To the editor:

Well, Lawrence, here we go again. Apparently, Lawrence is back in the mode of turning away commerce. We are spending more on police, sewers and road maintenance while raising current residential and commercial property taxes. The Southpoint development will bring 700-plus jobs, millions in sales tax, hundreds of thousands in property tax and, yet, our planning commissioners don’t want to allow it.

They will approve an apartment complex that needs an 85 percent tax abatement, but they won’t approve a retail development that is asking for no abatement, no special financing and no special tax district.

So, raise the taxes and the mill levy, because we are once again afraid of growth.