To the editor:

Our city commissioners and planners need to put issues that involve raising city taxes to a vote by the taxpayers! I’m tired of our city leaders’ irresponsible spending of our tax dollars! This town is becoming impossibly high to live in; you’ve got to stop giving in to every individual that wants something extra paid for by the city.

The schools keep asking for more money, yet people from Texas, California and almost any state in the south will tell you education in our schools is much better than they have. We have fewer students, too. Instead of building fancy new schools that we pay architects a fortune to design, use the same basic blueprint for all schools, like we did in the ’60s.

Didn’t we learn anything from South Junior High? They had to have a fancy round school that never worked. Now the taxpayers are footing the bill to replace it. And sell the old schools and fire stations that close; the taxpayers don’t want to pay for another city office or school board office. Get some of our money back by selling them; we don’t want to pay the utility bills on them!

And a lot of the street repairs wouldn’t be needed if the city would stop using salt on the streets; they make concrete-friendly mixes with sand that wouldn’t eat up the streets and curbs! Try chip-and-sealing more streets, like on Kasold to save money, instead of grinding the street and putting down new asphalt; that’d save a fortune.

Mary Chaney,

Lawrence