A building aledgedly has a leaky roof and this is this is seen as deviously screwing the tax payers?
The commercial leases I recall dumped nearly all of the building costs on the lessee. The landowner or his agent managed the common areas like the parking lot and landscaping and invoiced the tenants for the cost. If something happened to the building that wasn’t structural or otherwise required a code variance, it was the tenant’s problem.
Roof collapsed: owner
Roof leaked: tenant