To the editor:

After a period of deliberation and consultation, the City Commission seems ready to pass a budget that makes heavy cuts in social services while increasing spending on police and economic development efforts. With a noticeable increase in violence in our town in recent times, it seems proper to spend more on policing as a means of making our community safer. Could we instead be locking the barn after the horses have bolted?

Social services are a means of ensuring that people learn means to avoid violence and have a stake in the community so that they contribute rather than drain our resources. There will always be a need for well regulated police protection, but when I awoke Saturday morning at 2 a.m. wondering whether the noises I heard were last-minute fireworks or gunshots, I wasn’t wishing for more cops, I was wishing those people had better values and coping skills taught to them from the start. I was wishing they had more interaction with the community than the police, courts and jail. We can do better by all our citizens.

Bob Gent,
Lawrence