With the local elections primaries two weeks away, you would think the Public Works Department would be busy in the wards cleaning gutters, unstopping street drains, cleaning debris/trash and addressing a few pot holes. But not in the Friendly City. Where is our new street sweeper the city bought? With some council members running for reelection with an opponent, I would think that would be a priority. Those running unopposed, it is business as usual. Not only are we drowning in debt, our infrastructure is crumbling. We have an unfinished fire station with no idea of the cost. It was started with a $650,000 price tag five years ago. We have an amphitheater sitting unfinished after the state funds were depleted. It’s been flooded multiple times too, remember! Our fire and police department are under staffed and overworked. Violent crime is nearly out of control. We have another committee formed to address this. I hope they have more success than the “Citizens Overview Committee” had, which was made ad hoc. While our great men and women in “blue” are busy trying to catch the bad guys, some in high political place want to use them to harass some citizens when they are driving city streets. Someone reported to the police a suspicious vehicle driving in a neighborhood that the mayor lives in. An officer’s time was wasted to go to the citizen’s home because someone drove by the mayor’s home. Are there secrets hidden by some to the mayor’s real health problems? We could use a little transparency, but this is Columbus, isn’t it? The police have been used in the past to harass businesses about the mask mandate; now they are being used to harass and try to intimidate a citizen driving in the mayor’s neighborhood.
I will close on a positive note. Columbus is getting more COVID relief money. What did we do with the first $556,000 the city received? Transparency? Forty million dollars in debt, but who’s counting?
God Bless America!
Lee Roy Lollar, Columbus
