To the editor:

Mayor Highberger put settling the South Lawrence Trafficway high on his list of goals for his mayoral year. His willingness to tackle this problem has been welcomed by all sides, as was evident in Monday’s joint meeting of the County Commission, City Commission, USD 497, KU and Haskell Indian Nations University. Commissioners and board members welcomed the initiative and pledged to work with the mayor toward a solution.

You, however, in your April 16 editorial, prefer to ridicule the mayor’s position on the 31st Street alignment.

Even more offensive in your biased commentary is the way you marginalize and denigrate your fellow citizens who just happen to disagree with you. You refer to their decadeslong commitment as “the many delay tactics engineered by a small group of onlookers.”

“Small group of onlookers?”

These are simply people motivated by values different from yours, values that you don’t respect or care to understand. These are serious people who believe that there is more to building a city than figuring out how to move cars around, and they have as much to say about the SLT as you do.

Wally Emerson,

Lawrence