From LaVern F. Isely
Monroe
To the editor:
I heard Sen. Bernie Sanders say on television a few weeks back that good government starts at City Hall and the local school board and works right on up. Since we don't have a well-informed City Council in Monroe because they voted to get rid of every ward having their own alderperson and went for a system they call council at-large, where all the alderpersons could live, at the worst scenario, in one ward. Their excuse was they couldn't get alderpersons to run in each ward.
My answer to that excuse is to pay them more, which now is approximately $3,000, raise that to $5,000, which would attract more people to run. You could easy pay for this by getting rid of the city administrator, who they pay $100,000 plus and his assistant. I believe you could get somebody to run for a full-time mayor who would do it for $50,000 and have an office at City Hall with stated hours.
Over 90 percent of the people I talked to liked the system we had and there's no reason why we couldn't vote for people that support the ward system and get back what we lost since that system has been around in Monroe since 1882. If you want problems solved, you have to have people living and working in the area they represent.
For example, I talked to a group of veterans, who had a meeting at Leisure Lanes when NBC had the Commander-in-Chief Forum. One of the veterans gave me a pin from the group IAVA (Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America) and who would know better than this veteran, who fought nine years in these two wars. I looked up this group on the computer and found out it looked like a great group of veterans that I wouldn't mind being in, even though I didn't serve at that time. They said any veteran could sign up. I signed up, and their numbers are growing.
If the presidential candidates want to know what is going on, they should talk to this group because, just like the Monroe City Council, I feel you have to deal with a veterans group or a local group where the problems are happening. I'm wearing their pin next to the Hillary pin when I'm walking around Monroe.
Monroe
To the editor:
I heard Sen. Bernie Sanders say on television a few weeks back that good government starts at City Hall and the local school board and works right on up. Since we don't have a well-informed City Council in Monroe because they voted to get rid of every ward having their own alderperson and went for a system they call council at-large, where all the alderpersons could live, at the worst scenario, in one ward. Their excuse was they couldn't get alderpersons to run in each ward.
My answer to that excuse is to pay them more, which now is approximately $3,000, raise that to $5,000, which would attract more people to run. You could easy pay for this by getting rid of the city administrator, who they pay $100,000 plus and his assistant. I believe you could get somebody to run for a full-time mayor who would do it for $50,000 and have an office at City Hall with stated hours.
Over 90 percent of the people I talked to liked the system we had and there's no reason why we couldn't vote for people that support the ward system and get back what we lost since that system has been around in Monroe since 1882. If you want problems solved, you have to have people living and working in the area they represent.
For example, I talked to a group of veterans, who had a meeting at Leisure Lanes when NBC had the Commander-in-Chief Forum. One of the veterans gave me a pin from the group IAVA (Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America) and who would know better than this veteran, who fought nine years in these two wars. I looked up this group on the computer and found out it looked like a great group of veterans that I wouldn't mind being in, even though I didn't serve at that time. They said any veteran could sign up. I signed up, and their numbers are growing.
If the presidential candidates want to know what is going on, they should talk to this group because, just like the Monroe City Council, I feel you have to deal with a veterans group or a local group where the problems are happening. I'm wearing their pin next to the Hillary pin when I'm walking around Monroe.
