To the editor:

Downtown Lawrence Inc. is a useful and valuable organization. It does much to promote downtown and to preserve the downtown area’s vitality and importance to our community. Though I was not aware it is supported with tax dollars, I think that support is probably a good thing.

Nonetheless, Downtown Lawrence Inc. is a voluntary organization. The streets of Lawrence are not voluntary. We are, all of us, compelled by law to pay for the streets with our taxes. We have no recourse but to use them. Though it would seem that downtown merchants should support the downtown and should have an interest in belonging to Downtown Lawrence Inc., whether they choose to do so is a matter of personal choice.

Downtown Lawrence Inc. planned to ask the City Commission to deny sidewalk use permits for the day of the sidewalk sale to merchants who refuse to join Downtown Lawrence. A voluntary organization asks the government to punish those who refuse to support it. This attempt to use the coercive power of government to force citizens to join a voluntary organization is dangerous and a misuse of the power of government.

More fundamentally, it bespeaks of a childish and immature reliance upon government to solve our problems. If Downtown Lawrence Inc. has failed to persuade some of the downtown merchants to join its ranks, it should rely upon its own devices to solve the problem. This is a problem to be solved by individual people, not by Big Brother.

William Skepnek,

Lawrence