To the editor:

I feel compelled to respond to Tuesday’s Journal-World editorial regarding recreational facilities.

As a Centennial neighborhood homeowner and taxpayer, I am deeply resentful of the city’s pursuit of yet another sports facility. What our city desperately needs is long overdue infrastructure improvement in the form of sidewalk infill and repair, particularly in older neighborhoods.

The city has built two enormous sports facilities on the southeast side in the last year, and some would argue that they were forced on the Centennial neighborhood against its will. All this spending was funded with a bait and switch campaign that purported to “improve our schools.” Did we really need TWO state of the art stadiums? Indeed, as a taxpayer, I will think long and hard before I ever again vote to approve additional funding for Lawrence schools.

And now the city is considering taking on millions of dollars in additional debt to build a new recreation facility in west Lawrence. It’s madness!

How about instead of spending that money to line the pockets of developers (who have been lobbying for this “play” boondoggle for a while), we build some sidewalks in neighborhoods (like Centennial) that have none?

If we, as a community, really cared about wellness, we’d put our money where it would make the most difference: getting people out of their cars and walking.