To the Editor:

We moved our family to St. Charles when I was 45 years old in 1985. While driving around the city that first year, I noticed a home on Prairie Avenue resembling a very large half-finished bomb shelter. We felt certain a class city like St. Charles would not allow this blight to exist in that condition for long.

However, I am now 72, and all of this time that house has continued to exist in ever-changing degrees of ugliness and code violation. In fact, records indicate the owner, Clifford McIlvaine, began this "renovation" about 1975, exhibiting behavior that – in my opinion – is an arrogant defiance of city regulations and all of its citizens, and it has now gone on for 37 years!