To the editor:I am angry, frustrated and really surprised by the fiscally irresponsible behavior by our City Commission over the past several years. Let’s review:The City (Commission and staff) seems to do no serious medium to long-range planning. We have a long-standing stable staff with ...

To the editor:The Lawrence Journal-World article of July 6, asking how the police department project ended up being third in line behind the library and the recreation center is the same question asked when the recreation center was proposed. As a participant in a 6News Town Topic segment, ...

To the editor:If I am not mistaken each year about this time my lawgivers announce that we must increase our taxes to cover employee expenses (retirement, salaries, health care). Now it would seem to me that those costs should be relatively well understood and should be addressed long term as ...

To the editor:In 1999, as I was preparing to retire after 43 years of practicing medicine in Lawrence, many of my patients asked me where I was planning to move to after I retired. I remember always telling them “I wasn’t leaving Lawrence … people move to Lawrence to retire.”This is a ...

To the editor:Primary elections are fast approaching, and it’s vital to make your voice heard especially since some primaries will be the deciding election for those candidates who have no challengers from the opposing party. House Bill 2210 changed the deadline to switch your party ...

To the editor:Here are two items of waste concerns. I see that the city wants to fix more sidewalks. Good idea if they are fixed so as not to have predictable failure. But, when I see construction where a sidewalk is installed over fill dirt and the soil has settled causing the sidewalk to ...

To the editor:The Star-Spangled Banner is sung at sporting events, ball games and 4th of July celebrations around the country with great gusto by fans in the stands with words like “the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air.” Fantastic fireworks displays follow, designed to thrill ...

To the editor:As we celebrate the Fourth of July it is important to remember that, before the sales and the fireworks, it was in a time of uncertainty and some fear that it came about.In 1761, a lawyer named James Otis argued that the Bill of Rights, Magna Carta, and the Common Law prohibited ...

To the editor:Upon driving past K-10 in east Lawrence the other day, I did a double take. Like an alien invasion from “War of the Worlds,” giant metal cranes stuck their heads out of the forest like extraterrestrial invaders. And like said invaders, these cranes encroached upon the land, ...

To the editor:Not so fast, patriotic pyromaniacs! There is more than the usual push this year to forego Lawrence’s fireworks ban over the Independence Day holiday. Apparently, people have short memories. The fireworks ban was created because things were completely out of control in the ...

To the editor:Rather than place the burden of enforcing what has proven to be an unenforceable law on the Lawrence police, our city and county leaders should work together to restrict the sale of fireworks within Douglas County. Any firework sold in Douglas County should be legal to use in the ...

To the editor:On June 27, the J-W had an impressive diversity of views on the Opinion Page. There was conservative George Will, counterbalanced by the ultraconservative Cal Thomas.Will admired the tea party for its near-miss in Mississippi while ignoring the corrosive influence that radical ...

To the editor:Every year an article arrives before the 4th of July talking about the fireworks ban and the police department not having the resources to deal with the ban. I believe it is time for the city to discontinue this ban on fireworks usage on personal residential property.The cost for ...

To the editor,There is a fine line between Lawrence Police Chief Tarik Khatib worrying about worst-case scenarios and actually inviting them. So, from Chad Lawhorn’s very informative article Friday, we all now know where Lawrence’s sole armed vehicle is being stored, that there is no ...

To the editor:Dating back to just after President Obama was elected, there was an effort to scrutinize conservative groups, applying for 501c3 status, by the IRS. Extraordinary requirements were requested of these groups.At the center of this controversy is Lois Lerner. The known facts are that ...

To the editor:Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer recently provided an eyewitness account to South Sudan’s humanitarian crisis in the Kansas City Star. He spent two weeks there honorably volunteering with the International Medical Corps. Last year, Kansas University students traveled to Boston to compete in ...

To the editor:“Children.”  Did you say, “children”?  There are dozens, perhaps hundreds of darling, innocent children among the thousands that have been coming across our southern borders every single day for how many days? And where are they, Mr. President?You decided to send them ...

To the editor:Thank you to the Journal-World for its coverage of the Free State Festival in Sunday’s paper. The insert and accompanying articles made it clear how many exciting things are planned for the five-day event. What began as a small film festival just a few years ago, has grown into ...

To the editor:I sincerely hope that Chancellor Gray-Little and the other members of her Kansas University administration who have consistently denied the true nature of KU’s Confucius Institute have read the statement issued recently by the American Association of University Professors ...

To the editor:Ms. Kieffer, in her letter of June 24, should be wary of making broad brush stroke comments such as, “the government does not have any sense or do anything humanitarian unless it is for another country, unfortunately.”“The government” isn’t some mass floating out, in ...