. I didn't know that. I've never toured the Mansion. With one central staircase, the First Family, it is reported, could be trapped in the Governor's Residence upstairs (a far cry from Mansion) when the first floor public spaces were being used.That has been rectified.
    Take a truck-load of pictures, save artifacts (including a petrified rat, I would suppose), pull out the trim that is historic, salvage as many historic elements and furnishings as possible. Then, implode the place.
     Money would be better spent in a budget for a new structure that would last for the next 100 years. It could be modeled after the beautiful Georgian architecture of the current Mansion, the one that is home to rats, no pun intended.