To the editor:

Expensive problems with northwest city growth? What a shock!

Perhaps the potential problems with city growth in the northwest quadrant can be traced over the last four to five years to the city commissioners who stacked the planning committees with colleagues and doggedly adhered their plans and decisions to Horizon 2020 (a faulty guideline that was out of date and unreliable when it was approved). Some folks in Lawrence were aware of this plan’s shortcomings but commissioners took no heed of that.

Perhaps, it’s the conspiracy of the “smart growth and no growth” advocates to halt expansion in Lawrence. You see, the city can’t allow any development in these areas because it doesn’t have the facilities to support that growth. But, it never intended to support that growth.

Perhaps, the city professionals were truly caught off guard by the growth requests for this portion of the city. If you buy that rationale, I will gladly sell you my half of the Brooklyn Bridge for a fair price. Companies, such as Wal-Mart, do not begin the process of locating and constructing a new store without first doing their own due diligence and determining the growth and profit potential of the locations where they might locate.

If any of the above excuses are true, it’s past time for those in charge of the city, its planning and its operation to step aside. Perhaps Lawrence needs a new form of professional city administration to operate a city approaching a population of 100,000.

Ken Meyer,

Lawrence