Nothing like a handful of ne’re–do-wells to piss off the gentry…
Like Lawrence Journal World reader Chris Chapin. Chapin’s letter to the editor was published a few days ago.
“I’m very disappointed in the direction Lawrence is headed,” he begins. “What I see today is a fiscally irresponsible government whose leaders spend a majority of their time spewing out meaningless social edicts that have nothing to do with the business of running our city.”
Talk about grabbing a bull by the horns…
“Instead of addressing serious issues like what we can do to benefit from the billion dollars, or so, being spent just to our East, we are passing meaningless and embarrassing laws about dreadlocks. This homeless situation has made us the laughing stock of the Midwest, and I heard last night, even Mexico.”
Mexico laughing at us? No way!
“You can’t keep raising taxes and diverting hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars of taxpayer money away from needed infrastructure repairs to recruit, house and feed homeless people and not expect consequences,” Chapin continues. “You finally figured out how to fill up the buses. The people who actually pay for taxes are getting pretty restless.
“My observation is that the very vocal and militant far left has effectively silenced anyone who disagrees with them and has successfully hijacked the entire city. The groups I hang with are hoping (Lawrence city commission candidate) Mike Dever will return some degree of sanity to your bunch.”
Lawrence police chief Rich Lockhart is on record that neighboring, smaller police departments are sharing their ‘homeless wealth” with KU-ville.
“Lockhart said law enforcement agencies in nearby Jefferson and Shawnee counties also are bringing people — often homeless, mentally ill or both — to Lawrence, although those counties most often drop people off at the North Lawrence convenience store closest to the turnpike,” the Lawrence Journal World reports. “Lockhart didn’t provide an estimate of how many times per month such activity is happening, but rather said ‘it’s happening pretty frequently.
“I think there is a lot of passing the buck, and it is not fair to the person,” he added.
Not to mention, the city of Lawrence.
Word on the street is Lawrence is a great place for homeless types to go or be sent.
“…There is some kind of network, a message out there — and I don’t know if it is a website or what because we haven’t nailed that down completely — but there is a network that says there is a lot of services in Lawrence,” Lockhart says. “It (Lawrence) is a good place to go, and they treat their houseless people very well. And that is what is drawing people from out of state.”
Lockhart says there is no current strategy for countering that message.
The trouble with the, uh, “wide net” is that “some of the folks that are being drawn in are predators,” Lockhart says. “They don’t want a resource. They are victimizing our unsheltered people, who are vulnerable as well.”
And there’s a lot more going on at Lawrence’s trendy public library than nude women.
“An uptick in disruptive behavior outside of the Lawrence Public Library this summer has led to safety concerns from the community,” the newspaper reports.
“My hope is that if we can get some of the more outlandish things that have happened — or being purported to have happened — under control, that’ll really kind of dial down a lot of the stress and worry that people are having,” says library director Brad Allen.
The bottom line: Somebody needs to step up and take hold of the situation.
ku student housing?
Uh, not exactly. More like MU or K-State housing!
pretty sure that’s ‘extactly’