Dear editor:
Have the City Fathers gone mad? Has our City Council finally fallen over the deep end? What the heck is going on downtown? My wife and I were driving through the downtown area today (Monday) and saw the Department of Public Works employees erecting bright orange snow fences around all of the beautiful flowers plantings and shrubbery along Pennsylvania Ave.
Now let me see if I have this correct we have spent thousands of dollars expanding our sidewalks, installing a fountain, trying to beautify the downtown area in an attempt to appeal to out of town visitors in the hopes that perhaps, just maybe, we can draw tourists into Warren.
Moving forward, now it is the Fourth of July week and we will obviously have out of town guests, relatives, and visitors in Warren, many who come to watch our parade. What kind of image are we presenting them when we showcase them with our beautiful downtown area, lined with snow fences surrounding the floral displays? It amazes me that we can waste the money and time to erect these fences yet there is not a single, solitary American flag lining our streets anywhere downtown.
I realize that someone is concerned that pedestrians may not be careful around the plants and shrubs and may destroy some of them during the parade, but get real! Any flowers that are damaged or destroyed could easily be replaced with a minimum of effort and expense. Why not have the police department put foot patrols out in the areas of these flowers and keep an eye on them? Or have some of our volunteer Fire Police maintain a patrol around the flowers if we are that concerned. It is absolutely not eye appealing or inviting to out of town guests and I know this certainly would NOT make me want to return to the Warren area if I were a visitor.
And finally, please put flags out to line our streets and show that Warren still has some old fashioned American pride and spirit!
Gary Mickle
Russell