Letter to the editor: Candidates, come forward

To the editor:

With just a few days left before the filing deadline at noon on June 1 for City Commission and school board candidates, it is disappointing to see so many of the same old faces and so few new ones. One would expect the many controversial decisions of the last two years by local government to engender widespread interest in running for office — at least among those disenchanted with the status quo.

There is no shortage of issues the handling of which have caused heartburn around some dining room tables. Here are just a few: a growing lack of local government transparency, skyrocketing property values and no mill levy reductions, growing homelessness and a scarcity of affordable housing, racial disparity in law enforcement, continually rising utility fees, ever increasing costs of city capital projects, a lack of meaningful progress toward a police review board, the displacement of hundreds of grade school kids, larger classes and shrinking curricula, teacher shortages and administrator abundance, proposals to expand existing schools while closing recently renovated neighborhood schools.

If bringing a fresh pair of eyes to the direction of local government is on your to-do list, now is the time to act.

Here’s hoping for lots of last-minute filings and a robust primary with lots of fresh candidates and innovative ideas.

Jerry Harper,

Lawrence

COMMENTS

Welcome to the new LJWorld.com. Our old commenting system has been replaced with Facebook Comments. There is no longer a separate username and password login step. If you are already signed into Facebook within your browser, you will be able to comment. If you do not have a Facebook account and do not wish to create one, you will not be able to comment on stories.