This is terrible. Marty is losing his home? I guess I missed the
article. I don't think anyone deserves to lose their home, but
certainly not Marty
Jim

On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 4:16 PM, Karen Allen<[email protected]> wrote:
> For those of you who may not know him, Marty Cabry is the older white
> gentleman who works for Jannie Blackwell as her Zoning point person (among
> other things). You've probably seen him at Zoning Board hearings, or
> representing Jannie at community meetings.
>
> Marty had been sick for a number of years and had to take an oxygen
> tank everywhere until he had a full lung transplant about 2 or 3 years ago.
> But before that, one of his children was born with a debilitating disease,
> and has been confined to a wheelchair all of her life.  She is in her 30’s
> now and still lives with him.  The front of his house had to be reconfigured
> to install a wheelchair ramp for her, although the ramp didn't appear to be
> in the photo included in the online version of the Inquirer story.
>
> It's very unfortunate that Marty hasn't been paying his real estate taxes.
> But it isn't a situation where he is a deadbeat trying to game the system or
> his job.  For the last 30+ years he and his wife struggled to raise and
> support a severely handicapped child, and in his later years he himself
> suffered from a debilitating health problem.
>
> But in spite of all of that, Marty has also been a very tireless worker for
> Jannie, and he very likely puts in 10 to 12 hour days. Even when he was
> really sick, I often saw him come to our community meetings, having just
> come from one meeting and probably on his way to another one. Some of those
> meetings ran until 9 or 10 o'clock at night.  And in spite of any bad press
> that she may have gotten for doing it, Jannie Blackwell repaid that
> dedication by trying to help him, instead of simply turning on him or
> throwing him under the bus.
>
> I'm really sorry Marty's going to end up losing his house. I'm also sorry
> that the Inquirer couldn't give the same attention to his personal struggle
> as it did to the fact that he was a city employee who didn't [couldn’t] pay
> his property taxes. If anything, Marty is a perfect illustration of what's
> wrong with the current health care system, where medical expenses can force
> people onto the street.
>
>
>
> Maybe this story reveals flaws in the current health care system or with the
> real estate taxation system. But the story does not reveal a flaw in Marty's
> character, which the Inquirer story tried to imply.



-- 
Jim Cummings
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